In a recent post over at Slice, Ingrid returns to a common theme - music. Her take is that certain styles of music are acceptable and certain styles are not - and this seems to apply to everyone. She offers a polemic by her husband to make her point.
The essay by Tom Schlueter reminded me of the comments by John MacArthur regarding the wearing of suits in church. On the one hand both the opinion of MacArthur and the opinion of Schlueter make sense… they even have some validity. Yet the shared flaw that renders their opinions incapable of being applied universally is their ethnocentric position.
In other words, their instructions may have value – in their narrow context. The problem is they both elevate their preferences to universal codes that all must follow.
For example: Tom Schlueter gives two examples of purely instrumental brass music – in the style of swing and fanfare, respectively. In the first “The trumpets led the brass in a clear call to listeners: get up and dance” the other calls the listeners to “Come and worship God.”
His conclusion: The [fanfare] brass in the second example tells us there is royalty present. The percussion at the end of the fanfare speaks not of dance and flesh, but of honor and respect and reverence. Different message entirely. And he is right – swing brass bids us come and dance, fanfare brass bids us recognize authority and honor.
But his application is flawed. He rightly differentiates the two biddings, but then sets up a false dichotomy – that honor and respect are valid modes of worship, but celebration and dance are of the flesh. His conclusion of swing, if used as a call to worship would be “Get up and dance… Women should start flaunting their stuff in front of men on the dance floor. This would not be worship at all, but rather a gross insult to the Almighty.”
I’ve been in worship services where people danced – I doubt God was insulted.
The problem is not one of style of music, but context and assumption. First the assumption, Schlueter first assumes dance is fleshly and swing calls women to flaunt their stuff – this I will summarily dismiss. The context is worthy of discussion.
Tom Schlueter uses a 9-11 memorial as an example of appropriate music – solemn music would be appropriate, a Broadway tune… not so. I agree. And if the point of worship is the “honor and respect and reverence” of God, then a fanfare might work. Where he fails is the recognition that maybe the point of worship is (at times) to dance and celebrate. And in this swing may work well.
If Schlueter had stuck to an argument that music should evoke appropriate responses given the situation of worship, then I could have agreed. But he could not, he had to insert his cultural version of what is appropriate in style and overlay those expectations on us all.
