Religious? 7-Eleven. [Entry #2.]

I’m don’t shy away from the fact that I’ve grown up in a Southern Baptist church. I think it explains a lot about my family and makes my political stances surprising. Growing up I heard a lot of Steven Curtis Chapman, Matthew West, Mark Schultz and the like on 89.3 HISRadio but it took a few years for me to realize that it was Christian music. It was a far cry from what I heard in church.

[Point One.] 

In services, we use music the same as they did in antiquity. We're not chanting, but we use music to humble ourselves before God, pray to Him, cry out to Him, thank Him. In my church, there's not any speaking in tongues, there wasn't even any raising of hands in praise until just recently. "Big Church" was filled with these praise songs with full choir and orchestra. But growing up in the church, there's some gradual steps you go through to get there. Elementary Sunday School and Wednesday night choirs tended to be filled with songs that taught ideas, you start early with "Jesus Loves Me" for the basics, then you progress to stories like in "Rise and Shine" and eventually you'd put on a Christian musical with a few soloists, full choir, backing track and pop culture references. Once you're a youth your Wednesday nights become nights for "Crossfire" a service with more contemporary worship music that is conducted in a "hum & strum" fashion, and sung back ina 7-eleven fashion: Repeating the same seven words eleven times... Also while in youth group you go on tour during the summer to nursing homes and soup kitchens through junior high. Then your high school summers are spent touring and performing in prisons across America.  On both of these tours we perform more modern Christian pop, rock, and rap like I mentioned in my previous blog.  ...All of the above tours are accompanied by lively choreography of course. 

On a separate note, for one week each summer we go to churches across impoverished parts of Southeast Kentucky with my church and conduct Vacation Bible School. But on Sunday morning, we're guests in another Baptist church, who do things far more formally than we do. Every verse of each hymn is sung and their old, feeble pianist accompanies as the one member choir/worship leader sings leads hymns like below... at a much slower tempo with a much thicker accent, which makes things quite amusing. 

[Point Two.]

Since Baptist music is obviously born from Western Art Music and I find it pleasing, I imagine it's effected what I enjoy in music. But I don't believe that it's limited my taste in music. While what I consider right and wrong behaviorally has been heavily influenced by my sheltered Baptist homelife, I don't believe that it's translated to my musical taste. The words of the music hold the most religious weight, but I'm sure that we could dissect several hymns and find numerical symbolism, but the focus isn't on the instrumentation, intervals or anything.

I would have written on the music experience from visiting Richard's Episcopal church, but here's a summary: they sang the Doxology differently and I didn't approve.