Worship Capital, Evangelicalism, and the Political Economy of Congregational Music

Society for Christian Scholarship in Music

SCSM, Boston, Massachusetts, February 12, 2016.

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

Abstract

The presence of capital in Christian worship is unmistakable, enabling individuals and institutions to participate in the production, distribution, mediation, and consumption of worship music. Performing artists, songwriters, and ministers operate in markets that shape the aesthetics of songs that congregations sing every Sunday morning. This worship economy, however, remains undertheorized in congregational music studies. Why has this been so? In what ways are other forms of capital (material, social, cultural, etc.) implicated in the worship economy? How might a theoretical approach to the political economy of congregational music contribute to our understandings of evangelical worship itself? Building upon the works of Pierre Bourdieu, analyses of music industries, and contemporary discourses of intellectual property, this paper outlines a theoretical framework for the political economy of worship music and considers barriers to integrating this framework into our scholarship and practice. This research emerges from several years of ethnographic fieldwork at the Anchor Fellowship, a non-denominational evangelical church in Nashville, Tennessee, and advances the concept of “worship capital” to capture the various ways in which individuals and institutions invest in worship.

Part of the organized panel Packaging and Presenting Worship Music. Panelists:

• Emilie (Coakley) Rook

• Deborah Justice

• Andrew Mall

Panel abstract

The ways in which religious musics and movements are packaged and presented hold the keys to the success or failure of these streams of sacred sounds and thought. Seeing content through a particular lens can either emphasize its congruity with current practices or heighten its contrast to existing models. This panel investigates three such instances in which sacred and worship musics have been packaged in specific ways in order to serve particular agendas.

First, we consider how the 1640 Bay Psalm Book captured the American imagination. The hymnal came to be known as the first book printed in the supposed wilderness of North America, but to what degree is this psalter actually “American”? Referring to the work of Stephen Greenblatt and key theories on national identity—including the writings of Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, and Homi Bhaba—our first panelist positions the Bay Psalm Book as a case study to explore one manifestation of how musical material can codify identity. The hymnal becomes a site of the articulation of an emerging nation waiting to be sung into being, while still rooted in a transnational circulation of ideas and material. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates how musical material manifestations of religious and cultural identity can be rooted in both the national and transnational, while at the same time imagined political sites of a community’s identity.

Our second paper uses a case study of Syracuse, New York’s shifting religious soundscape to illustrate nationwide dynamics of religious repackaging. In recent years, many pipe-organ-and-chancel-choir mainline Protestant denominations in Central New York have been struggling and declining. In contrast, pulsating popular-music-genre-driven evangelical “movements” and unconventional churches have been growing rapidly in this same area. Syracuse’s newer congregations perform similar to those of historical groups, but analyzing how their use of new labels and new music technologies has impacted the religious soundscape holds keys to understanding the spiritual needs and desires of 21st century Christians across America. Wresting a framework of theories from sociology and ethnomusicology, this project will ultimately result in an interactive digital soundscape mapping the sounds of spirituality in Salt City.

The panel’s final paper concerns the roles of capital in packaging worship experiences. 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. Building upon the works of Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 1986, 1993), Jacques Attali (1985), and contemporary discourses of intellectual property, our third panelist outlines a theory of “worship capital” to explain the material and symbolic investments in worship made by individuals and institutions.