“Beer & Hymns” and Redemption: Reimagining and Reclaiming Religious Identity through Participatory Sing-alongs

Sound and Secularity Symposium

Stony Brook University Department of Music, Stony Brook, New York, April 12, 2019.

Material from this paper was published in “ ‘Beer & Hymns’ and Community.”

Abstract

As a loosely-organized institution, “Beer and Hymns” started at the Greenbelt Festival in England in 2006 and migrated to the Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina in 2012. Local Beer and Hymns communities meet at bars, breweries, clubs, and pubs in across the U.K., U.S., and around the world. Most are not affiliated with a church or Christian denomination, instead relying on the energy of independent local organizers (who are usually volunteers). Beer and Hymns is exactly what it sounds like: we raise our red Solo cups and lift our voices together to sing hymns, spirituals, praise songs, and folk songs together. The conveners accompany on whatever acoustic instruments are available, provide songbooks, and lead the song, but are quickly subsumed by the larger group: the sonic emphasis is on the participatory nature of the sing-along, and not necessarily on proper intonation, rhythmic precision, or vocal blend. At Wild Goose’s Beer and Hymns, song choices include both secular and sacred selections, and the nightly gatherings attract participants from a variety of theological backgrounds, many of whom have an ambivalent or even troubled relationship with organized religion in general and Protestant Christianity in particular (including mainline and non-denominational evangelicalism). Given the ambivalent (and sometimes antagonistic) relationship between houses of worship and houses of drink in the United States, the mere act of singing hymns in bars can be interpreted as resisting prescriptive religious norms. But in recontextualizing these songs in Wild Goose’s pub tent, beers in hand, participants—including current and former churchgoers—reimagine their theologies and reclaim their religious identities. In this paper, I analyze the sonic and social fabric of Beer and Hymns as a participatory space that enables resilience and redemption.