Replies

Although the format demands I reply to a particular respondent, this is aimed not towards "Tax-chick," but to those to whom it applies. Those of you who have represented my posting as requirement of polyphony for good church music, or as a rejection of the Christian music of non-Western cultures--made me out, in short, to be someone who demands church music conform to his personal tastes--have either not read what I have written, or lied deliberately to support points of your own. In all my writing on this subject I have always been scrupulously careful to avoid mistakes like those of which you accuse me, and no fair interpretation of my work can support your contentions. The story of the rigid hymnalist who loosened up in his old age is particularly inapplicable and particularly offensive. African church music is subject to the teaching elders of the African churches, and then to the universal Church. I have no doubt that mutatis mutandis those churches have the same problems as our own--bad theology, sexualization, trivialization of holy things, and so forth. The standards devout African Christians hold to are exactly the same as they are for all Christians, although their expression of those standards may differ. Good African Christians are modest, theologically orthodox, and treat holy ground as holy ground. To be sure, what we have in this story may well be that of a kind of enlightenment; it may also be an account of an old man's continued record of laziness and bad judgment. I have seen it many times: a person who spends a good portion of his life being overly rigid and inflexible, living by a rule that allows him to avoid a great deal of hard mental and spiritual labor, goes through an old-age conversion in which he becomes his own counterpart, now excessively flaccid and lacking in sober judgment. The most memorable experience I had of this was of a professor, feared and dreaded by his students, who, once he hit seventy, bought a bad hairpiece, affected a wholly unnatural grin, and insisted his students call him "Sam." They were (very reasonably) more frightened of him than ever.

Welcome to FR, sir. It’s nice of you to respond to our comments on your piece.

Since you posted to me (and I don’t take it personally), I’ll simply reiterate that it seems to me that your ideal for worship music would reject much of the Book of Psalms, the “hymnal” as it were of Jesus and His contemporaneous disciples.

I love 18th and 19th century hymns, and will insist on them at my funeral. (”Come, You Sinners, Poor and Needy,” in particular.)