One reason so many lapsed Christians find themselves back in church on Christmas Eve is to hear the music. This year, you might be surprised to discover that those wonderful old carols have changed in your long absence. While you were away sinning, there has been a bit of an internecine scuffle between fans of the classical canon and what we’ll call the “Kumbayah” sect.
Traditionalists uniformly deplore the “Life Teen” church services that seem to be flourishing in the suburbs. For example, the Upper Room service at Christ Presbyterian Church in Edina is essentially a Christian rock concert with candlelight, velour seats, and a joyful noise. The result is a little like a parish talent show. At an Upper Room service the other day, the pastor served as emcee, music director, Mick Jagger-like rock star, and liturgist. He even performed an interpretive reading—a spoken-word performance, in heathen terms—of the Lord’s Prayer. While teenagers and twentysomethings sprang to their feet and flailed their arms (to the beat of music that, for the most part, pats them on the back for having found Jesus), a skeptical writer in the back pew wondered how this counted as churchgoing.
It is a national crisis: Out with the pipe organs, in with the drum sets and acoustic guitars. By introducing modern music into their worship services, many churches are trying to make the sanctuary a friendlier, more worldly place. Of course, this often merely splits both clergy and congregation along contemporary versus classical music lines.
“There are churches in the Twin Cities that literally have an upstairs church and a downstairs church,” said Dr. Lynn Trapp. He is the director of worship music and the organist at Saint Olaf Catholic Church in downtown Minneapolis. “They won’t allow the guitar into the upstairs church.”
The doctrinal loosening of Vatican II back in the sixties spawned a slow, steady, but ultimately radical transformation of sacred music, first in the Catholic Church and then among Protestant denominations. Churches increasingly made music that sounded like pop, folk, rock, even saccharine love ballads—but they often saved this kind of thing for special events that were more social than worshipful. That began to change, however, and in the last decade, younger clergy have tried to incorporate more contemporary music directly into regular services.
The past year has seen an especially pointed battle between contemporary and classical worship music, with some church members preferring—even demanding—their sacred music sound more like what they hear on the radio. Their sworn enemies are the traditionalists, who are recognized by their white-knuckled grip on the old choral hymnal.
From this pew, it appears that contemporary music is winning. In the past year, many Twin Cities churches uprooted music directors and organists, fired well-paid sopranos, and switched formats. And even though the organ is to hold a “pride of place” according to Roman Catholic dogma, the majestic pipes of this instrument, so often incorporated into the very architecture of church buildings, stand silent. They have been displaced by a crop of friendly, goateed guitarists playing sacred music that sounds like something off the Sonny and Cher Show.
The sweep has the choral community in a fuss, because many are professional singers dependent on the income from their lucrative “church gigs.” Snobbery and self-preservation aside, they argue that contemporary music is too individualistic for congregational worship. The lyrics, they say, are self-referential and self-indulgent. Jeffrey O’Donnell, associate producer for WCAL’s nationally syndicated sacred music program Sing for Joy, suggests that contemporary music is inevitably New Age-y in tone and content. It “looks inwardly rather than outwardly. ‘Lord, let me be your shepherd’ and all that kind of stuff,” he said. By contrast, traditional music is concerned with “the wonders of God’s creation, God’s work, God’s people.”
O’Donnell said that the rhythms of contemporary music are often too jarring for a group to successfully join in, thereby forcing reliance upon soloists and excluding parishioners from singing along. “This style of music is written to be embellished or improvised,” he said. “It works for smaller groups or meditative sessions, but not necessarily for congregational song.”
Dr. Trapp, who leads a diverse music program for Saint Olaf that includes both contemporary and classical music as well as African chanting and other genres, argued that this is but one movement in the constant evolution of worship. “Gregorian chant was the basis of Christian music,” he said. “We only moved into the standard hymnody after Martin Luther and beyond. In history, there is always a need for the charismatic.”
If you like what you’re hearing, Dr. Trapp said, the Twin Cities are especially ripe with new Christian music, thanks to a concentration of renowned composers who live here alongside some of the best church choirs. “We have worship styles far left and far right and everything in between,” he said. “Where else in the country do you have this hotbed of experimentation? And along with that you have the divisiveness.”
Some of the best-known modern services—or most notorious, depending on your confessional preferences—include the bluegrass service at St. Paul’s House of Mercy and the rock ’n’ roll service at Spirit Garage, the nonconformist, nomadic south Minneapolis church. While both are successful in attracting the unbaptized and the backslider alike, organizers acknowledge that their music programs alienate, even offend, others. “What we’re doing may not work for you,” said John Kerns, minister of music for Spirit Garage. “It’s cool to us, but it may not be cool to you.”
—Christy DeSmith
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