How YouTube Mediations of Global Contemporary Congregational Songs Contribute to an Understanding of the Genre

Contemporary congregational songs (ccs) are a global genre of Christian worship, driven presently from Western production centres. Streaming media platforms, in particular YouTube, have become essential vehicles for disseminating these songs globally, as well as a way for fans to contribute to the popularity of songs through views, likes, comments, sharing, and uploading their own fan-created videos. While this activity has had some scholarly attention, it has not focussed on the varied forms these videos take and how they contribute to and nuance the definition of the genre. This article utilises the most sung songs data from recent Christian Copyright Licensing International reports across five regions to establish the 32 most sung ccs globally. A media studies analysis is then conducted, with contributions from musicology and theology, of the most viewed versions of those ccs on YouTube. Three typical video forms are identified and discussed in relation to the way they reflect and shape perceptions of the contemporary congregational song genre.

Protestant Congregational Song in the Philippines: Localization through Translation and Hybridization

Historically, the language of Protestant congregational song in the Philippines was English, which was tied to that nation’s twentieth-century colonial history with the United States. The development of Filipino songs since the 1970s is linked to this legacy, but church musicians have found ways to localize their congregational singing through processes of translation and hybridization. Because translation of hymn texts from English has proven difficult for linguistic reasons, Papuri, a music group that produces original Tagalog-language worship music, bypasses these difficulties while relying heavily on American pop music styles. Word for the World is a Pentecostal congregation that embraces English-language songs as a part of their theology of presence, obviating the need for translation by singing in the original language. Day by Day Ministries, the third case study, is a congregation that translates beyond language texts, preparing indigenous Filipino cultural expressions for urban audiences by composing hybridized songs that merge pre-Hispanic and contemporary forms.

White Pop, Shiny Armour and a Sling and Stone: Indigenous Expressions of Contemporary Congregational Song Exploring Christian-Māori Identity

It has taken many years for different styles of music to be utilised within Pentecostal churches as acceptable forms of worship. These shifts in musical sensibilities, which draw upon elements of pop, rock and hip hop, have allowed for a contemporisation of music that functions as worship within these settings, and although still debated within and across some denominations, there is a growing acceptance amongst Western churches of these styles. Whilst these developments have taken place over the past few decades, there is an ongoing resistance by Pentecostal churches to embrace Indigenous musical expressions of worship, which are usually treated as token recognitions of minority groups, and at worst, demonised as irredeemable musical forms. This article draws upon interview data with Christian-Māori leaders from New Zealand and focus group participants of a diaspora Māori church in southwest Sydney, Australia, who considered their views as Christian musicians and ministers. These perspectives seek to challenge the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations within a church setting and create a more inclusive philosophy and practice towards being ‘one in Christ’ with the role of music as worship acting as a case study throughout. It also considers how Indigenous forms of worship impact cultural identity, where Christian worship drawing upon Māori language and music forms has led to deeper connections to congregants’ cultural backgrounds.

Churches and Devotional Practice

This chapter discusses the contribution of hymnology to nineteenth-century intellectual culture. It demonstrates how clergy and musicians engaged in scholarly writing and debate concerning the history, context, practice, and spirituality of congregational song. Using a diverse range of sources, including journal articles, lectures, sermons, and hymnals, it argues that hymnology was recognized as an important area of scholarship that drew on a range of musical and religious perspectives. Interest in it extended across denominational and national boundaries, and was characterized by professional and amateur participation. The key to understanding hymnology’s centrality in intellectual culture lies in the pervasiveness of church music in nineteenth-century cultural practice and experience.

‘The Harmony of One Choir’? Music and Social Unity in Reformation Heidelberg*

From early in the Reformation, Protestant leaders viewed music as a powerful tool not only for educating their followers, but also for forging unity within diverse and dispersed communities. Such a belief found expression in official and unofficial religious contexts, and left its mark on printed devotional material, congregational hymn books, public policies of church authorities, and the musical activities of individual churches. At the same time, the manner in which a person accessed, experienced and produced music in a Reformation urban environment was conditioned as much by social factors such as age, gender, social station and personal contacts, as by confessional affiliation and policy. Using a corpus of previously unexploited sources from the Protestant city of Heidelberg, this article challenges the rhetorical and outdated binary notions of social ‘harmony’ and ‘discord’. It argues that music in a Reformation city — whether congregational song in churches, secular song in taverns, inns and streets, or domestic devotional song — could function as a powerful platform for emphasizing rather than dissolving a range of meaningful social differences, even as it created new kinds of unity across urban society.

The Songs We Sing: A Textual Analysis of Popular Congregational Songs of the 20th and 21st Century

Contemporary worship songs have been the subject of criticism over their lyrical quality. Objective assessment of the veracity of the criticisms has been difficult to achieve. This research seeks to address this issue by performing a textual analysis of the most popular hymns of the 19th and 20th centuries and contemporary popular worship songs and comparing the results. The research concludes that although there are differences in the lyrical content they are not crucial and that both contemporary worship songs and traditional hymns should find a home in congregational song.