First, administrative business: I tag Blue Raja (in abstentia) to defend the dispensational view of Israel.

I followed with no little interest the posts dealing with the not-so-subtle sexuality of modern worship. (Michael 1, Michael 2, Pirate, Travis). One month ago, I had a brief email exchange with one of our FOBs (Friend of BHT) on exactly this topic. I was reacting to this interview with Leigh McLeroy in which she took on a challenging question about the character-forming aspect of our music. I wrote to our FOB:

One factor that I would like to explore some other time, and which I think is really a part of what is going on with the aggressiveness of individual expression through music, is another of youth’s aggressions: sex. There is an orgiastic quality that I think my older sisters and brothers would be too modest to name, but which I think also gives them the sense they are either prey for the predators or irrelevant to the experience. I would like to hear some knowledgeable depth psychological analysis of the various fetishistic practices which are on display in contemporary worship. I think we’d be shocked.

So coupled with the narcissism of youth is the sexual aggressiveness of youth. Perhaps what we are observing is not the secularization of church so much as the paganization of church. (this is what occurred to me when re-reading some [anonymous] articles). I should add that I don’t think this aggressiveness toward the non-young is intentional in most cases. The young are just being the young. It will all be over in 20 years or so anyway, when the pre-baby boom generation have all died.

So the bar has beaten me to that punch. Now I’ll just add the second factor that has directly touched my family and probably explains my rotten attitude: it’s also about violence. Not the content of the music, but just as with the sexual suggestiveness of the “worship leaders” (mostly unintentional, to be sure), the violence of the music assaults a particular group of people, and a group of people that we are quickly marginalizing in our churches for the sake of a hip, “inclusive,” (i.e., sophisticated) experience.

Music as spiritual formation is precisely what one reads about in the OT with the Levitical priests set aside to instruct the people in writing the Law and the poetry of God in their hearts through music. The priestly, discipling function of music is the biblical pattern.

The importance of congregational song is central to that pattern. I have watched the churches I grew up in move away from congregational participation to the liturgical key-light shining ever-brighter on the “worship leader(s)” to the all-out glare of the mini-concert. And following lock-step with American culture, the musical forms aggressively assert the values of individualism, autonomy and youth. Even good words sincerely intoned by a talented worship leader cannot be heard formatively by generations of believers that associate church music with its communal function, stilted and plodding as that may be. I’ve watched my Mom and her generation literally jammed out of their congregations and despised for being chintzy with their gratitude.

I think what I’ve been watching is a new Segregation taking over the American church, a Segregation of Age instead of race. First, the boomers gave the older people their “traditional” service, usually at a time “they” liked, like 8:00 am. If they didn’t like their second-class church citizenship, then…this is America! You can find a church for blue hairs down the road somewhere. Music has served as the not-so-blunt instrument to drive away the white-haired. If we’re supposed to abhor that kind of action, then we have apparently numbed ourselves to whatever is wrong about it. For the old ones who hesitate, they are reassured that all is in order, that this is the necessary unfolding of change of which history approves. To doubt (much less dispute) the historical legitimacy of what the youthful want to do is disloyal to the holy principles of the Reformation. History can (and is) revised to line up with the agenda. Augustine was right: what we love and worship precedes what we believe. America worships youth, the future is for the young and everyone must embrace it. Ironically, by actions often justified as the pursuit of increasing representation of the diversity of the body (which is a good thing), other aspects of God-given diversity are eliminated.

My vocational setting is with the young, so nothing would be easier for me than to buy into this movement within church life and practice. There is an innocence to youthful narcissism and aggression. In some respects, they’re just being young, as we all once were, strident and impatient for gratification. But if this is the true Body, who will speak for the old in Christ? In all the din, they are silenced and powerless. I hear the stories, and sit back stunned at what has happened to my Mom, her friends, and her generation, and even more stunned that I seem to be so alone in thinking there’s something wrong with it. These are not troublemakers and complainers; they’re quiet, wise servants and teachers who love and appreciate the young among them. Yet they’re supposed to embrace a kind of worship that physically assaults not only their sensorium, but their whole being, their very identity. Is this the price of admission to the communion of the saints today?