{"id":107957,"date":"2013-07-10T12:45:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-10T16:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/?p=107957"},"modified":"2013-07-10T12:45:41","modified_gmt":"2013-07-10T16:45:41","slug":"not-all-things-considered-npr-on-hymns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2013\/07\/not-all-things-considered-npr-on-hymns\/","title":{"rendered":"Not all things considered: NPR on hymns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/iframe>Let\u2019s get the praise for this story about praise music and hymnody out of the way first.<\/p>\nNPR\u2019s All Things Considered did something very rare and they did it nicely. The show featured a full four minutes on Christian worship music. The show managed to do this without sneering and without any politics. The show featured actual Christian voices talking about their views on worship. This is a wonderful thing and kudos to them.<\/p>\nIf that\u2019s all you\u2019re looking for from NPR, you will love listening to this piece, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/transcript\/transcript.php?storyId=200013769\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Modern Hymn Writers Aim To Take Back Sunday<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\nAs it happens, not everyone was as pleased with this piece. We heard about it from more than a few readers. I\u2019m with them in having some criticism. Perhaps it\u2019s because I had too-high expectations. I\u2019m Lutheran. We take our hymnody very seriously. This week\u2019s hymn in our house is \u201cWe Praise You And Acknowledge You,\u201d by Stephen Starke, a modern hymn writer. (It\u2019s the one playing in the video embedded above.) Last week\u2019s was \u201cTo God The Holy Spirit Let Us Pray,\u201d by Martin Luther, who hasn\u2019t been writing new hymns for 500 years or so. I\u2019ve had the pleasure of <a href=\"http:\/\/pastoralmeanderings.blogspot.com\/2011\/09\/singing-praise-proud-past-and-bright.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">writing about hymns and choral music<\/a> and the greater pleasure of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.immanuelalexandria.org\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">worship life built around hymns<\/a>.<\/p>\nIf you bill your story as \u201cModern Hymn Writers Aim To Take Back Sunday,\u201d I want the story to be about that. I want to see if <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mlive.com\/living\/bay-city\/index.ssf\/2011\/08\/meet_pastor_stephen_starke.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">the prolific Stephen Starke<\/a> is in it. But this story was really not about modern hymn writers so much as a very narrow subset of Christianity and just a couple of modern hymn writers. The story would have been improved by making that clear. Instead, the lede was this:<\/p>\n<blockquote>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: In recent decades, worship music has trended away from the church organ and classic hymns in favor of more rocking songs made popular by Christian radio. Now a crop of modern hymn writers is pulling Sunday morning singing back to a more traditional style. Blake Farmer of member station WPLN reports from Nashville.<\/p>\nBLAKE FARMER, BYLINE: There was a time when hymns were used primarily to drive home the message that came from the pulpit. Then came the praise songs.<\/p>\n(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, \u201cOUR GOD\u201d)<\/p>\nMATT REDMAN: (Singing) Our God is greater, our God is stronger\u2026<\/p>\nFARMER: Matt Redman\u2019s song \u201cOur God\u201d is the most popular piece of music in Christian churches today. That\u2019s according to charts that track congregational singing \u2013 yes, there is such a thing. But approaching the top 10 is a retro hymn co-written by Keith Getty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nSuch broad strokes, eh? If I tell you that later in the story we\u2019re told that we\u2019re more or less talking about Southern Baptists in this piece, would that help? It helped me. I mean, the Southern Baptists are a large group and a story about their worship practices and trends is great. But it was weird to read about these \u201ccharts\u201d that track congregational singing. I know that my large Lutheran denomination doesn\u2019t track these things and I wasn\u2019t terribly familiar with either the praise song or the hymn mentioned in the lede. So I spent the next few minutes trying to figure out how narrow the story would end up being.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s quite narrow. And nicely so. <a href=\"http:\/\/.religionnews.com\/2013\/04\/30\/modern-hymn-writers-revive-a-lost-musical-art\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Bob Smietana\u2019s piece on the same topic from April of this year<\/a> helped the reader much more by laying the focus all on the line right there at the top:<\/p>\n<blockquote>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) Most songwriters in Nashville want to get their songs on the radio. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gettymusic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Keith and Kristyn Getty<\/a> hope their songs end up in dusty old hymnbooks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nBoth stories are interesting and both stories are about the Gettys but I appreciate Smietana\u2019s approach.<\/p>\nBack to this NPR piece, I did think it managed to get some helpful doctrinal points in. Here\u2019s one perspective:<\/p>\n<blockquote>KEITH GETTY: Our goal is to write songs that teach the faith, where the congregation is the main thing and everybody accompanies that.<\/p>\nFARMER: There\u2019s no definition for what\u2019s a hymn and not a praise song, but Getty says it should be singable without a band, easy for anyone sitting in the pews to pick up. And it should say something bold.<\/p>\nGETTY: And I think it\u2019s to the church\u2019s poverty that the average worship song now has so few words, so little truth, is so focused on several commercial aspects of God, like the fact that he loves our praises.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nLater we\u2019re told that the Gettys have 12 hymns in the latest Southern Baptist hymnal. (This caused me to look something up in my hymnal, where I saw that Starke has 32(!) listings, more than Paul Gerhardt or Martin Luther.) And we learn that the substance of the Getty\u2019s work is helping encourage other songwriters to follow suit. We hear some of the repetitive sections of praise music but also a defense of them:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>FARMER: \u201cHow Great Is Our God\u201d by Chris Tomlin is a refrain sung in mega churches worldwide. Nashville producer Ed Cash collaborated on the song and says he laughed out loud the first time he heard a rough draft.<\/p>\nED CASH: I remember thinking, you know, that\u2019s exactly the simple kind of brainless praise chorus things that drive me crazy.<\/p>\nFARMER: But Cash has had a conversion to the praise chorus. He now believes you shouldn\u2019t complicate the message.<\/p>\nCASH: You know, for some people singing a seven-word, simple chorus draws them into the presence of God. And to me, ultimately, what is the goal of worship music? It\u2019s to exalt God.<\/p>\nFARMER: In the last few decades, some church leaders have called the tension between contemporary and traditional styles a worship war. It hasn\u2019t exactly let up. But the hymn is getting more love from modern worship leaders, even if it\u2019s just tagging a new praise song with a classic chorus. For NPR News, I\u2019m Blake Farmer in Nashville.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThat\u2019s actually nicely handled. There is a big difference between hymns and praise music and, given the briefness of this story, that difference was well articulated. But, again, the story about these debates in Southern Baptist or other evangelical megachurches is going to be different from how that debate plays out in Lutheran or Episcopal congregations. The lede really didn\u2019t explain that we were going to be looking at just one modern hymnwriting couple and their influence in one part of Christianity.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s get the praise for this story about praise music and hymnody out of the way first. NPR\u2019s All Things Considered did something very rare and they did it nicely. The show featured a full four minutes on Christian worship music. The show managed to do this without sneering and without any politics. The show […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":605,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,27,16,1,48],"tags":[1941,1943,1944,1942,1936,1678,1934,268,1691,105,1935,1938,1940,1939,1937],"class_list":["post-107957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baptists","category-evangelicals","category-music","category-uncategorized","category-worship","tag-all-things-considered","tag-chris-tomlin","tag-ed-cash","tag-how-great-is-our-god","tag-hymnal","tag-hymns","tag-keith-and-kristyn-getty","tag-martin-luther","tag-nashville","tag-npr","tag-souther-baptist","tag-stephen-starke","tag-to-god-the-holy-spirit-let-us-pray","tag-we-praise-you-and-acknowledge-you","tag-worship-music"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Not all things considered: NPR on hymns<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Let's get the praise for this story about praise music and hymnody out of the way first. 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