“Beer & Hymns” and Congregational Song: Participatory Sing-alongs as Community
Conferences, Presentations Andrew Mall Conferences, Presentations Andrew Mall

“Beer & Hymns” and Congregational Song: Participatory Sing-alongs as Community

Christian Congregational Music conference presentation (2019). 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. 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 troubled relationship with Protestant Christianity (including mainline and non-denominational evangelicalism). Our voices entwine, and often our arms do, too. And by the end of the night, as our singing reverberates in the night, we emerge unified by our singing, even if only for one night.

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Capital, Class, and Congregational Matters: The Political Economy of Worship Music
Conferences, Presentations Andrew Mall Conferences, Presentations Andrew Mall

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

Christian Congregational Music conference presentation (2015). 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.

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Subculture as Liturgy: Resistance and Worship among Subcultural Christians
Conferences, Presentations Andrew Mall Conferences, Presentations Andrew Mall

Subculture as Liturgy: Resistance and Worship among Subcultural Christians

Christian Congregational Music conference presentation (2013). Based on several years’ of ethnographic research, this paper examines the musical practices of two subcultural Christian communities in the U.S.: Nashville’s Anchor Fellowship and western Illinois’s Cornerstone Festival. Music and congregational song are very important to these liminal spaces, challenging old boundaries and defining new ones. Subculture itself becomes liturgical, and the political potential of corporate worship and popular music is often made explicit. In illustrating these communities, their sounds, and their ideologies, this paper both demonstrates the utility of subcultural theory to the study of congregational song and challenges Hebdige’s dialectic of incorporation.

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