Christian music in scripture and tradition

Religious music has always been man's attempt to express the relationship between the Divine and the human. Through it, human nature takes part in the love of the Holy Trinity, participating in power, in prayer and in spirit, in the immanence of God. Divine revelation is easily revealed to man through theology expressed in religious music, and man, regardless of his theological knowledge, begins to feel and live in the love of God.

Music and Religion: Trends in Recent English-Language Literature (2015–2021)

This article reviews recent (2015–2021) English-language publications that focus on music in/as/about religion (broadly defined)—including world, folk, and indigenous religious traditions. While research related to Euro–American-based Christian music accounts for more publications than any other single tradition examined, this review intentionally foregrounds religions that are not as well represented in this literature, such as Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, and folk and animistic traditions from around the world. Recurring trends within this literature elucidate important themes therein, four of which are examined in detail: (1) race and ethnicity, (2) gender and sexuality, (3) music therapy (and medical ethnomusicology), and (4) indigenous music. Broadly speaking, recent (2015–2021) publications related to religion, music, and sound reflect growing societal and political interests in diversity and inclusion, yet there remain perspectives, ideas, and ontologies not yet accounted for. The list of references cited at the end of this article represents only those publications cited in the review and a more comprehensive bibliography is available via an open-sourced Zotero group.

TINJAUAN TEOLOGI ATAS FENOMENA MUSIK KRISTEN KONTEMPORER DARI PERSPEKTIF ALKITAB

Music is an inseparable part of worship, as much as prayer in worship. Music as a part used for worship and praise for God, through the glorified music of God.Contemporary Christian music can now function to bridge this world and the church. However, what needs to be considered is that it is not permissible to stop on this bridge, but must grow and develop towards the quality of music that should be.The point is music is a tool to deliver and help people in expressing and proclaiming the fellowship between God and His people. As long as the music adopted is still within acceptable limits and in accordance with the Bible.

Music for Others

Musical activity is one of the most ubiquitous and highly valued forms of social interaction in North America—from sporting events to political rallies, concerts to churches. Its use as an affective agent for political and religious programs suggests that it has ethical significance, but it is one of the most undertheorized aspects of both theological ethics and music scholarship. Music for Others: Care, Justice, and Relational Ethics in Christian Music fills part of this scholarly gap by focusing on the religious aspects of musical activity, particularly on the practices of Christian communities. It is based on ethnomusicological fieldwork at three Protestant churches and interviews with a group of seminary students, combined with theories of discourse, formation, response, and care ethics oriented toward restorative justice. The book argues that relationships are ontological for both human beings and musical activity. It further argues that musical meaning and emotion converge in human bodies such that music participates in personal and communal identity construction in affective ways—yet these constructions are not always just. Thus, Music for Others argues that music is ethical when it preserves people in and restores people to just relationships with each other, and thereby with God.

Chiming In: A Computer-Assisted Analysis of Popular Musicians’ Political Engagement on Twitter

While music as an artistic form is well studied, the individuals behind the art receive relatively less attention. In this article, we provide evidence of celebrity advocacy with a systematic examination of musicians’ political engagement on Twitter. This study estimates the extent to which musicians use Twitter for political purposes, with particular attention to whether such engagement varies across music genres. Through a computational-assisted analysis of 2,286,434 tweets, we group 881 musicians into three categories of political engagement on Twitter: not engaged (comprising the majority of artists), circumstantial engagement, and active political engagement. We examine the latter categories in detail with two qualitative case studies. The findings indicate that musicians from different genres have distinct patterns of political engagement. The Christian music genre shows the most engagement as a whole, especially in philanthropy. On the contrary, the most active accounts are rock and hip-hop artists, some of whom discuss political issues and call for mobilization. We conclude with suggestions for future research.

TINJAUAN TEOLOGI ATAS FENOMENA MUSIK KRISTEN KONTEMPORER DARI PERSPEKTIF ALKITAB

ABSTRACTMusic is an inseparable part of worship, as much as prayer in worship. Music as a part used for worship and praise for God, through the glorified music of God.Contemporary Christian music can now function to bridge this world and the church. However, what needs to be considered is that it is not permissible to stop on this bridge, but must grow and develop towards the quality of music that should be.The point is music is a tool to deliver and help people in expressing and proclaiming the fellowship between God and His people. As long as the music adopted is still within acceptable limits and in accordance with the Bible.

Contextualizing Hymns and Songs for the Chinese Context

This essay discusses the development of Chinese Christian hymns and songs from the early twentieth century to modern times. Some hymns and songs composed by early Chinese hymn writers are analyzed, such as the works of Hsi Sheng-mo, Dora Yu, Jia Yu-ming, Wang Zai, Wang Ming Wang-dao, John Sung, Watchman Nee, and John E. Su. In order to effectively bring the gospel and teach biblical truths to the people, they used words and expressions that resonated with and were understood easily by Chinese. In the 1930s, T. C. Chao began to promote the idea of contextualizing Christianity and hymnody to meet the needs of Chinese society. He wrote hymns for Hymns for the People (1931), which were paired with Chinese tunes arranged by missionary Bliss Wiant. Significant hymnals compiled for Chinese churches, as well as hymns and songs composed by contemporary hymn writers and Christian music groups, also are examined.

Broken Hebrewist Vessels

Whereas the music Mordecai Seter wrote in 1966 embodies a clash between his unsignified semiotic procedures and the national redemptive trajectories that animated them, Andre Hajdu’s music in 1970 knowingly staged unwanted sonic adjacencies of the Jewish Eastern European soundscape alongside Christian music from late medieval Europe. Both composers sought de-signification—either by eschewing ethnographic imports in the form of folk or liturgical music (Seter), or through violent deconstructions of seemingly opposing musical markers of Jews and Christians (Hajdu). The works of both therefore disclose meaningful disharmonie: both manifest the disabling of Zionist tropes and the concomitant reclaiming of the ethnic specificity of diasporic Ashkenazi culture. This chapter also reads the late music of Seter and Ben-Haim against the background of their notebooks and diaries, in addition to two seminal literary works—Past Continuous (1977) by Yaakov Shabtai and Unto Death (1969) by Amos Oz—that record admixtures of diasporic Jewish subcultures and the fallouts of a post-ideological age.