Singing as Theology

A few weeks ago, I mentioned a series of articles in recent issues of The Christian Century in which various theologians discuss "how their minds have changed" over time. This week, I read another such essay, "Deep and Wide," written by prolific author Mark Noll, who after many years of teaching at Wheaton College is now teaching at Notre Dame.

Noll, whose specialty is the study of Christianity in American history (though he's recently begun serious study of global Christianity), is a wonderful historian, capable of writing books for a variety of audiences. His best, in my estimation, is America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. Despite this, I do not recommend it to many people because it is the culmination of a lifetime of study that distills an almost indescribable amount of information into a careful theory of the context for American Christianity -- most people would find themselves in over their head because Noll does not take the time (and it would take significant time and probably triple the length of the book) to carefully define for non-experts all of the context he's exploring. Instead I recommend any of his other wonderful books that are written for a general audience, several of which are on my bookshelves.

In his Christian Century essay, Noll offers some reflections on how his appreciation of the richness and diversity of Christianity has developed over the years, even as he has become more aware of the depth of similarities in the Christian faith across time and culture. I was particularly struck by his reflections on the significance of hymns in his faith and his self-awareness of that faith:

A further broadening effect of the great hymns took me longer to comprehend. With the help especially of Andrew Wall's account of how the once-incarnate Christ has been, as it were, incarnated afresh wherever Christianity enters a new culture. I came to see something else. While the dogmas of these hymns were universal, the music that played such a powerful part in quickening the dogma was particular. Isaac Watt's "When I survey the wondrous cross" remained fairly inert words on the page without the tune "Rockingham," by Edward Miller, or "Hamburg," by Lowell Mason. I might find singing this hymn with a rock-and-roll melody or accompanied by a five-toned Thai xylophone an intellectual curiosity, but it would not be heartfelt worship.

Over time the obvious became clear: the hymns did their great work for me as they were sung with music originating from only about 200 years of Western musical history (1650-1850). With music not from the West and with later or earlier Western music, the affect simply was not the same. Extension was the next step: if I was experiencing the universal gospel through a particular cultural expression, it followed that the same gospel could be as powerfully communicated through other cultural expressions, even if those expressions were alien or foreign to me. The experience of those who could be moved by a rock-and-roll rendition of "When I survey the wondrous cross," or by a five-toned Thai version of a similar hymn, was, in principle, just as authentic as when I sang these words set to "Rockingham." Understood in this way, the hymns were making me at the same time both a cultural relativist and a stronger Christian dogmatist. (June 1, 2010, p. 33)

Many people of faith use music to define what churches they like or don't like. Noll acknowledges that he responds better to certain musical styles than others, but he does not fall into the usual trap of seeking to impose his preferences on others. Instead -- and this is a growth in self-awareness that many of us never achieve -- he considers how God uses this music to reach out to him and then imagines how God might use other forms of music to reach out to different people. In this dual appreciation of music, Noll glimpses depth and wideness.

Like a good Calvinist, Noll then incorporates this insight into his understanding of the grace inherent in the celebration of the Lord's Supper. Certainly, it is another form of the "one body, many members" metaphor found in Scripture and central to most Protestant theological understandings of Communion. But I wanted him to linger on this insight about the role of music in faith -- or maybe I just wanted him to explain more how this understanding crept into his awareness.

Most people are aware that they like certain church songs better than others. Some might admit that certain styles of music or specific instruments influence these preferences, but most would probably speak about how a certain song "feels like worship" or "makes me feel the presence of God." Then, however, churchgoers have to learn an important lesson -- everyone has such preferred songs and not everyone's preferences overlap, even in a single congregation. I have a colleague who once threatened to preach a sermon entitled "Why We Can't Sing 'In the Garden' Every Sunday," to try to address just this issue. As members of a faith community, we gradually learn how to incorporate music over time that includes "favorite songs" or "favorite styles" of everyone in the room, though this is never without grumbling and frustration.

Noll's comments go far beyond this local compromise to imagine -- even admitting his own lack of understanding how this works in various cultures -- that the same God can be in all of these songs, regardless of styles, instruments, tempos, or anything else. In this, he not only reaches out to people he loves that he sees and interacts with regularly: he sees a church far beyond his own imagining, beyond his culture and class, beyond his specific time in history, beyond his language. It's an audacious vision of the gospel, and one that we rarely encounter as Christians because we are so myopic -- so culturally conditioned, so focused on ourselves and our close friends. Might we, in our own ways, gain awareness of such a God whose grace is so ubiquitous even as it seems so overwhelming in our own lives.