Spiritual Songs and the Search for Something More

"There is a long history of putting sacred texts to popular non church melodies in order to speak to a wider audience. A good example of this is the tune for the Holy Week hymn 'O Sacred Head Now Wounded.' Its original words were a love song -- 'Confused are all my feelings. A tender maid's the cause' -- set to a medieval melody by Hans Leo Hassler in 1601. Not exactly a theological text! Millions of Christians sing this hymn about the passion of Christ, harmonized by Bach and known as the 'Passion Chorale,' unaware of the tune's origin." (Don and Emily Saliers, A Song to Sing, A Life to Live, p. 159.)

I am familiar with the concept. As a teenager, back in the days when church camps were littered with guitars -- back before the Mick Jagger had wrinkles -- we use to sing the church hymn When I Survey the Wondrous Cross to the tune of the Rolling Stones song, As Tears Go By. Later, with slightly less reverence, I found myself singing Amazing Grace to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme. Really.

And there have been others. Borrowing. Merging. Blending. Integrating. I'm not sure which word captures the art of placing the secular into the blessing hands of the sacred, but I've been thinking about church music since talking with a recent visitor to our congregation's worship service and hearing his feedback on our music. It's alright, he implied -- just "stuck" in his opinion. Music can and needs to change, he stressed, without becoming the "dog and pony show" he says he has experienced in so many high-profile "contemporary" churches.

I hope to have more conversations with the visitor -- whether or not he returns to our church. Though I haven't yet comprehended exactly what he was telling me, I sense that he is putting his finger on the source of my own musical consternation of recent years. There are some wonderful contemporary hymn writers, but they are still writing hymns. Isn't there an attractive alternative? Surely there is some creative space -- some musical artistry and utility -- between hymnody the likes of which the church has sung for centuries, and trivial religio-babble so characteristic of contemporary praise that has a musical range of three or four notes and a vocabulary of about as many words. Where is the new musical form in which the whole people can participate and enjoy, and with which they can viscerally connect?

I doubt it involves more sacred texts married to television themes, but who knows? Has anyone tried to sing a Psalm to the Desperate Housewives theme?

Ponder that, while you are tapping your foot and trying your compositional hand -- if you dare.

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