One of the most notable, but least studied, aspects of the 18th-century revivals that led to the rise of modern evangelicalism was the disputed place of hymn-singing. In his very first report on the unusual religious stirrings in Northampton, Massachusetts, from 1736, Jonathan Edwards noted that although his congregation had already learned the era's new style of singing—"three parts of music, and the women a part by themselves"—the revival had worked an extraordinary musical effect: "Our public praises were greatly enlivened, and God was served in our psalmody as in the beauties of holiness. There was scarce any part of divine worship wherein God's saints among us had grace so drawn forth and their hearts lifted up, as in singing the praises of God."

Yet soon the fervor of hymn-singing, as well as what the newly revived were singing, came under fire. Not only were critics upset with what Edwards (in a later work defending the revivals) described as "abounding in much singing in religious meetings." Critics were also complaining that the revived congregations were singing "hymns of human composure," that is, hymns newly written by contemporaries rather than hymns paraphrased directly from the Psalms, which was then the only kind of hymnody widely accepted in most English-speaking Protestant churches. Edwards, with many of the early leaders of the evangelical awakenings, had in fact begun to sing the hymns of his older contemporary Isaac Watts ("When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" and "Join All the Glorious Names of Wisdom, Love, and Power"). And not only Watts, for from the earliest days of the evangelical revival, leaders and participants were writing and singing their own hymns in both Britain, as from Charles Wesley ("Where shall my wond'ring Soul begin? … How shall I equal triumphs raise, / or sing my great Deliverer's Praise!"), and America, as from Samuel Davies ("Who is a pardoning God like Thee? / Or who has grace so rich and free?"). The result from the new intensity of hymn-singing, appearing as it did along with newly written hymns that were as evocative to some as they were offensive to others, was an early version of today's worship wars.

One of the few historians who has attended to the power of singing in the rise of 18th-century evangelical movements, and then to the central place of hymns in all subsequent American church life, is Stephen A. Marini, Elisabeth Luce Moore Professor of Christian Studies at Wellesley College and also the director of a musical group that often performs the shape-note hymns of the Sacred Harp tradition. Over the last two decades, Marini has published a number of path-breaking articles on the place of hymns in American Protestant history. Now he has broadened considerably the scope of his concerns by publishing Sacred Song in America. It is a book that could not have arrived at a more opportune time.

The clash of musical styles, tastes, and practices, which becomes every year more dramatic in America's churches, is one of the most prominent features of contemporary religious life. Never has it been more obvious that the right kind of music draws people in and the wrong kind of music drives them out. Rarely has the emotional power of music been so fully on display. Contemporary experience on every side validates viscerally what Marini, quoting the documents of the Second Vatican Council, recognizes as the capacity of music to "unveil a dimension of meaning and feeling, a communication of ideas and intuitions that words alone cannot yield."

Marini's book does not provide prescriptive answers to the many questions—practical, artistic, theological, scriptural, architectural, economic, ethical, and ethnic—that swirl around the religious use of music today. What it does supply, however, may be even more basic, for the book documents the central role of sacred song in a tremendous variety of religious traditions; it explains with special sensitivity the breakthroughs (and problems) for music in the liturgical, charismatic, and seeker-sensitive revivals of recent years; it treats sympathetically the tangled web of economic-religious considerations that now beset sacred music of almost every sort; and it begins to explain why music is and has been so foundationally important for religious believers.

Marini's strategy was to hit the road in order to visit places where sacred song could be observed in practice. The book describes with as much sympathy as possible what he heard and saw, to which are added historical accounts for the groups under consideration. Marini also includes analysis of two recent hymnals (the Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Hymnal of 1991, which reflected the rising conservative tide in that denomination, and the United Church of Christ's New Century Hymnal of 1995, which did more to incorporate inclusive language and inclusive ideology than any other major American hymnal). And he presents transcripts of interviews with two composers whose works are used widely in church settings—Daniel Pinkham, whom Marini calls "a nonbeliever of Episcopal background," long associated with the Unitarian King's Chapel of Boston, and Neely Bruce, a passionate Roman Catholic believer who from his post at Wesleyan University in Connecticut has long campaigned for the spiritual and artistic renewal of church music.

The great success of the book is Marini's ability to make every one of his on-site visits come alive. The great complexity that the book reveals comes from the striking variety of what he found during those visits: to the Denver March Powwow featuring Native American song and dance; a Chicano Holy Week pilgrimage in Chimayó, New Mexico; a Sunday of Sacred Harp shape-note singing at the Little Vine Primitive Baptist Church in Blount County, Alabama; a morning worship with the thousands packed into the Apostolic Church of God on Chicago's south side; a concert of klezmer music and Sephardic song in Cambridge, Massachusetts; an evening of New Age music in Ellsworth, Maine, featuring wiccan Kay Gardner; a rehearsal with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on Temple Square in Salt Lake City; a visit to John Michael Talbot at the site of his community of the Brothers and Sisters of Charity near Eureka Springs, Arkansas; and personal interviews with members of the Lewis and Isaac families at the Peaceful Valley Blue Grass Festival in Shinhopple, New York. In order to make sure that music remains central in a book about music, Marini also adds a 45-page appendix of musical examples keyed to the various chapters in the book.

Marini's reports illuminate musical traditions that are often little understood, or even known, by those outside the specific groups involved. As an example, his clear explanation of how West African ritual practices, the evangelically sponsored hymns of Isaac Watts, and the performance practices of early jazz and the blues flow together into the controlled improvisation of urban African American worship makes sense out of what to first-time Caucasian visitors can sound wildly incongruous, or simply wild. Likewise illuminating is his account of how the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has exploited classical Christian repertory and good-feeling American patriotism as a powerful advertisement for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But as with so many of the groups Marini visited, Mormon musical practice contains substantial ambiguities—in this case, some Mormons who worry that their choir is not aggressive enough in propagating their faith, and other Mormons who feel that the spectacular attention lavished on this one choir takes the steam out of musical efforts at the ordinary services of local Mormon worship.

Marini also subjects the growing commercial entanglements of sacred music to fair, but searching analysis. He quotes sympathetically John Michael Talbot as saying, "I believe that American Christianity is a heresy and I believe that the industry of the Christian Broadcasters Association has become a Whore of Babylon." But he also notes the dependence of Talbot's Brothers and Sisters of Charity on the success of Talbot's albums (and now also videos) and the anomaly that Talbot practices his simple lifestyle and promotes his intentionally simple music from a corner of Arkansas overrun with outlandish Christian kitsch. In addition, Marini's attention to successes and problems in the world of Christian Contemporary Music structures his discussions with the Lewis family, which features what Marini calls "Christian entertainment," and the Isaacs, whom he describes as practicing "music evangelism."

The payoff from Marini's careful work is not going to resolve the musical conundrums that now bear down with such intensity on congregational councils, pastors, worship leaders, and church musicians. Yet by showing so clearly how forcefully music acts to establish community and communicate deep conviction, how it both reflects a church's values and actively shapes those values, and how—above all—music acts as a "dynamic whole" reflecting the deepest levels of "human religiousness," this book explains why those conundrums are so important. It is now one of the best resources available to show why, for better and for worse, we have arrived at the state of religion in contemporary America where, as Marini quotes one Mormon leader, "we need better music and more of it, and better preaching and less of it."

Mark Noll is McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College. He is the author most recently of America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford Univ. Press).

Copyright © 2004 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
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