Tag: Music

Christian Rock and Rocky Soil

Christian Renaissance Movement1 Comment

It used to baffle me. “How can so many of my peers who were so ‘churchy’ and ‘involved’ in high school have just drifted away in college?”

It doesn’t baffle me any more.

If you are a new DRE, youth minister, or high school chaplain in the USA, here’s a sobering reality check: the chances are that a lot of the kids volunteering on the weekend, helping lead retreats, signing up for work camp each year, etc., etc., will fall away when they leave high school. No, not all, and probably not most, but many. Some will eventually find their way back, maybe by a chance encounter with a priest, or a random itch of their conscience, or if and when they get married in the Church and decide it’s time to “get serious.” Some will find their way back, but not all.

Why does this happen, how does this illusion of commitment work, and what can be done to prevent this?

Despite the provocative title of this article, music is only part of the problem, though it is one of the best examples of the core conflict – trying to choose both God and mammon in parishes and ministry programs.

But let’s talk music first.

It is possible for rock music to be authentically Christian and still be good rock. But the Christian message must be indirect, or else there will be a lack of proportion between what is being said and how it is being said. Proportion is an essential element of beauty, and who wants music that isn’t beautiful to be used for worship?

Here is one comparison between two songs with similar themes but achieved in radically different ways.

This song is a first-person account of someone trying to overcome some life obstacles.

The lyrics are vaguely Christian, but it seems like even if they were more direct it would not help much – it would still be inappropriate for worship, because it is taking a music genre entirely from and for the world and trying to Christify it explicitly. That is why it’s so awkward, at least for me, even just to listen to.

Furthermore, the music itself in this example is just plain second-rate. The message itself also is very self-centered, which would be one thing if it wasn’t marketed as “Christian” and there wasn’t the almost artificial insertion of a mini-prayer in the lyrics, “God, I want to dream again.” I’ve never heard this at church, but I don’t frequent Protestant megachurches. I can certainly imagine it being used.

The next song is about a couple of kids whose lives are going terribly wrong, starting with one who gets shot on his way to school.

This is good rock music. It’s also profoundly moving, albeit in an unexpected way. Nobody would play this at a church, and rightly so, but I argue that this is a much better example of “Christian Rock” than the first song, not only because it is better musically but also because it knows what it is: the artists don’t try to insert the explicitly other-worldly into a worldly genre, apart from a one-off Scriptural reference (“the blind leading the blind”). Instead, they vividly illustrate real world problems and the emotions associated with them. This leads the listener to the simple consideration of the bleakness of sin and the need for something dramatically good to counter young people’s hopelessness. Finally, they suggest that the solution is at least in part our responsibility: “We are, we are, the youth of the nation.” That’s about a thousand times more Christian and artistic than the previous song. (The band, P.O.D., is loosely self-described as Christian, by the way.)

Anyway, as an alternative to Christian Rock at church, we have masterpieces like this available to us:

It’s very hard to pull off something like this well – and it really MUST be recited live – but that is part of what makes it worth so much as an act of worship. It involves serious dedication. Sacrificial worship doesn’t only mean killing goats, of course: it can also mean slaving away for a few dozen hours just to produce one beautiful arrangement for a single Mass. God likes that.

“But I like the churchy Christian Rock. So do lots of other people. In fact, a lot of the people at my church come because we play that kind of music.”

Now we come to the root.

If it were a simple matter of aesthetics, one taste does not rule over other tastes. Chocolate is not inherently better than vanilla, etc. Except we are not talking about ice cream, we are talking about the public worship of Almighty God and spiritually encountering Him in that worship (which is distinct from emotionally encountering Him). There is an objectivity to music and worship, which is why the objection that “classical” music is just the “rock” or “pop” of the 17th century (etc.) does not work. Certain kinds of music do not appropriately resonate with our soul inasmuch as it is ordered toward loving and encountering the otherworldly. As the famous saying goes, “Lex orandi, lex credendi” – as one worships, so one believes. If someone heard a “Christian song” without knowing the language in which it’s being sung, and he thinks it’s probably about some guy’s girlfriend, for example, there is a big problem. If God, as the Author of Grace, is going to be treated directly, He deserves something more than what your girlfriend deserves, as nice as she may be. And the more one treats God like a girlfriend in worship, the more one is likely to think of God that way. It’s just how human beings work. When your girlfriend gets boring or too challenging, you can leave her for someone else. When God or the Mass or the one true Church is treated like a girlfriend in worship, when they get boring or too challenging, they are all too likely to be left for something else. And the more one tries to dress them up like some other “girl,” the more one will realize that it would be easier just to go after that girl instead. We can’t make God in our image, and when we figure that out, the choice is forced upon us: we either destroy our little idol and worship God on His own terms, or we go seek the thing that we were trying to make Him into.

The trumpets that will blare at Our Lord’s return will be playing music closer to Mozart than to Meatloaf, and not for no reason. If I don’t like the Parousia’s music – or even Heaven’s music – will it be because God doesn’t know what’s “relevant,” or will it be because He knows there’s something more objective about transcendence than my fleeting emotional inclinations?

Liking secular-ish Christian-ish music and feeling good about God on its account is not wrong in itself.

feelsmeme
Go on ahead! Feelings and emotions are NOT evil. But they are only GOOD if they are in line with reason.

What is wrong is when those things are at the foundation of one’s spiritual life, instead of the imperceptible indwelling of the Holy Spirit and sanctifying grace expressing themselves in the exercise of moral virtue and frequent prayer (even continuous prayer, to the point where instead of talking to yourself to think through the mundane tedium of your daily life, you talk to God). If and when well-performed secular-ish Christian-ish music and/or nice feelings about God become inaccessible for some reason, a person who had seemed to grow up in the spiritual life so quickly is liable to become “withered by the sun and die,” so to speak, just like the seed sown in rocky soil (Mt. 13: 1-23). Such a person will eventually notice that the world (or even some other church) gives quicker and easier nice feelings, and that continuing to pray and go to Mass diligently is really hard when faced with that alternative. And why resist? “If spirituality is all about the feels anyway, when I get them, great, when I don’t get them, then I just won’t kill anyone or rob any banks, and I’ll go to Heaven, or something like that. But maybe the whole ‘organized religion thing’ is all just a psychological prison anyway, and a nondescript ‘spirituality’ is where it’s at.” And down the slope we go. People don’t usually think or express their desires in exactly these terms, but they often act based exactly on the ideas found in them.

If you live in the Western world, this process is almost certainly happening with people in your parish, especially to millennials. The problem, of course, is not limited to music – the approach of condescending indefinitely to worldliness can permeate the air of entire parishes. Let pastors who are looking to “Rebuild” be aware of the lesson of Aaron and the calf… Money and popularity do not make a parish a spiritual success. Your sanctuary may be tricked out with the latest live streaming gear and some nifty projector screens, and your band may make a 6 figure salary due to generous tithing, but if there’s not perpetual or nearly perpetual adoration; if there aren’t vocations; if there aren’t long lines at the confessional; if people are not praying before and after Mass in silence… these deserve more attention.

The Protestant megachurches and the world will always win the game anyway. They produce better, flashier, trendier stuff, including morals and doctrine. They produce better rock music. They condescend to our worldliness better. Therefore, the game ought not be played. Our Lord did not play the game, though He was invited to by the Devil. (Mt. 4: 1-11)

Christ condescended to our worldliness by becoming a human being. Beyond that, He used language and images we could understand. He identified with us in our need for food and drink, as with the woman at the well, or with the Eucharist itself. He pointed out the way to perfection to the Rich Young Man and to those wondering about divorce by meeting them where they were, and yet He did not insist on poverty or celibacy as Commandments. All this condescension, however, actually serves the will of the Father by calling people to look beyond the world. Christian Rock, as commonly understood, does not do this, but instead lowers God more than He lowered Himself by putting Him into a worldly genre of music which can certainly make people feel nice feelings but cannot lead one to contemplation as it is understood by the spiritual masters. (In fact, prolonged silence is one of the best things for that.) And of course, some other parochial and ministerial projects fall into the same trap. We must not be in the business of making good novices: we must be in the business of making saints.

The longer one pretends he can find God in the storm, the earthquake, and the fire, the more likely he is to miss the small whispering sound that calls a soul out of the cave. God showed His might on Sinai with signs of His fearsome power, but now, in the invisible life of grace, the signs of His love manifestly prevail – and lovers very often want to be alone together in silence, do they not?

Education in the spiritual life must become a greater priority in parishes, especially youth ministry programs, if we are to stop the bleeding of parishioners looking “to be fed” somewhere else – back in Egypt, that is, where there were melons and leeks and fleshpots.  We especially ought to curb the enthusiasm in our young people for getting chills and thrills on retreats – and certainly for “speaking in tongues” and being “slain in the Spirit,” for goodness’ sake – and instead teach them that the greater effects of prayer and the sacraments are in an undying thirst to do what is right out of love for God and the pursuit of union with Him at the expense of any and all other pleasures. Growth may seem slower, but it will be steadier.

Better, more subdued, more dignified music is just one part of the solution. Christ our Rock is more spiritual than worldly, after all.

Post by: Eamonn Clark

Main image: The Sower, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

The Liturgical Creeps

Christian Renaissance Movement12 Comments

In my time in parish work, and in my exploration of the world’s great (and little) churches, I have encountered many interesting phenomena. As you might imagine, that involves a spectrum, with the simply “good” on one end and the simply “bad” on the other, with plenty of ho-hum stuff in the middle. But there is also a category of things sort of “in the middle” which don’t really fit well into such a simple paradigm. They deserve their own little separate space.

In psychology, there is something called the “uncanny valley.” Here is a chart:

uncanny1

At this point, I’m not exactly sure how I would rearrange the variables on this chart to explain these experiences, but they are definitely of the kind that would fit into that valley which just feels “off.”

Electric candles – especially votive candles – are a big one.

Yes, it’s cheaper. Yes, it’s less dangerous. Yes, it’s cleaner. But isn’t that all part of what makes it not as good? It seems far “less human” than it should. All you do is put in a coin… Some electrons move… And there you go. That’s it. No careful management of the flame as you transfer it from a candle already lit, no satisfaction of getting your wick to light, no organic timeline for when it will go out, and nothing is actually burnt up and “wasted” on God. The last bit is probably the most important. Here’s 2 Sam. 24:22-24:

But Araunah said to David: “Let my lord the king take it and offer up what is good in his sight. See, here are the oxen for burnt offerings, and the threshing sledges and the yokes of oxen for wood. All this does Araunah give to the king.” Araunah then said to the king, “May the Lord your God accept your offering.” The king, however, replied to Araunah, “No, I will buy it from you at the proper price, for I cannot sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”

King David was worried about not spending enough himself for a burnt offering of oxen. One can only imagine the king’s reaction if Araunah had offered to put coins into a candle machine that just moves electricity in a circle.

This does not necessarily mean that the one using a candle machine is doing a poorer job praying, but perhaps over time it could have an effect on a person’s perception of worship, leading to the thought that what’s in your wallet is more important than what’s in your heart… After all, there are no “suggested donations” for a machine.

Another big one is recorded music.

We don’t accept lip-syncing at concerts. Why would God accept a recording from a CD at Mass? This can be especially prevalent at funerals, where a well-meaning family wants their loved one’s favorite song played, and while it is certainly difficult to deny a grieving family, the songs are often inappropriate and are never anything much more than a catharsis over memories when what the funeral rite is primarily for is prayer for the soul of the deceased.

Recorded music also shows up outside liturgies as “filler,” when silence is, I suppose, too unsettling. You will find this in many churches in Rome, Paris, and beyond. While the music is often “good,” the fact that it is an mp3 means that those voices and instrumentalists are not actually there praying with you – it just sounds like it. And to me that can be a bit more unsettling than silence.

Notice once again the lack of “waste” – it is a mere digital re-presentation of someone else’s work.

On the other hand, once I walked into Wieskirche in Bavaria and there was a magnificent little choral arrangement being sung by a small group. Wonder and joy, the opposite of the liturgical creeps?

img_20150307_141613389
Notice the real candles. The detached altar was nothing to write home about, but everything else was!

The “liturgical creeps” are then, I suppose, when something a little “fake” is helping mediate or ground prayer that reduces the “waste” of human effort. It’s a working definition, at least.

Perhaps you have had the experience yourself. What else fits into the liturgical uncanny valley?

 

Post by: Eamonn Clark

 

Main image: Opening title from the popular 90’s kids’ show, “Are You Afraid of the Dark?”

Uncanny chart: By Smurrayinchester – self-made, based on image by Masahiro Mori and Karl MacDorman at http://www.androidscience.com/theuncannyvalley/proceedings2005/uncannyvalley.html, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2041097

Why is only this called Praise and Worship?

Christian Renaissance Movement14 Comments

Deep in the silence of the Roman catacombs, a dim light grows brighter from around the corner as several torchbearers approach. There is urgency in their demeanor, but there is also a peacefulness. As they turn into the long, narrow corridor, the figure of an emaciated but sturdy pontiff can be seen slowly making his way behind them in full vesture. He is preparing to celebrate Mass over the tomb of one of his favorite martyrs, but he is trying to escape the notice of the emperor’s soldiers above. He turns to one of his deacons: “We’ll keep the volume on the amps down this evening, but I think we can still use the drum set.” The little group starts their liturgy to a hushed rendition of “Gather Us In.”

Suddenly, several of the emperor’s guard are heard rushing down from above! But the worship leaders will not be deterred, singing all the louder, “Gather us in, the rich and the haughty, gather us in, the proud and the strong…” The men get closer and closer. “Not in the dark of buildings confining, not in some heaven light years away…”

You decide what happens next: Are the soldiers so touched by the devotion and beauty of what they encounter that they are miraculously converted, or is this pope martyred for having terrible taste in music?

This is a ridiculous example meant to illumine a serious problem… The crisis of liturgical music, and even more broadly, the crisis of Christian music today in general.

Before we get into it, can we atone for the sins of the video above with a sample of something that won’t offend our sensibilities and is possibly similar (albeit very distantly) to what might have actually been sung in such a setting?

Ahh. That’s better.

We can realize the disparity in the dignity of the two pieces. We laugh at the thought of acoustic guitar accompanying someone like Pope St. Sixtus II, whose mere memory emboldens faith and charity. But when we imagine him being surrounded with this wonderful a capella piece performed by Ensemble Organum, it moves the mind to another world – we sense that this chant has a gravity and that anything done while it is sung is at least similarly serious. (And yes, it is a capella… The deep tones are droning.)

You will no doubt agree that this music is ordered to the praise and worship of God. Why then, does “Praise and Worship” refer to a class of music with such vast differences, like “Gather Us In,” (which, to be honest, is really more like a hymn than real P&W) or the stuff you would hear on the local Christian music radio station?

It starts in the same time and place that many other important things began to be destroyed: the late 1960’s in California. Coming on the heels of the secular music revolution going on at that time, “Jesus music” made its debut. A small group of hippies figured out that “free love” wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and starting becoming “born-again” Christians. Then they simply incorporated biblical messages into the music they were already playing in the back of the van and on the street corner. The growing popularity of the music of the ecumenical Taizé community in France also had some influence over the new genre, which is not so bad in itself, but when combined with 70’s guitar gets a little strange.

Credit needs to be given for the desire to leave a terrible way of life and to embrace and share the Christian faith. But if you are listening from far away, you ought to be able to tell whether a song is more likely to be about the Incarnation or about dropping acid. It is fundamentally a problem of proportion between means and ends. (This will be explored in other posts.)

The novelty of such a strange mix took off, and it turned into a bona fide industry within a few years. Soon it became “contemporary Christian music,” even having its very own magazine.

This all of course also conveniently followed the Council, which had set the stage for a plethora of misguided innovations.

So whence did the name “praise and worship” come? Perhaps there was some event or concert that first popularized the phrase, or maybe some big producer started talking about the music in that way. But that it has become accepted terminology – over and against Mozart – is surely more than hearing other people use the term. There must have been some kind of large-scale interior breakdown of the sense of latria (adoration) in order to identify praising and worshiping with only a specific kind of Christian music, and music of dubious liturgical quality at that. It would seem that the Church of What’s Happening Now deemed its music to be superior to all that had gone before, and thus gave it the truly dignified title of “praise and worship” – as if it were the first time music had ever been used for such things… And this is to make no mention of the often self-centered lyrics that sort of miss the point of praise and worship to begin with. (This one might be the worst.) If the songs you sing at church use personal pronouns more than “You,” “God,” “Christ,” etc., then there might be a problem.

Maybe this theory is a little “out there.” But then again, the 70’s were “out there” too.

How is this for a thought: if it isn’t praising God, or aiding in the worship of Him, then it really isn’t Christian music at all. It might be about Christian themes, it might be done by people who are not afraid to say they are Christians, etc. But if we really want to bestow the name “Christian” onto something, it had better be ordered toward Christ. We should remind ourselves how seriously St. Ignatius of Antioch took that title.

There’s no easy solution to this. But let it be known that the official stance of CRM is that all Christian music is also Praise and Worship music. Maybe introducing this idea in our parishes and schools could help recall to mind the truth of the matter and tone down some of the craziness.

 

Main image credit: http://www.confrontmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/crowd2.jpg

There was no music on Calvary

Christian Renaissance Movement3 Comments

Chances are, you’ve heard of St. Ignatius Loyola. Chances also are that you have tried his oft-recommended technique of meditation involving placing yourself in some scriptural scene, trying to imagine all the details of what is going on around you.

This is certainly a good method for reflecting on Scripture, but we 21st century Christians typically have a roadblock to achieving the real purpose of this exercise. It is a case of art revealing and concealing the truth simultaneously… We usually want to “cinematize” what we imagine.

This is easily proven. If you were asked to place yourself at the Mount of Olives during the Ascension, you would probably be tempted to insert a soundtrack at least, and maybe even some crazy angles and close-ups of wide-eyed apostles. But this is just not how we experience real events. So why would we try to experience the Gospel in this way? If I asked you to imagine eating breakfast, there wouldn’t be any orchestral accompaniment. When you start to dream about going home after a long day at work, are your kids running in slow-motion to embrace you? Maybe this type of dramatization opens up a place in ourselves that allows for a greater emotional response, which certainly can quicken true devotion up to a point, but eventually we might find ourselves responding more to the “art” than to God. Of course, this is a new phenomenon, since film is a new art form.

This scene from Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is pretty well done. But try watching it once with the sound, and once without. Notice the difference – perhaps the one is more emotional, but perhaps the other is more spiritual. (One day I would love to make a short film about some incident in the Life of Christ with no “fluff”… No music, dramatic lighting, slow motion, etc.)

The “silence and normalcy” of the events in the Life of Christ highlight His Incarnation – Jesus is really human, and, like other humans, does not have built-in theme music, a wind-machine on hand (that incident on the Sea of Galilee notwithstanding), or a traveling make-up crew.

The truth is that we are all outdone in spiritual maturity by Elijah. If we weren’t taken in by the storm, we would have been enthralled by the earthquake. If that didn’t get us, we would have bowed down at the fire. But Elijah knew it was the small whisper of wind that was the voice of the Lord.

It is significant for us Christians that Elijah encounters this voice at Horeb, where all those same kinds of things had happened before with Moses and actually were true representations of the voice of God. It seems that in general God becomes quieter and quieter throughout the course of Scripture and salvation history… Paradoxically, the quieter He becomes, the closer we can get to Him.

Sometimes a little fire or earthquake is fine, but often it is a snare. The true life of the spirit is quiet, invisible, and secret. Just as the flesh of the Son of God concealed His Divinity on the cross while simultaneously revealing it, our outer life conceals and reveals our deepest interior life; and since the interior life is what matters most, our default habit ought to be to deal with it directly insofar as it is possible. If we feed the spirit, that will shine forth in our flesh (just ask Moses). On the contrary, expending too much energy enhancing our outer lives through entertainment and pleasures leaves our interior life hanging high and dry – though sometimes people can be tricked into thinking that a fun and “rewarding” life is sure evidence of holiness and Divine affirmation of one’s choices (or even mistakenly branded by well-meaning persons as critical tools of the New Evangelization). Hormones, seratonin, and even genuine spiritual consolations are not the real substance of the spiritual life, they are only afterthoughts and can even be obstacles to growth. The really good stuff is quiet, and sometimes without a drop of sensible devotion. This is a bit like how cinematizing the Life of Our Lord can, in a way, rob it of some of its power. That isn’t to say there is no place for it, just as sometimes God really does bless us materially, but it ought not be the primary way we try to encounter the Almighty.

There was screaming, crying, and there were even a few words, but there was no music on Calvary.

 

Main image: The Deposition from the Cross, Fra Angelico

Contemporary Showcase: Extraordinary Music Workshop, Krakow, Poland

Christian Renaissance Movement

Folks, if you want an example of how to revive church music, look no further. (Seriously, watch the whole thing.)

The Extraordinary Music Workshop, run by the Polish Dominican Liturgical Centre, has got it all: devout youth, a rich expression of a deep cultural patrimony, excellent instruction, tons of energy…

It makes for a great time and great liturgical music, from what the trailer shows.

THIS IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF THING WE NEED MORE OF. Hopefully they will consider doing it every year, or even establishing a full conservatory. Maybe this year’s World Youth Day, which is being held in Krakow, will bring the grace to inspire such an endeavor.

 

Main image: By FotoCavallo – http://www.flickr.com/photos/cecphotography/6281990824/, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17653028

“Maybe it made me too emotional…”

Christian Renaissance Movement2 Comments

Thus spake St. Augustine in the Confessions about the first time he heard music in a church. He debated whether having music in worship was a good idea, period. Augustine could see that the emotions were a powerful force to drive the human spirit, but if they got too strong they could actually become a distraction from real spirituality, which is ultimately a silent and invisible relationship measured by conformity of the intellect and will to God… One might end up conforming himself to the music instead.

Obviously, we’ve settled that debate, and it is safe to assume that we came down on the right side. But now there is a new debate – and yes, it is new – over what kind of music is appropriate for aiding prayer.

I would like to offer an example of extremes.

Here is a song with 16 million hits on YouTube called “Touch the Sky.” It is by Hillsong United, one of the most popular Christian bands in living memory.

Here is a song with 3.6 million (and that many only because it is being conducted by Leonard Bernstein) called “Ave Verum Corpus.” It is by Mozart.

It doesn’t seem that any serious person could equate the two, and yet it is not an uncommon experience to hear both a “praise and worship” song and a “classical” song in the same mass. I think that was once turned into a play.

If all you’ve ever had is grape juice, how will you appreciate fine wine? It’s not a wonder that a culture increasingly obsessed with the ephemeral and emotional is drawn to a sentimental spirituality summed up by C-G-Am-F.

Yes, this music can be a channel of grace. Yes, it can pick people up when they’re down. But to insist on this to the exclusion of the real musical heritage of the Church is a little bit like picking through the dumpster in the back of a fancy restaurant because the leftovers have calories and nutrients. Go into the restaurant instead.