An interview with Grove City College Religion professor T. David Gordon, a minister in the Presbyterian Church of America, on his recent book: Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns (P&R Publishing, 2010)

In his new book, Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymn, (P & R Publishing, 2010), T. David Gordon argues that modern worship choruses have trumped hymns in many congregations because for decades, we have been inundated with pop music—to the point that many of us don’t know better. If you eat nothing but Big Macs, Gordon says, you will never appreciate a filet mignon.

A professor of religion at Grove City College, Gordon takes a media ecology approach, which he describes as the study of “the social and individual human consequences when a new medium is introduced to a culture.” Regarding church music, Gordon says, media ecologists should ask how music, “once a participatory thing, became a passive thing. What happens when people who used to sing folk music around the house are now surrounded by Muzak? How does that alter our sensibilities of music?”

In the context of the church’s “worship wars,” Gordon’s views may seem controversial and certainly will not stop the feuding. While not everyone will agree with him, his arguments can take the discussion about church music to a deeper, richer place. Christianity Today senior associate editor Mark Moring recently spoke with Gordon.

The media ecology approach brings a new perspective to the worship wars.

The wars are still going partly because none of the ways by which people tried to explain the wars were sticking. I think media ecology allows us to better understand the division. You could not explain the change [from traditional hymns to praise-and-worship songs] on either theological grounds or aesthetic grounds. So I started asking, On what grounds could we explain it?

The Reformation also changed worship music, but only after two-and-a-half centuries of serious theological discussion. It hasn’t been the same with modern changes; the debate came about ex post facto. In fact, proponents of contemporary worship music do not consider singing “A Mighty Fortress” to be sinful, in the way that Calvin and Luther thought the Mass was sinful.

You write that we evangelicals are beholden to “contemporaneity.” What do you mean?

Many are promoting an “aesthetic” that it is our duty to patronize living artists and not artists who are dead. Should we also not read books that are more than 50 years old, or enter buildings that are more than 50 years old? Christians aren’t abandoning their buildings, and they haven’t stopped reading Spurgeon or Edwards or Luther or Calvin. We haven’t rejected other art forms that are not new. We’ve done so only with music.

Have we really rejected it, or do we just prefer modern music?

It’s closer to rejection at this point. In every generation, gifted people would write some good hymns, and subsequent generations would enjoy them. Nothing new there. What’s new is the notion that you have to have new music in a worship service. That’s unprecedented. I’m asking why people feel this emotional distance from hymns that was not felt by generations before.

Today, traditionalists and contemporary enthusiasts both seem to be saying, “We’ll do our thing, you do yours, and we’ll agree to disagree.” What’s wrong with that?

It is always appropriate to articulate differences in a manner that encourages Christian fellowship and charity. But those of us who regret all denominational differences, on the ground that they become effective barriers to the highest expressions of Christian unity, also regret that “traditional” and “contemporary” have become their own denominations. So in this sense, it is never good for Christians to simply say to other Christians, “Go in peace, be warm and full.” We first should try to understand our differences, then attempt to resolve them. Traditionalists have never excluded the contemporary; they have always encouraged the best artists of every generation to add to the growing, living tradition of hymnody. It is the contemporaneists who are often exclusive; there are some who exclude almost the entire Christian tradition.

I have consistently encountered this irony: Almost all defenders of contemporary worship music are aesthetic relativists (“It’s just a matter of taste”), yet they are the ones who insist that the church abandon everything else in the name of what they deem “good taste.” But why are they willing to see the church divided over what is “merely” a matter of taste?

You blame the ubiquity of pop music for the shift.

Remember the expression “elevator music”? The first Muzak was used in elevators for people who, when they went to the big city and got in an elevator for the first time, were a little anxious. So the Muzak people decided that with some pleasant background music, people’s anxiety would go down. Before long, elevator music made its way into the dentist’s office, then the mall, and now as you put gas in your car. We can’t tune out the onslaught of pop music; we hear it as much as five to eight hours a day. People reach a point where nothing but pop music sounds like music.

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