Capital, Class, and Congregational Matters: The Political Economy of Worship Music

Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives

CCMC, Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford, England, August 6, 2015.

Material from this paper was published in Worship Capital: On the Political Economy of Worship Music.

Abstract

The presence of economic capital in worship music is unmistakable. Capital exchange enables worship conferences such as Passion and major artists such as Hillsong United to reach thousands of Christians. The worldwide licensing and royalty payment system operated by Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) helps songwriters pursue professional careers in praise and worship music. At local levels, individual churches subscribe to CCLI on a sliding scale, welcome touring artists, and frequently pay their worship leaders a stipend or salary. At the institutional level, seminaries and colleges train future music ministers, while multinational corporations distribute and administer worship music as a commodity and intellectual property. For example, both record labels operated by Passion and Hillsong are affiliated with Capitol Christian Music Group, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music corporation.

Worship music, performing artists, songwriters, and ministers circulate and operate in capitalist markets. The influence of these markets on localized music access and practice, however, remains undertheorized in the area of congregational music studies. Building upon the works of Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 1986, 1993), Jacques Attali (1985), and contemporary discourses of intellectual property, how might we consider the ways in which other forms of capital (cultural, intellectual, religious, social, etc.) are implicated in these markets? How do markets mediate between distinct congregations and globalized worship industries? This paper outlines a theoretical framework for the political economy of worship music, considering the roles of capital(s) in its production, distribution, mediation, and consumption.