Singing the Congregation

Abstract

Singing the Congregation examines how contemporary worship music shapes the way evangelical Christians understand worship and argues that participatory worship-music performances have brought into being new religious social constellations (“modes of congregating”). Through ethnographic investigation of five of these modes—concert, conference, church, public, and networked congregations—this book seeks to reinvigorate the analytic categories of “congregation” and “congregational music.” Drawing from theoretical models in ethnomusicology, congregational studies, and ecclesiology, Singing the Congregation reconceives the congregation as a fluid, contingent social constellation that is actively performed into being through communal practice—in this case, the musically structured participatory activity known as “worship.” By extension, “congregational music-making” is recast as a participatory religious musical practice capable of weaving together a religious community inside and outside local institutional churches. Congregational music-making is not only a means of expressing local concerns and constituting the local religious community; it is also a potent way to identify with far-flung individuals, institutions, and networks that this global religious community comprises. The unique congregations examined in each chapter include but extend far beyond local churches, revealing widespread conflicts over religious authority and far-ranging implications for how evangelicals position themselves relative to other groups in North America and beyond.

The Arts in Sacred Spaces: How Religious Conservatism and Cultural Omnivorousness Influence Attitudes about Congregational Involvement in the Arts

“…In the 1960s and 70s, the use of contemporary styles of music in worship settings was far more controversial than it is today. What at the time may have constituted the kind of “artistic experimentation” that religious conservatism opposes is today a regular and tacit feature of congregational liturgy, not only in conservative Christian congregations but also increasingly in mainline and Catholic ones (Ingalls 2018, 12). Such social changes in American religion raise the question as to whether religious conservatism is changing in its opposition to atypicality or, instead, if it is merely appropriating cultural products and practices that were once taboo.…”

“…CWM is a participatory style of Christian music that arose from the development of Contemporary Christian Music within the evangelical Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 70s. Today, CWM is often a regular and important element of congregational worship in Pentecostal, charismatic, and evangelical (but also increasingly Catholic and progressive mainline Protestant) churches (Ingalls 2018, 7,12). Yet despite its growing popularity, CWM has had a long and contentious history.…”

“…Yet despite its growing popularity, CWM has had a long and contentious history. As early as the 1960s, anti-Rock sentiment among conservative Christians morphed into an initial hostility and moral outrage towards Christians who were incorporating hitherto secular styles of music into the Christian musical repertoire (Ingalls 2018, 8; Nekola 2011, 132; Porter 2016, 32). At best, these efforts were accused of producing a watered-down expression of Christianity (Gormly 2003, 255) and, at worst, they were the Devil's music and a form of “spiritual fornication” (Romanowski 1992, 84).…”

“…Despite sociology's long history of recognizing religion as a fundamental source of how symbolic boundaries are constructed and maintained between sacred and profane (Durkheim 2008 [1912]: 9), few studies on cultural tastes and practices have given it much attention (for some exceptions, see Aarons 2018; Katz-Gerro 2002; Katz-Gerro et al 2009). Even fewer have considered the added boundaries concerning congregational spaces, with the one main exception of research on congregational worship music (e.g., Dueck 2017; Ingalls 2018; Kelman 2018; Porter 2016).…”

A psalm is always a memory: Nostalgia and sacrality in contemporary ritual-musical appropriations of the psalms

“…Wijnia, 2016). Following its description, anthropologist of music Monique Ingalls and ritual scholar Martin Hoondert have also worked with this concept (Hoondert, 2019: 106; Ingalls, 2018: 37).…”