No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Worship Wars, Gospel Hymns, and Cultural Engagement in American Evangelicalism, 1890–1940
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2018
Abstract
This article argues that gospel hymnody was integral to the construction of modern evangelicalism. Through an analysis of the debate over worship music in three denominations, the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Christian Reformed Church, and the Reformed Church in America, from 1890–1940, I reveal how worship music was essential to the negotiation between churchly tradition and practical faith, between institutional authority and popular choice that characterized the twentieth-century “liberal/conservative” divide. While seemingly innocuous, debates over the legitimacy of gospel hymns in congregational worship were a significant aspect of the increasing theological, social, and cultural divisions within denominations as well as between evangelicals more broadly. Gospel hymnody became representative of a newly respectable, nonsectarian, and populist evangelicalism that stressed individualized salvation and personal choice, often putting it at odds with doctrinal orthodoxy and church tradition. These songs fostered an imagined community of conservative evangelicals, one whose formation rested on personal choice and whose authority revolved around a network of nondenominational organizations rather than an institutional body. At the same time, denominational debates about gospel hymnody reveal the fluid nature of the conservative/liberal binary and the complicated relationship between evangelicalism and modernism generally. While characterizations of “liberal” and “conservative” tend to emphasize biblical interpretation, the inclusion of worship music and style complicates this narrow focus. As is evident through the case studies, denominations typically categorized as theologically liberal or conservative also incorporated both traditional and modern elements of worship.
Keywords
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2017
References
Notes
1. Bulletins, January 9, 1927; March 13, March 27, 1927; Hope Reformed Church. Joint Archives of Hope College and Van Raalte Institute, Box 7.
2. Bulletins, January 24 and March 21, 1915; Bulletin, April 18, 1920; Bulletin, October 1, 1922, Third Reformed Church, Joint Archives, Box 6.
3. Bulletins, December 1917, Hope Reformed Church, Joint Archives, Box 7; Bulletins, Feb 21, March, April 1915, Third Reformed Church, Joint Archives, Box 6.
4. For a detailed discussion of “corporate evangelicalism” as it developed in the twentieth century, see Gloege, Timothy, Guaranteed Pure: Moody Bible Institute, Business, and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).Google Scholar Taylor, Charles, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6. A delineation of this alternative fundamentalist culture and its impact on mainline and evangelical denominations can be found in Noll, Mark, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994);Google Scholar Carpenter, Joel, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).Google Scholar
7. Sizer, Sandra [Frankiel], Gospel Hymns and Social Religion: The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Revivalism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978);Google Scholar Blumhofer, Edith, Her Heart Can See: The Life and Hymns of Fanny J. Cros by (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005);Google Scholar “Women Hymn Writers,” in Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, Vol 2, ed. Rosemary Skinner Keller and Rosemary Radford Ruether (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).
8. There are several edited volumes that delve into the ways in which music was integral to defining a cultural, religious, and ethnic identity for individuals and communities. See, for example, Marini, Stephen A., Sacred Song in America: Religion, Music, and Public Culture (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003);Google Scholar Blumhofer, Edith and Noll, Mark A., eds., Singing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land: Hymnody in the History of North American Protestantism (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004);Google Scholar Mouw, Richard J. and Noll, Mark A., eds., Wonderful Words of Life: Hymns in American Protestant History and Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004);Google Scholar Noll, Mark A. and Blumhofer, Edith, eds., Sing Them Over Again to Me: Hymns and Hymnbooks in America (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006);Google Scholar Bohlman, Philip V., Edith Blumhofer, andMaria M. Chow, Music in American Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).Google Scholar Particularly relevant to my work are chapters 1 and 9 in Blumhofer and Noll's Singing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land. Both Stephen Marini's chapter (Chapter 1, “From Classical to Modern: Hymnody and the Development of American Evangelicalism, 1737–1970”) and Daniel Fuller, Philip Goff, and Katherine McGinn's work (Chapter 9, “‘Sing Thy Power to Save’: Music on the ‘Old Fashioned Revival Hour’ Radio Broadcast”) establish the significance of music in creating and promoting a national religious community. Fuller, Goff, and McGinn's contribution specifically begins to get at how music was central to the development of religious entertainment in America. The goal of this study is to add another layer to that development.
9. Goff, James R., Jr., Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002);Google Scholar Harrison, Douglas, Then Sings My Soul: The Culture of Southern Gospel Music (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2012);Google Scholar Cusic, Don, The Sound of Light: A History of Gospel Music (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990).Google Scholar
10. Moody, Dwight L., Power from on High; or, The Secret of Success in Christian Life and Work (London, 1882) 77,Google Scholar quoted in Findlay, James F., Moody, Dwight L., American Evangelist, 1837–1899 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 275–76.Google Scholar
11. Clark, Rufus W., The Work of God in Great Britain under Messrs. Moody and Sankey, 1873–1875, with Biographical Sketches (New York: Harper and Bros., 1875), 148.Google Scholar
12. Sankey, Ira D., “TheNinety and Nine, Words by E. C. Clephane, Music by Ira D. Sankey,” in Sankey's Story of the Gospel Hymns and of Sacred Songs and Solos (Philadelphia: Sunday School Times Co., 1906), 224–25.Google Scholar
13. This is detailed in Sizer's Gospel Hymns and Social Religion.
14. Gloege, Guaranteed Pure, 160.
15. For a thorough account of the “New Theology” and its relation to artistic forms and aesthetics, see Hutchinson, William R., The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Marsden, George M., Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1980);Google Scholar Levine, Lawrence W., Highbrow Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).Google Scholar
16. “The Revised Methodist Hymnal,” Methodist Quarterly Review, Fourth Series, 31 (July 1879): 527; “The Hymn Book of the Methodist Episcopal Church,” Buckley, J. M., Stamford, Conn., Methodist Quarterly Review, Fourth Series, 28 (April 1876): 309.Google Scholar
17. Bangs, Nathan, A History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, quoted in Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 202.Google Scholar
18. Mann, J. B., “The Arena: Decline in Church Music,” Methodist Review (May 1900): 474.Google Scholar
19. Rice, C. R., “The Arena; Church Music,” Methodist Review (November 1898): 971.Google Scholar
20. The Methodist Hymnal (New York: Methodist Book Concern; Eaton & Mains; Jennings & Graham; Smith & Lamar, September 1905; reprint October, November, December, 1905; April 1906; October 1908; June 1914; March 1917), vi.
21. The Methodist Hymnal, 1905, vii.
22. Winchester, C. T., “The New Methodist Hymnal—the Hymns” Methodist Review (September 1905): 681.Google Scholar
23. Earl Enyeart Harper, Methodist Review (May 1925): 380–81.
24. Ibid., 381.
25. “Editorial Miscellany: Sunday-School Hymns and Music,” Methodist Review (May 1885): 430–31.
26. Rice, “The Arena: Church Music,” 971–72.
27. Lyman Hurlbut, Jesse, Methodist Review (January 1899): 113–14.Google Scholar
28. Hatfield, J. T., “Church Music,” Methodist Review (May 1898): 408.Google Scholar
29. Goodwin, W. R., “The Arena: Church Music,” Methodist Review (July 1898): 633.Google Scholar
30. Merrill, Richard N., “Is the Present Trend toward Gothic Architecture and a More Elaborate Ritual a Real Advance? II. Negative,” Methodist Review (March 1931): 200.Google Scholar
31. Ibid., 201.
32. Ward, Harry F., “Songs of Labor,” Methodist Review (July 1915): 559.Google Scholar
33. Miller, Madeline S., A.M., “The Immigrant in Story and Song,” Methodist Review (May 1914): 425.Google Scholar
34. Bricker, Garland A., “The Arena: Religious Expression through Rural Poems and Songs,” Methodist Review (March 1918): 294–95.Google Scholar
35. Prof. Ward, Harry F., “Songs of Discontent,” Methodist Review (September 1913): 725–29.Google Scholar
36. Ibid., 722.
37. The “dual role” of the liberal “as spiritual expansionist and social critic” as well as a more thorough explanation of liberals’ “receptivity to the so-called secular culture” including “insights from the arts and sciences” can be found in Hutchison's The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism, esp. 145–59.
38. Ward, Harry F., “Songs of Discontent,” 725.Google Scholar
39. De Gereformeerde Amerikaan, vol. 1 (1897), 146 f.; translated and quoted in D. H. Kromminga, The Christian Reformed Tradtion, 1971, 102.
40. Acts of Synod, 1906, 18; “Psalm and Hymn Singing,” The Banner 43 (June 30, 1908): 412.
41. Beets, Henry, “Meeting the Psalm Singers Half-Way,” The Banner 43 (April 16, 1908): 261;Google Scholar Beets, Henry, The Banner 43 (August 20, 1908): 525.Google Scholar
42. Kuiper, Henry J., “Editorial: The Right of Our Churches to Sing Hymns,” The Banner 65 (May 9, 1930): 445.Google Scholar
43. Bruinsma, Henry A., “Voices in the Church: A Voice from the South on Music in the Church,” The Banner 74 (November 23, 1939): 1094.Google Scholar
44. Kuiper, “Editorial” 445.
45. Kuiper, H. J., ed., The New Christian Hymnal (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1929).Google Scholar
46. “Music in the Church Service,” Second Englewood Men’s Society, The Banner 55 (July 28, 1920): 475.
47. Mrs. Heyns, D., “How to Teach Music in the Christian School,” Christian School Magazine 7 (April 1928): 499–500.Google Scholar
48. Swets, Seymour, “What Is Good Church Music?” The Banner 68 (May 26, 1933): 490.Google Scholar
49. “Music in the Church Service,” The Banner 55 (July 28, 1920): 475.
50. Bennink, Bernard J., “Voices in the Church: The Christian Reformed Church and Choir-Singing,” The Banner 69 (October 12, 1934): 876.Google Scholar
51. Kuiper, Henry J., “Editorial: The Hymn Question: A Bit of History and a Few Remarks,” The Banner 65 (May 2, 1930): 421.Google Scholar
52. Acts of Synod, 1928, 29.
53. See Teresa Long, Kathryn, The Revival of 1857–1858: Interpreting an American Religious Awakening (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), esp. 6.Google Scholar
54. Acts and Proceedings, 1882–1885, 774–75, quoted in Brumm, James L. H., “Singing the Lord's Song: A History of the English Language Hymnals of the Reformed Church in America,” New Brunswick: The Historical Society of the Reformed Church in America Occasional Papers, no. 2, 1990.Google Scholar
55. Acts and Proceedings, 1890–1893, 102, quoted in Brumm, “Singing the Lord's Song.”
56. Acts and Proceedings, 1899, 424, quoted in Harry Boonstra, “Singing God's Songs in a New Land: Congregational Song in the RCA and the CRC,” in A Goodly Heritage: Essays in Honor of the Reverend Dr. Bruins, Elton J. at Eighty, ed. Jacob Nyenhuis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 12.Google Scholar
57. Bratt, James, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America: A History of a Conservative Subculture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984).Google Scholar
58. Noll and Blumhofer, Sing Them Over Again to Me, viii, ix.
59. Darryl G. Hart, “In the Shadow of Calvin and Watts: Twentieth- Century American Presbyterians and Their Hymnals” and Scott E. Erickson, “The Anatomy of Immigrant Hymnody: Faith Communicated in the Swedish Covenant Church,” in Blumhofer and Noll, Singing the Lord’s Song in a Strange Land, 92–139. Paul Westermeyer, “The Evolution of the Music of German American Protestants in Their Hymnody: A Case Study from an American Perspective,” in Bohlman, Blumhofer, and Chow, Music in American Religious Experience, 155–73.
60. Bulletins, 1914–1919; Second (Hope) Reformed Church, Holland, Michigan. Joint Archives of Hope College and Van Raalte Institute, Second (Hope) Reformed Church, Holland, Michigan, Box 7.
61. Bulletins, July 19 and July 26, 1925, Hope Reformed Church. Joint Archives, Box 7.
62. Bulletin, June 23, 1929, Hope Reformed Church. Joint Archives, Box 7.
63. Bulletin, March 20, 1927, Hope Reformed Church. Joint Archives, Box 7.
64. Bulletins, July 1, August 5, 1928, Hope Reformed Church. Joint Archives, Box 7.
65. Bulletin, January 13, 1929, Hope Reformed Church, Joint Archives, Box 7.
66. Bulletin, April 18, 1920, Third Reformed Church, Joint Archives, Box 6.
67. Bulletin, October 1, 1922, Third Reformed Church, Joint Archives, Box 6.
68. Bulletins, November 24, 1929; October 28, 1928, Third Reformed Church, Joint Archives, Box 6.
69. Bulletins, January 24 and March 21, 1915, Third Reformed Church. Joint Archives, Box 6.
70. Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 3.
71. In the last few decades, church resources, pastoral conference sessions, and evangelical and denominational books have focused on these stylistic battles. A small sampling of books include Long, Thomas G., Beyond the Worship Wars: Building Vital and Faithful Worship (Alban Institute, 2001);Google Scholar Towns, Elmer L., Putting an End to Worship Wars (Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1997);Google Scholar Byars, Ronald P., The Future of Protestant Worship: Beyond the Worship Wars (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002);Google Scholar York, Terry W., America's Worship Wars (Hendrickson Publishers, 2003);Google Scholar and Wayne Liesch, Barry, The New Worship: Straight Talk on Music and the Church (Baker Books, 2001).Google Scholar
72. Janet McMonagle. “Coral Ridge Presbyterian and Pastor W. Tullian Tchividjian: Split, Growth, and Change,” Jacksonville Examiner, November 4, 2009.