Scripture, Culture, and Missions
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 55, No. 1 – Fall 2012
Managing Editor: Terry L. Wilder
By T. David Gordon. Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2010. 192 pages. Softcover, $12.99.
Perhaps the issue of pop culture and church music has not been exhausted; perhaps it has. Nonetheless, T. David Gordon, professor at Grove City College, offers his own critique of contemporary worship practices in Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns. Following his book, Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers (inspired by Rudolf Flesch’s Why Johnny Can’t Read: and Why Johnny Can’t Write), Gordon continues his quest to address major shortcomings in conservative Reformed churches. Whereas his first book was motivated by his experience with cancer, this book reflects on the loss of his infant daughter (many years ago) to leukemia. Direct and uncompromising, it is based upon the central belief, “I think contemporary worship music is often of a lesser literary, theological, or musical quality than most traditional hymnody” (15). Gordon’s purpose is to persuade his readers “to be wary of using contemporary Christian music in worship services at all, to object to its common use, and to zealously oppose its exclusive use” (36).
Gordon follows a very simple progression. He acknowledges that he is primarily concerned with music that “sounds” contemporary because that genre is “fading, transient, or ephemeral” (60). It communicates the meta-message of “contemporaneity” and banality because pop music cannot demand a commitment of itself. He argues that earlier generations never considered listening to church music in leisure time because it was sacred, following that with a summary of Ken Myers’s description of high, folk, and pop music. Pop music suffers from an ignorance of tradition and poor quality while high music demands well-trained musicians and the “creativity of masterly poets” (131; he grudgingly admits, however, that folk music may be “the most appropriate idiom for Christian hymnody” [87]). He concludes with the claim that churches should not use music (or any other means) to “reach” a community, and that indeed the Woodstock generation introduced the guitar in church to appease itself and not younger generations, which apparently do not like guitars (159).
Frankly, the book itself is rather inconsequential. His well-taken points (churches do not advertise “Theologically Significant Worship” on their marquees, pop music tends to be monogenerational, and pop lyrics lose their impact when “not set to music” [135]) are borrowed from other authors, primarily Myers in All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes. It is a purely contemporary product with little lasting value and almost no meaning outside of a narrow cultural context, filled with examples of hubris, ignorance of music history and the music industry, and unawareness of a huge body of literature already devoted to the topic. Though he claims not to be a musician, he stands in judgment of all music that falls outside an amorphic “traditional” genre that only he can identify. He claims to know the message of all contemporary music regardless of the author’s intent and worries only about the opinions of “mature” Christians. In the end, it seems as if Gordon believes the church should be some kind of cultural catacomb for trained musicians, regardless of the mission of the church as given by Jesus Christ.
An interesting question arises from reading this book. Gordon does not try to hide his disdain for the Free Church tradition, disregarding it as “sub-Christian” (122) because it rejects the universal church and her Reformed liturgies. A number of Baptists (including this reviewer) have recently argued that Baptist leaders should be more aware of historical resources for congregational worship and not so dependent on the latest trends in evangelical church practices. This book should give them pause. Most Baptists, especially those who take the Great Commission seriously, should not want to be associated with Gordon’s type of holdover from Puritan practice (that a church should be more concerned with perfecting itself than the world around it). Any kind of elitism which would result from pursuing high culture flies in the face of everything Jesus taught and explains why parts of Gordon’s traditions (he currently attends an Anglican church though he is an ordained Presbyterian minister) have fallen on such hard times. The Free Church tradition intentionally (and biblically) rejects any sort of professionalization that would divide clergy from laity, church from church, and Christian from lost. However, this does not mean that Baptists should celebrate mediocrity, as Gordon insinuates. It simply means that Baptists should remember that God cares much more about the heart than the quality of the offering.
Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns will be read by few and impress fewer. However, it serves as a sober reminder of why Baptists should resist the temptation to drift into uncritical traditionalism in the historic liturgical sense (out of the uncritical traditionalism of a different kind that currently characterizes so many Baptist churches). God has provided churches with invaluable resources from throughout history, but the moment those resources become a snare (something used to divide Christians and churches into different classes) they must be dismissed. May the Baptists who investigate those resources in order to enrich their congregation’s worship be strongly warned that they must never adopt Gordon’s mindset towards God’s church.
