The praise song is integral to worship in the black tradition, expressing Spirit-filled praise and demanding the full participation of the worshiping community. Black praise singing is also expressive of themes important in the black Christian experience and in the theology that has been formed out of this experience.
Black religious music and black theology are correlative in meaning. From the beginning, black music has sprung from black theology as a meaningful and life-affirming medium in the black experience. This article intends to take a brief look at this interplay between music and theology as revealed in the black Pentecostal praise song.
Luther Gerlach and Virginia Hine have studied Pentecostalism as a mode of social transformation involving a seven-step commitment process required to recruit, convert, and maintain members. The two steps most germane to the Pentecostal praise song are the original commitment event and the orientation process that features group support for modified cognitive and behavioral patterns (Luther P. Gerlach and Virginia H. Hine, People, Power, Change: Movements of Social Transformation [Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970], 110).
Pentecostals call the most significant event effectuating commitment “baptism of the Holy Ghost.” Following the acceptance of Christ as their personal Savior, believers are encouraged to seek this experience by prayerfully petitioning God to “fill them” with the Spirit. As recorded in the Book of Acts, the initial sign of Spirit baptism is “speaking with other tongues” (glossolalia; cf. Acts 2:1–13).
In addition to expecting new members to be Spirit-baptized, the established Pentecostal community maintains a strict code of personal conduct. One of the traditional ways black Pentecostals communicate this expectation to new members is through their praise songs. New members do more than simply learn the words of praise songs by joining the community in choruses of faith affirmations; they also learn by rote the theological meanings of the songs and the behavioral expectations of their new religious community. Gerlach and Hine claim that the popular aphorisms contained in black Pentecostal songs are “conceptual models which spring into life and take on deep meaning” (Gerlach and Hine, People, Power, Change, 162). Aphorisms such as “I have crossed the separating line,” which abound in praise songs, are not mere pat phrases. They represent the “cognitive building blocks” of Pentecostal belief because they are saturated with theological meaning (ibid.).
In part, what new members in the black Pentecostal church are oriented to is the black religious worldview and the theological reflection that sustains it. Black theology is a defiant act of faith and human will. When black people decided to interpret the Scriptures so that the words would speak to their particular experiences, they concluded that God had not intended for them to be slaves (James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed [New York: Seabury Press, 1975], 8). Black religious music is a fascinating artifact of this theological dynamic because it demonstrates how black people, for the purpose of their liberation, reinterpreted their religion designed to reinforce white supremacy. Born in black people’s struggle for survival and liberation, the theology of the black worldview continues to transform the meaning of songs black Pentecostals adapt from the white religious tradition.
Conversely, members of other denominations, black and white, have hardly begun to appreciate the musical contribution black Pentecostals have made to the Christian hymnic tradition. Like other denominational groups composing the black church, black Pentecostals have long sung hymns by white hymnists, but the praise songs were created out of the Pentecostals’ own unique style of worship. Improvisatory in nature and simple in structure, these songs of praise are rendered differently each time they are sung. Black Pentecostals sing their praise songs in a way similar to the way jazz musicians play their instruments. Just as jazz musicians have an inventory of jazz riffs and chord progressions to call upon, so have the Pentecostal praise leaders an inventory of familiar calls at their disposal for leading the singing of praise songs. Black Pentecostals learn their praise songs by rote via the medium of oral transmission, and it is the spiritual mood of the moment that determines what is sung or played. Walter Hollenweger asserts that black Pentecostals are duplicating the way primitive Christians transmitted theology, through oral channels (“Creator Spiritus,” Theology 47 (1978): 35).
An integral aspect in the improvisatory singing of the praise song is call and response, the African-derived pattern that survived the cultural transition to America. Jack Daniel and Geneva Smitherman define call and response as the verbal and nonverbal interaction between speaker and listener in which each of the speaker’s statements (or “calls”) is punctuated by expressions (“responses”) from the listener. As a fundamental aspect of the black communications system, call-and-response spans the sacred-secular continuum in black culture.… More than an observed ritual in Church services, call-and-response is an organizing principle of black Cultural Reality that enables traditional black folk to achieve a unified state of balance or harmony which is essential to the Traditional African World View. (Jack L. Daniel and Geneva Smitherman, “How I Got Over: Communication Dynamics in the Black Community,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 62:1 (1976): 26–39)
In black Pentecostal praise songs, the very act of punctuating the singer’s call with a unified response instills a forceful sense of allegiance to the theology of the song being sung. Call and response bind all participants together in meaning and purpose. Observe, as an example of call and response, the following words of a favorite black Pentecostal praise song, “On My Way to Heaven and I’m So Glad”:
Goodbye, goodbye, I’ve left this world behind.
I’ve crossed the separating line.
I’ve left this world behind.
In the call and response mode, the song is sung like this:
Leader: Goodbye
Congregation: Goodbye
Leader: Goodbye
Congregation: Goodbye
All: I’ve left this world behind. I have cross the separating line. I have left this world behind.
The following are the words of another favorite praise song. As in the previous song, the worship leader calls out various verses to which the congregation responds:
Leader: I’m a soldier.
Congregation: In the army of the Lord.
Leader: I’m a soldier.
Congregation: In the army.
Leader: If I die, let me die.
Congregation: In the army of the Lord.
Leader: If I die, let me die.
Congregation: In the army.
As these examples illustrate, praise songs are meditations on simple theological themes which help orient new members to the worldview and theology of black Pentecostalism. Praises to God for salvation, explications of Christ’s atonement, and pledges of determination to continue the Christian life are among the familiar themes in these songs. So simple are the songs, and so familiar are their themes to Pentecostals, that the creative worship leaders can “call” a medley of songs on a particular theological theme without even breaking the tempo between songs. This makes the worship leader an important factor in the instruction and orientation of new members—a teacher of sorts.
How does the praise song serve black Pentecostal theology? The praise song was never intended to be an exhaustive explication of Christian theology. It is a song that thanks God for the salvation promised to those believers who are faithful and Spirit-filled. In this regard, the praise song is more concerned with rejoicing over salvation than with plotting out the salvation process. The latter—the more in-depth doctrinal aspects of black Pentecostal theology—are taught to members in the contexts of Bible study, Sunday school, and preaching. But the praise song has prepared the way for this more formal instruction. The praise song, then, can afford to concentrate on worshipful acts and on orienting new members (and reorienting old ones) to the more common tenets of Pentecostal belief: the praise of God and human submission to the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Black Pentecostals transmit their theology through the oral channel of praise songs to communicate group values and expectations to individual members. Using song to teach group expectations and to engender worshipful solidarity is an aspect of communal life that has been maintained in black culture from its traditional African religious roots.