This Christian Life

Hymns on MTV

This is a neat article outlining a brief history of music in the church and how that translates (or becomes) to today’s Christian music. The author uses the popular band Jars of Clay as a study in the problem of “competing” with today’s media world.

Check it out: Hymns on MTV

The most dramatic changes in evangelical music since the colonial period began in the tumultuous decade of the 1960s. Throughout American history evangelicalism has demonstrated a remarkable knack for survival by tapping into the prevailing popular tastes. Although it would be an understatement to say that evangelicals were slow to warm to rock ‘n’ roll, by the late sixties some evangelical musicians recognized that the strains of “Make Me a Blessing” and “Bringing in the Sheaves” (which I used to think was my mother’s laundry song: “bringing in the sheets”) could no longer compete with “Hey Jude,” “Alice’s Restaurant,” and “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.

The feminine ideal of piety in the nineteenth century, especially when combined with the temperance crusade, brought overtones of sexuality and sentimentality to evangelical music. Faithful, patient mothers waited for their wayward sons to return home and come to Jesus—”Tell Mother I’ll Be There”—and the intimacy was apparent in such songs as “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” “My Jesus, I Love Thee,” and in the enduring popularity of “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me.” A resurgence of muscular Christianity at the turn of the twentieth century sounded the notes of militarism: “Lead On, O King Eternal,” “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus,” “On ward, Christian Soldiers.” It is not surprising that, during the carnage of the world wars, hymns about blood were popular in evangelical churches—”Nothing but the Blood of Jesus,” “Are You Washed in the Blood?” Evan gelicalism sustained the notes of triumphalism—”Victory in Jesus,” ” ‘V’ Is for Victory”—through the Cold War.