Augustine

A Brief History of Dance in Worship

by

Christian dance has persisted throughout the history of the church, despite many official decrees against it. Christian churches that have incorporated dance and other stylized gestures in worship have benefited from a profound way of expressing their praise and enacting the gospel message. Dance as worship is one manifestation of the Spirit’s ongoing activity in the church.

The New Testament church was not born into a vacuum, but into a Jewish culture filled with heritage and saturated with rich traditions. T. W. Manson has commented: The first disciples were Jews by birth and upbringing, and it is a priori probable that they would bring into the new community some at least of the religious usages to which they had long been accustomed. (T. W. Manson, quoted in Ralph P. Martin, Worship in the Early Church [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974], 19)

Christianity entered into a tradition of already existing patterns of worship, including music and dance, as found recorded in both the Bible and ancient writings.

King David danced exuberantly in God’s presence (2 Sam. 6), while Miriam the prophetess led the women to dance with tambourines in response to their mighty deliverance from the pursuing Egyptian army (Exod. 15). Women are seen dancing in Shiloh at a feast (Judg. 21:21–23) and before David as a response to his military victories (1 Sam. 29:5). Visual images show both the bride and the bridegroom dancing: he leaping in dance (Song 2:8) and she as two dancing companies or armies with banners (Song 6:13). The Psalter commands the dance (Ps. 149:3; Ps. 150:4).

Other writings provide accounts of dancing in Jewish history. The Mishna describes a major ceremony of Sukkot, the seventh and final feast of the Jewish sacred year celebrating God’s rains and the increase of crops. The ritual is called Nissuch Ha-Mayin, in Hebrew meaning the water drawing. “The water-drawing ceremony was a joyous occasion, replete with grand activity and high drama” (Mitch and Zhava Glaeser, The Fall Feasts of Israel [Chicago: Moody Press, 1987], 175). “Levitical priests, worshipers, liturgical flutists, trumpeters, and a crowd carrying lulax (branches) and etrog (fruit) celebrated together in a great display of symbolic activity and festival rejoicing” (Sukkah 5:1). It was probably the viewing of this ceremony to which Jesus makes reference in his great teaching on the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in John 7:37–39.

Another celebration, which occurred on the first night of the feast of Sukkot, was the illumination of the Temple. Enormous golden candlesticks were set up in the court of the women.

The mood was festive. Pious men, members of the Sanhedrin, and heads of the different religious schools would dance well into the night holding burning torches and singing songs of praise to God. (M. and Z. Glaeser, Fall Feasts of Israel, 182)

The Glaesers go on to report: “Not only did they play instruments with fervor, but the Levitical choir stood chanting and singing as the leaders of Israel danced” (M. and Z. Glaeser, Fall Feasts of Israel, 183).

Dr. Sam Sasser writes: Recognized Norwegian scholar Sigmund Mowinckel, in what is believed to be one of the best books written on the Psalms in Israel’s worship, and a standard text in most graduate schools and seminaries, notes in definition: “Together with song and music goes the dance, which is a common way of expressing the encounter with the body. The dance is a spontaneous human expression of the sense of rapture.… At a higher religious level it develops into an expression of the joy at the encounter with the Holy One, an act for the glory of God (2 Sam. 6:20ff). It behooves one to give such a visible and boisterous expression of the joy before Yahweh.” (Sam Sasser, The Priesthood of the Believer [Plano, Tex.: Fountain Gate Publishers], 111)

The church from A.D. 30 to A.D. 70 was undergoing transition. There was a separation from Temple worship, and those elements in the old covenant which would not be continued in the new covenant. The epistles and the book of Acts outline the forms and ceremonies of Judaic worship that would be eliminated in the church. Blood sacrifice (Heb. 9), Levitical priesthood (Heb. 7:11–28), the practice of circumcision (Acts 15:5, 28–29), and the keeping of new moons and Sabbaths (Col. 2:16–23) were to be discontinued. However, there is no commentary about discontinuing the use of musical instruments, singing, and dancing. Nowhere are these condemned or forbidden. On the contrary, the following Scriptures seem to indicate the continuing practice of inherited worship patterns (Col. 3:16; Eph. 5:19–20; Acts 15:13–16; 1 Cor. 5:13, 14:26).

It is noteworthy that historically the book of Psalms has been the basic hymnbook for the church and her worship patterns, as David Chilton describes: When the church sang the Psalms—not just little snatches of them, but comprehensively, through the whole Psalter—she was strong, healthy, aggressive, and could not be stopped. That’s why the devil has sought to keep us from singing the Psalms, to rob us of our inheritance. If we are to recapture the eschatology of dominion, we must reform the church; and a crucial aspect of that reformation should be a return to the singing of Psalms. (David Chilton, Paradise Restored [Tyler, Tex.: Reconstruction Press, 1985], 8-9)

Although Jewish tradition is replete with accounts of dancing, Ecclesiastes 3:1 and 4 states, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven / A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” The New Testament church was soon to experience seasons of mourning and weeping. Lamentations 5:15 says: “The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned to mourning.” Laughing and dancing would again find their season in the church as God brought times of restoration, healing, and revival. Jeremiah 31:4 promises, “Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel: thou shalt be adorned with thy tabrets, and shall go forth in the dances of them that make merry.”

Separation from Jewish heritage was not the only point of adaptation for the new church. Until the time of Constantine, a.d. 323, the church experienced extreme persecution at the hands of the Roman government. Christians were captured, used as human torches, compelled to fight in gladiatorial combat, and fed to lions in elaborate spectacles called Roman games. The games reflected the immoral decadence, monstrous abuses, unwieldy influence, and imperial sadism into which Rome had fallen. Incorporated into these games was the Roman dance, an art form borrowed from other cultures, mainly Greek, and consigned to slaves.

Christians had seen their friends and fathers martyred in amphitheaters where their agony was merely a prelude to, or an incident in, the shows. That the church Fathers would honestly have denied any desire to employ consciously a trace of taint from Roman spectacle we have no reason to doubt. Church history is full of the courageous and violent denunciations that the early Fathers launched against the shows.

As early as a.d. 300 a council at Elvera decided that no person in any way connected with circus or pantomime could be baptized. In 398, at the Council of Carthage, a rule was established excommunicating anyone who attended the theater on holy days (Lincoln Kirstein, Dance: A Short History of Classic Theatrical Dancing [Little Rock: Revival Press, 1982], 59-60).

Although church history of the first millennium finds the weight of evidence to be in opposition to dance, there are quotes from writings of the church fathers which indicate some trace of dancing remained in the Christian church.

  • “Of those in heaven and those on earth, a unison is made, one General Assembly, one single service of thanksgiving, one single transport of rejoicing, one joyous dance.” Chrysostom (a.d. 386)
  • “Everything is right when it springs from the fear of the Lord. Let’s dance as David did. Let’s not be ashamed to show adoration of God. Dance uplifts the body above the earth into the heavenlies. Dance bound up with faith is a testimony to the living grace of God. He who dances as David dances, dances in grace.” Ambrose (a.d. 390)
  • “To keep the sacred dances, discipline is most severe.” Augustine (a.d. 394)
  • “Could there be anything more blessed than to imitate on earth the dance of angels and saints? To join our voices in prayer and song to glorify the risen creator.” Bishop of Caesarea (a.d. 407)
  • “I see dance as a virtue in harmony with power from above.” Thodoret (a.d. 430)
  • “Dance as David danced.” Bishop of Milan (a.d. 600)
  • “Dance as David to true refreshment of The Ark which I consider to be the approach to God, the swift encircling steps in the manner of mystery.” St. Gregory of Nazianzus (a.d. 600) (all quoted from Debbie Roberts, Rejoice: A Biblical Study of the Dance [Little Rock: Revival Press, 1982], 39-40)

In his book on dance, Lincoln Kirstein records a few examples of dancing in Christian churches: The Abbot Meletius, an Englishman, upon the advice of the first Gregory, permitted dancing in his churches up to 604.… The Jesuit father Menestrier, whose history of dancing published in 1682 is full of valuable data about his own time as well as of curious earlier tales, tells of seeing in certain Parish churches the senior canon leading choirboys in a round dance during the singing of the psalm. The Parish Liturgy reads “Le chanoine ballera au premier psaume.” (“The canon will dance to the first psalm.”) (Kirstein, Dance, 63)

Continuing in this vein, Kirstein records three more examples: Scaliger said the first Roman bishops were called praesuls and they led a sacred “dance” around altars at festivals. Theodosius says that Christians of Antioch danced in church and in front of martyrs’ tombs. Los Seises, the dancing youths of the Cathedral of Seville, whose annual performance on the feasts of Corpus Christi and the Immaculate Conception was connected with the ancient Mozarabic rite, are often described as ritual dancers, though their dance was really an independent votive act, peculiar to the towns of Seville and Toledo. (Ibid.)

The writings of Augustine in the fourth century issue a complaint against dancing: It is preferable to till the soil and to dig ditches on the day of the Lord than to dance a choreic reigen. Oh, how times and manners change! What once was the business of lute players and shameless women only, namely to sing and to play, this is now considered an honor among Christian virgins and matrons who even engage masters in their art to teach them. (Walter Sorell, The Dance through the Ages [New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1967], 36)

On the one hand, condemned and on the other hand embraced, dance seems to have never completely disappeared from church history. Especially in the Mediterranean countries and the Orient, people never gave up dancing. Here, the clergy applied less coercive measures to restrain dance. However, taking the gospel to the north, the clergy had an uphill struggle to uproot the rituals and pagan rites.

With the Christian way of life taking root, the heathen quality was lost, but the people retained what they liked about the old way. How many things in which we still indulge nowadays have their roots in ancient pagan rituals, such as the idea of a June bridge, Halloween, or Yuletide! Or who would think today of the Maypole as a phallic symbol and of the dance around it as a fertility dance? (Ibid., 38)

Although dance was more often condemned by the millennium church than sanctioned, there were exceptions. As Alordyce Nicole writes, in his exhaustive work on the period, had this been actually enforced half of Christendom, including a section of the clergy, would have been out of communion with the church.… From East to West, in Constantinople, in Antioch, in Alexandria, in Rome, the mimic drama flourished, uniting together old pagans and new Christians in the one common enjoyment of pure secularism. (Kirstein, Dance, 60)

Because of the increase in heresy, the leaders desired more centralization of authority and a set pattern of doctrine. A series of traceable events, beyond the scope of this article, gave rise to priestly class and eventually the formation of the Roman Catholic church.

From the scriptural position of the priesthood of all believers there grew up a distinct priestly class.… The early leaders warned against falling from this idea, but soon a priestly class was developed and the priests began to do things for common Christians that, they were told, they could not do for themselves. This was not only a retrogression to Jewish days, but was also a compromise with paganism. If the ministers were to be priests they had to interpret the items of worship in such a way as to give themselves special functions and to justify their position.… Along with these developments was a general increase of ceremonialism. Simple services became ritualistic. (F. W. Mattox, The Eternal Kingdom [Delight, Ark.: Gospel Light Publishing House, 1961], 151)

Combining the practice of asceticism and the sharp cleavage between clergy and laity, this period finds little expression of dance in the church; and what can be found is in the ceremony and service of the priests. Hence, the rise of the Mass. The Mass is based on Christ’s passion. It is called Eucharist or Thanksgiving, since those celebrating give thanks for the bread and wine. The Mass continued to be arranged until it supported “an astonishing exuberance of minute detail, each tiny point related to a central truth of the religion” (Kirstein, Dance, 70).

The expression of one’s beliefs and feelings through movement is the very foundation of dance. Though the worship form of dance was removed from the people and repressed in the priesthood, the basic elements of dance found its expression in the Mass. It is the indirect contribution of the Mass with which we are occupied but even so, there were definite preordained movements and postures for the participants. However, we do not infer nor should we “easily assume that basilicas were sacred opera houses, or the Mass was a holy pantomime” (Ibid., 67). But dancing as a form of worship is not an isolated phenomenon or an ancient relic of our distant Hebraic ancestors. Therefore, we must understand the forms worship may take when it emerges as the dance.

  • Outside the walls of the church, people were still expressing religion in dance, although their belief was more a fear of death than faith in the living God that prompted Israel’s dance.
  • In no other epoch besides the late Middle Ages has the dance been more indicative of social phenomena. It reflected frightening aspects of the plague and the fear of death.
  • At Christian festivals people would suddenly begin to sing and dance in churchyards, disturbing divine service.
  • Hans Christian Anderson tells of little Karen who was cursed to dance without stopping and who could not find rest until the executioner cut off her feet. (Sorell, Dance through the Ages, 40, 42)

The church leaders tried to stamp out these obscene dances, which often began in the churchyard cemetery with people dancing around tombstones then moving through the town attracting more and more people as they went. This dance, also known as the dance macabre, reached a climax as the bubonic plague swept Europe in the fourteenth century. These dances of violent nature occurred everywhere. In Germany, they were called St. Vitus’ dance. In Italy, it was called tarantella and these dances indicated the tenor of life, particularly during the period of the plague (Ibid., 40).

The clergy maintained that the millennium would be the day of reckoning, Judgment Day. When the year 1000 passed without any visible changes, some of the fear subsided.

The Church remained powerful and the spirit of medievalism lingered on, even while man awakened to new inner freedom. From the crudeness of his carnal lust and mortal fear of it, he escaped into chivalry; checking his growing freedom, he forced himself into the straitjacket of ideal codes. (Sorell, Dance through the Ages, 39)

The fourteenth-century introduced more change for the world and the church with the beginning of the Renaissance, the great revival of art and learning in Europe in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The world was revolting to set the soul and body free.

Above all, Renaissance man had a visual mind, as his accomplishments in printing, sculpture, and architecture prove. The eye became used to seeing in patterns. And it was a geometric design that inspired the first attempts at ballet. (Ibid., 90)

The Renaissance, emphasizing the dignity of the human person, laid the foundation for independence of thought which eventually broke the grip of Catholic theology. A revitalized interest in the study of the Scriptures caused people to be aware that the New Testament church was vastly different from the church in existence in Western Europe.

The religious and moral corruptions now could be effectively combated because of the intellectual freedom which had been encouraged by the Renaissance. Men began to see in the Scripture that the claims of the clergy were unfounded, and with a new intellectual basis for their criticism, ideas of opposition to the hierarchy spread rapidly. (F. W. Mattox, Eternal Kingdom, 240)

The sixteenth-century began the Reformation. Notable leaders sought to eliminate the unscriptural doctrines and practices of the Catholic church and, through reforms, return the church to New Testament patterns. One of the first reformers was Martin Luther (1483–1546). Along with emphasizing justification by faith, Luther stressed the priesthood of all believers. This was a preeminent step to releasing the people to express their worship unto God, which would eventually release all the Davidic expressions of praise, including dance.

John Calvin (1509–1564) was a leader of the Reformation in Switzerland who laid down principles that have influenced a large part of the Protestant world today.

The church of Luther experienced and preached the ideal of renunciation of the world more strongly than the Reformed church, which desires to proclaim the glory of God in all areas of life. The Reformed Churches do not view this world as a vale of tears but as the vineyard of the Lord, which is to be cultivated. They do not shun the world, but meet it, accepting the danger of becoming secularized in order to magnify God’s name within it and by its means. Thus in the last analysis, they subject nothing to a judgment of absolute condemnation. Everything must and can serve to the glorification of God, even art. We may recall the thought of the Neo-Calvinist Abraham Kuyper. Basically, the art of the dance should also be capable of being incorporated into the service of God. (Gerardus Van Der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986], 51-52)

Writings on the Renaissance and Reformation periods are scattered with accounts of a revitalized interest in dance in the church. Giovanni Boelaccio of the fourteenth century mentioned the carole, a dance in a ring to singing voices, originally performed in May only, but whose popularity grew until the carole was sung and danced throughout the year.

Variations of the carole arose everywhere. The minnesingers in Germany called it Springtang and put into it a great many hops and small leaps.… The people identified the carole—today known only as a Christmas song—with religious images as they appear in many “Last Judgment” paintings of the early Renaissance which show angels in heaven enjoying a carole. (Sorell, Dance through the Ages, 41)

The varied artistic styles of the Renaissance reflect the concept of dancing in the heavens. The works of Leonardo da Vinci pictured the entire cosmic order as dancing. Dante, a famous writer, poet, moral philosopher, and political thinker of his day saw the dance of the saints in heaven.

When those bright suns so gloriously singing
Had circled three items ‘round about us turning,
Like stars which closely ‘round the pole go swinging,
They seemed like women who are not yet willing
To dance, but to the melody stand clinging
While the new rhythm mind and ear is filling. (Van Der Leeuw, Religion, 30)

The works of Vondel reveal the same visual imagery:

… for the guests so merry
At the wedding, must not rest,
Since their dance is necessary.
Heaven holds no ghost nor quest
Who with holy dance and singing
Does not spend eternity.… (Van Der Leeuw, Religion, 30)

Vondel also sees how the church dances with God:

As air through many organ pipes is guided
One spirit is to many tongues divided,
In equal time through a field of equal sound,
Where Church and God together dance the sound.
The angel hosts from heaven’s height descending
Dance deeply down, our sacrifice attending,
About Christ’s body on His altar-stone.… (Van Der Leeuw, Religion, 30)

Apparently, the prevailing philosophy embraced dancing in heaven. “To die on earth as a martyr brings heavenly joy.… In Fra Angelico’s The Last Judgment, the virgins and martyrs dance the heavenly dance” (Van Der Leeuw, Religion, 68). Luther, describing heaven’s garden for his young song, portrays “a small beautiful meadow, which was arrayed for a dance. There hung lutes, pipes, trumpets, and beautiful silver cymbals” (Van Der Leeuw, Religion, 68). Although the church may have somewhat embraced the concept of dancing in heaven, the practice of dancing on earth was, for the most part, shunned if not declared anathema.

No longer under the heavy restraints of the church, Renaissance society was, therefore, dancing. Two opposite poles of dance developed in Europe between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries: the peasants, or the populace at large, stood for the earthiness and crude joy, while the nobility replaced the primary impulses with refinement and polish. “The court dance was subjected more and more to rules. Contributing to this development was, no doubt, the reliance of the nobility on professional entertainers” (Sorrel, Dance through the Ages, 45).

Further refinements and more popularity came to dance because of Catherine de Medici, a daughter of a great house in Italy who came to France to marry Henry II. “She brought with her a company of musicians and dancers from her native city of Florence to supervise her artistic presentations, and highly impressive they were” (John Martin, The Book of Dance [New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1963], 26). In 1581, with the expertise of Balthasar de Beaujoyeux (an Italian by birth though bearing a French name), Catherine de Medici produced what is considered the first ballet, Ballet Comigue de la Rein.

The populace was also dancing. Folk dances such as the egg dance, the country Thread-the-Needle, and ring-shaped or choral dances grew in popularity. Labyrinth dances signifying resurrection themes were popular in many parts of the world, sometimes even being incorporated into Christian holidays. At Easter, in the province of Twente, in Oatmarsum, the children danced or processed through the entire town in a serpentine motion singing a very old Easter song:

Hallelujah! The happy melody
Is now sung loud and prettily.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

This dance is sluip-door-kruip-door in Dutch, Magdeburger in German, forandole in French, and the cramignon of Limburg. These also had two other names, taken from Biblical antiquity and the classics: Jericho and labyrinth.

From the Reformation period until the present, the church has experienced many spiritual awakenings or revivals, including the restoration of many New Testament truths. The energies of the clergy, theologians, and even whole denominations has been to embrace and preserve the truths that were being revealed. If the loss of truth or the embrace of heresy propelled the church into the dark ages (which is the prevailing philosophy of church historians), then the converse is also true. Embracing truth is responsible for returning the church to her calling, commission, and glory. Scripture compares truth to walls and salvation (Isa. 26:11; 60:18; Ps. 51:18). The rebuilding of truth is analogous to the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after captivity, defeat, and judgment (Ezra 9:9; Neh. 2:17; Isa. 26:1). In Israel of old, such restoration was the promised season of release, rejoicing, and dance (Jer. 31:1–13; Neh. 7:1; 12:27–30). Likewise, as the church has experienced reforming and rebuilding, rejoicing and dancing have accompanied each season of restoration. (Below you will find quotes from various revival periods and special religious sects that validate this view.)

A unique group called the Shakers was founded in England in 1747. The term Shaker came from the rapid up-and-down movement of their hands, mostly in their wrists. Shaking the hands with the palms turned upward as if to receive a blessing meant they were expressing the open petition, “Come, life Eternal.” Shaking of the hands with the palms turned downward to the floor was a symbolic motion that they were shaking out all that was carnal.

The Shakers believed that by keeping their inner and outer lives in perfect order they were reflecting the perfect order of God’s kingdom. The practicing Shaker was held accountable to his religion when he stepped out of bed, when he dressed, when he ate when he spoke, and when he worked. Worldly lusts were suppressed by rules: carnality was held at bay by a dress code that insured modesty, by a series of orders restricting the body’s movements and appetites, and by architectural designs that segregated the sexes. Unity was enforced by the requirements of obedience—the submission of the individual to the authority of God’s appointed leaders.

On Sundays the Shakers danced to the honor of God. Their worship—in vivid contrast to the restrained order of their weekday lives—was an exuberant spectacle that veered unpredictably through many hours of the day. Formal dances could at any time break off into spontaneous displays of whirling, weeping, and shaking. Scathing or uplifting sermons were delivered extemporaneously by the elders, or by individual worshipers who were suddenly seized by the power of God and compelled to speak. Throngs of spectators—“the world’s people”—packed the little meetinghouses to be entertained, shocked, or inspired. No one who witnessed Shaker worship, whether horrified or enraptured, ever forgot it.

The first ordered dance of the Shakers, the “Square Order Shuffle” was introduced by Joseph Meacham about 1785. In 1820 a variation was introduced, men and women shuffled forward and backward in a series of parallel lines, weaving, in imaginative designs, a fabric of union and love.

A 19th Century American engraving called “Shakers Dancing” can be seen at the Dance Collection, Performing Arts Research Center, The New York Public Library at Lincoln Center. (Amy Stechler Burns and Ken Burns, “The Shakers,” American History Illustrated [Summer 1988], 27)

During the early 1800s in the slave community, dance was an important part of their worship. A syncretism of African and conventional Western religious beliefs, the praise meeting in the quarters was unique in the United States. While whites might be carried away by religious frenzy at occasional “awakenings,” slaves had an even more intense emotional involvement with their God every week. In contrast to most white churches, a meeting in the quarters was the scene of perpetual motion and constant singing. Robert Anderson recalled that in meetings on his plantation there was much singing. He noted, “While singing these songs, the singers and the entire congregation kept time to the music by the swaying of their bodies, or by the patting of the foot or hand. Practically all of their songs were accompanied by a motion of some kind.” A black plantation preacher testified to the uniqueness of the religion in the quarters when he asserted: “The way in which we worshiped is almost indescribable. The singing was accompanied by a certain ecstasy of motion, clapping of hands, tossing of heads, which would continue without cessation about half an hour; one would lead off in a kind of recitative style, others joining in the chorus. The old house partook of the ecstasy; it rang with their jubilant shouts, and shook in all its joints (John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community [New York: Oxford, 1972]: 27). Two outstanding features of the slave community worship were the “ring shout” and the “juba.” H. G. Spaulding gave an excellent description of the “shout” on the Sea Islands in 1863:

After the praise meeting is over, there usually follows the very singular and impressive performance of the “Shout” or religious dance of the negroes. Three or four, standing still, clapping their hands and beating time with their feet, commence singing in unison one of the peculiar shout melodies, while the others walk round in a ring, in single file, joining also in the song. Soon those in the ring leave off their singing, the others keeping it up the while with increased vigor, and strike into the shout step, observing most accurate time with the music. This step is something halfway between a shuffle and a dance, as difficult for an uninitiated person to describe as to imitate. At the end of each stanza of the song the dancers stop short with a slight stamp on the last note, and then, putting the other foot forward, proceed through the next verse.… The shout is a simple outburst and manifestation of religious fervor—a “rejoicing in the Lord”—making a “joyful noise unto the God of their salvation.” (Blassingame, Slave Community, 65–66)

Accompanying their singing was the practice of the “patting juba.”

When slaves had no musical instruments they achieved a high degree of rhythmic complexity by clapping their hands. Solomon Northup, an accomplished slave musician, observed that in juba the clapping involved “striking the hands on the knees, then stroking the hands together, then stroking the right shoulder with one hand, the left with the other—all the while keeping time with the feet, and singing.… ” Often the rhythmic patterns used in juba were little short of amazing. After viewing a performance in Georgia in 1841, a traveler from Rhode Island observed that, while the slaves were patting juba, it was “really astonishing to witness the rapidity of their motions, their accurate time, and the precision of their music and dance.” (Ibid.)

The world was in a period of change. The Industrial Revolution followed the Reformation changing the character of life as people had known it. Likewise, the reformers continued to bring change to the church. The late 1800s produced a church concerned about holiness, some Christians even seeking a second work of grace called sanctification. Holiness evangelist, pastor, and church leader Ambrose Blackman Crumper, a licensed Methodist Episcopal preacher, was determined to establish the holiness message in his native state of North Carolina. “Everywhere he went, people shouted, danced before the Lord, and ‘fell under the Spirit’ when they received the second blessing.”

The Holiness movement spawned the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the turn of the century. Pentecostalism was born on Azusa Street, prompted in part by the Great Welsh Revival. Seekers of the baptism of the Holy Spirit would receive the gift of tongues. “Dancing in the spirit” was often a regular happening at their meetings. Dancing in the spirit is physical movement akin to dancing, presumably done while under the influence and control of the Holy Spirit. “Most older Pentecostal believers who have participated in spiritual revivals over a period of years have witnessed what is known as ‘dancing in the spirit’ ” (Stanley M. Burgess and Gary B. McGee, eds., Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988], 236). According to the Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, various phrases applied to the dance movements observed in the Pentecostal believers included: holy roller, orgiastic worship, physical agitation, physically demonstrated praises, orgasmic worship, noisy and expressive worship, holy jumpers, and others.

Dancing is a phenomenon closely tied to the fresh encounters with God found in the message of sanctification, baptism of the Holy Spirit, or healing revivals. One famous woman healing evangelist, Maria Woodworth-Etter, whose meetings journal has many accounts of people dancing, had this to say on the subject:

David danced with all his might before the Lord. The word is full of dancing. Where dancing in the Bible is mentioned, it always signified victory for the Lord’s hosts. It was always done to glorify God. The Lord placed the spirit of power and love of the dance in the Church, and wherever the Scripture speaks of dancing it implies that they danced in inspiration, and were moved by the Spirit, and the Lord was always pleased and smiled His approval, but the devil stole it away and made capital of it. In these last days, when God is pouring out His Spirit in great cloudbursts and tidal waves from the floodgates of Heaven, and the great river of life is flooding our spirit and body, and baptizing us with fire and resurrection life, and divine energy, the Lord is doing His acts, His strange acts, and dancing in the Spirit and speaking in other tongues, and many other operations and gifts. The Holy Ghost is confirming the last message of the coming King, with great signs and wonders, and miracles. If you read carefully what the Scripture says about dancing, you will be surprised and will see that singing, music, and dancing has a humble and holy place in the Lord’s Church.… All the great company was blessed but Michael, and she was stricken with barrenness till the day of her death, so you see she sinned in making light of the power of God in the holy dance (just as some do today), and attributed it to the flesh or the devil. They always lost out, and many are in darkness till death. (Maria Woodworth-Etter, A Diary of Signs and Wonders [Tulsa: Harrison House, 1981], 524-525)

The Pentecostal revival was not limited to the United States, but spread quickly to the European continent, bringing with it the Holy Spirit’s gifts, anointing, and also the dance. Between the two world wars, a revival of Christian drama won wide popularity, especially in Germany.

I shall never forget seeing one of these bands of German young people as they produced a thrilling version of the Totentanz (Dance of Death) before a Chinese student-group in Peking. Being chiefly a dance, with music but no words, it spoke an international language; and the intensity of the emotion among these oriental and largely non-Christian observers aroused by this European and thoroughly Christian play was surprising and extraordinary. (Richard H. Ritter, The Arts of the Church [Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1947], 97-98)

From that time until the present day, dancing has been incorporated by many evangelistic groups. Currently, two outstanding examples are YWAM (Youth With A Mission), founded by Loren Cunningham, and Toymaker’s Dream by Impact Productions. The year 1948 hosted another outpouring of the Holy Spirit known as the Latter Rain Movement. With a strong emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, laying on of hands, and prophecy, this visitation, like earlier revivals, hosted manifestations of spiritual dancing. Rev. Charlotte Baker, a modern-day prophet and anointed teacher, comments on that outpouring in her book On Eagle’s Wings: “Dancing is not new to the Christian who is familiar with worship in the realm of Pentecostal churches. Since the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the turn of the century, dancing in the Spirit has been a part of Pentecostal praise and worship.” However, a shift began to take place in the understanding of teachers such as Charlotte Baker. Although not doubting the validity of dancing while yielded to the Holy Spirit’s influence, she and others also believed dancing as a voluntary act is a true act of worship. She goes on to comment:

It must be noted, however, “dancing in the Spirit,” the term which has been so widely used throughout the years, is not found in God’s Word. Careful study of the Word reveals that the appropriate expression is dancing before the Lord. For example, David danced before the Lord with all his might at the time of the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Israel. “Dancing in the Spirit” suggests that the Holy Spirit takes hold of the Christian, causing him or her to enter into uncontrollable motions and contortions, all supposedly manifestations of the Spirit. “Dancing before the Lord” suggests the worshiper’s strength, training, and expertise as fully under the control of the dancer, who expresses worship and joy in actions and steps which bring pleasure to the heart of God. While it is true that the believer is admonished to “leap for joy,” it is also true that there are many Scriptures that indicate that intricate steps, marches, group dances, twirling, and twisting were part of the expression of the dance. There is a growing conviction among the people of God that He is most pleased when we offer to Him, as an act of worship, all of our ability whether it be in art, in the dance, or in any other creative expression with which the Lord has blessed us. Every activity of life is designed to become an act of worship. In the past five years, we have seen many gifted dancers come to Jesus for salvation and add to the Body of Christ a wonderful ability to express, in an excellent manner, their worship unto Him in dance. Just as there are those who have been given the ability to sing and to edify the Body through excellence in song, so are there those who have been given the ability to pour out to God a similar ministry through the dance. Room should be made within the worship structure of the Church for the full expression of each individual; such expression should always remain within the confines of the Word and under the leadership of the ministries. (Charlotte E. Baker, On Eagle’s Wings [Shippensburg, Pa.: Destiny Image Publishers, 1990], 101-102)

In the 1950s and 60s, a few churches pioneered new territory in choreographed dancing, pageants, dance troupes, and trained artists. Among these was The King’s Temple in Seattle, Washington, pastored by Rev. Charlotte Baker, a disciple of the late Reg. Layzell, and Living Waters Fellowship in Pasadena, California, pastored by Willard and Ione Glaeser.

By the early 1960s, the charismatic renewal movement was building momentum, sweeping people from every denomination into the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. An outstanding feature of the charismatic meetings was the importance placed on singing Psalms and other Scriptures. “The rise of singing psalms and Scripture songs, as well as the rebirth of dance in worship, in the charismatic movement is directly attributed to Old Testament examples” (Burgess and McGee, Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, 689). Exuberance and freshness marked the worship services: “As in the early days of the Pentecostal revival, it is not unusual to find charismatic worshipers singing, shouting, clapping hands, leaping and even dancing before the Lord as they offer him sincere praise and thanksgiving” (Burgess and McGee, Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, 693).

In 1978 God raised up four men—Rev. Larry Dempsey, Rev. Barry Griffing, Rev. Steve Griffing, and Rev. David Fisher—to begin a teaching worship conference called the International Worship Symposium. This worship seminar, along with one of its offshoots, and the International Feast of Tabernacles Celebration in Jerusalem have done much to encourage local assemblies to begin creative worship in the area of dance.

Dancing in churches currently ranges from simple folk style steps in which whole congregations participate, to traveling professional artists such as Ballet Magnificat. Liturgical dance, the name having been just recently coined to identify the style of dance, is becoming more common.

Practiced by liturgical artists, dance serves and functions as a conduit from the inner workings of the spirit to the outer expression of today’s worship.… dances for the liturgy change with the seasons: fall, winter, spring, and summer match advent, Christmas/Epiphany, Lent/Easter, and Pentecost. Becoming immersed in the cyclical process, a dancer discovers that he or she has become a student of religion. Dances are designed from personal reflections on the spirituality of the liturgical season. Scripture and prayer, mingled with the urgings of the dancer’s soul, and enriched by the experience of life, are shaped through the medium of dance. (Doug Adams and Diane Apostolos-Cappodona, eds., Dance as Religious Studies [New York: Crossroad, 1990], 153-154)

It appears that there is an inescapable link with restoration and rejoicing, with rebuilding and responding—“going forth in the dances of them that make merry” (Jer. 31:4). Indeed “to everything, there is a season.” The season of weeping over our spiritual captivity has come to an end, for He has “turned our mourning into dancing.”

Liturgical Aesthetics

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The aesthetic dimensions of Christian worship encompass not only written liturgies and rubrics but also the ways in which the liturgy is brought to life. This article addresses the rich and varied ways that these aesthetic dimensions are realized, including the liturgical expressions of time and space, the visual and the aural, the cognitive and emotional, the eternal and the culture-bound.

The term aesthetics derives from a Greek root meaning “of or pertaining to things perceptible by the senses, things material (as opposed to things thinkable or immaterial)” (O.E.D.). Since the 18th century, the term has come to designate the theory and interpretation of the beautiful in art and in nature. Liturgical aesthetics comprehends both the modern and classical meanings of the term. Thus the scope of this article includes the concept of beauty in relation to prayer and ritual as well as reflection on the sensible signs and various “languages” of worship such as time, space, sound and silence, movement and gesture, sacramental sign-acts, and the artistic environment.

Relations between beauty, the human senses, and the worship of God is both obvious and difficult to trace in their complexity. Liturgical worship requires corporately shared forms into which a community of faith enters to give expression to adoration, praise, thanksgiving, and petition. Because liturgy is more than texts and rubrics governing the correct performance of ritual acts, the “poetics of liturgical celebration” is of primary importance. The study of literary qualities of texts is only one strand in such a poetics. Since the mystery of God’s self-communication in Word and sacrament is always in and through specific forms, the poetics of liturgical celebration constitute a simultaneously theological and anthropological inquiry. Poetics as the study of how living discourse utilizes the powers of language is here applied to the broad range of liturgical utterance and to the arts of ritual enactment.

Liturgy possesses great formative and expressive power over human imagination, thought, emotion and will. Speaking theologically, we may say that, over time, Christian liturgy forms persons in the paschal mystery that it signifies and at the same time brings to communal expression the lived experience of the gospel. From a phenomenological or anthropological point of view, liturgy may be said to form human persons (and communities) in specific symbol systems and fundamental ways of being in the world. At the same time, liturgical rites become the means of expressing primary identity and passional self-understanding. Both the formative and expressive dimensions of liturgy require structure and particular elements—words, actions, symbols, music, and related art forms. But what gives such elements and the structure of the rites life is style—a particular way of celebrating the rites. As Aidan Kavanagh has observed, “ … the artful symbolism which is the liturgy is never secured in the abstract or in the general. It is accomplished in specific acts done by people in certain places at given times” (“The Politics of Symbol and Art in Liturgical Expression,” in Symbol and Art in Worship [Concilium: Religion in the Eighties, no. 132], Luis Maldonado and David Power, eds. [New York: Seabury Press, 1980], 39). Liturgical aesthetics investigates what is signified and experienced and how it is so signified and experienced in actual worshiping assemblies.

If Christian liturgy is understood as a complex of communal sign-actions and texts brought together in symbolic patterns about the Scriptures, the font, and the Table, then liturgical aesthetics studies the perceptual elements and the art of ritual enactment which render these human activities alive with significant form. If Christian liturgy is understood as an epiphany of the mystery of the divine self-communication, then liturgical aesthetics must address the question of how the style of celebration opens access to understanding and participation in that which theology cannot explain but can only comprehend in wonder and adoration. Both conceptions of liturgy and both methodologies are necessary.

Liturgy and Aesthetics: Historical Ambiguities

The matrix of artistic creativity for pre-Reformation cultural life in the West was the Christian liturgy. Liturgical art was, to a great extent, the fountainhead of popular art, and the cultural imagination was permeated with biblical stories and liturgical images. Such a historical period furnishes ample evidence of the power of liturgy to shape and receive cultural modes of perception. By contrast, the prophetic side of Christianity has from the beginning been suspicious of human imagination, voicing objection to the dissociation of the aesthetic from the ethical or the holy. The words of Amos echo in other historical periods: “Take away from me the noise of your song; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream” (Amos 5:23–24). Furthermore, the iconoclastic impulse to resist the uses of art emerges in the name of holiness to guard against idolatrous confusion of images with the divine reality they are to represent or express.

At the outset, Christianity had considerable reservations about the arts and a relatively unadorned liturgy. The immoralities of songs in the context of pagan rites provided good reason for such suspicion. The pattern of life that was associated with music and the other arts of the theater was cause of great concern to the church. There was an asceticism in the earliest monastic movements that regarded the ease and even the sensuality of the post-persecution church as apostate. While the prophetic biblical traditions feared idolatry, the use of music, for example, seemed at home in the chanting of psalms. But the traditions springing from the philosophy of Plato also influenced the early church. Aware of the enormous emotional power of music, poetry, and dance upon the human psyche, such traditions regarded artistic endeavors as traffic with the ambiguities of sensuality. The strictures against flute-playing in Plato’s Republic emerged in the Christian assembly’s initial resistance to the use of instruments in worship. The mistrust of matter and images itself led to a chaste role of iconography in the early buildings. Gradually, especially in the East, the idea of the icon as an image that mediates but does not contain the sacred, emerged.

The theological and philosophical suspicions of art and of the aesthetic power of liturgy surfaced virulently again with some of the Reformers of the sixteenth century. The systematic destruction of images and religious art in places such as Zurich in 1524 at the hands of the Zwinglian town council testify to the fear of external rites, material form, and visible symbols. The suppression of all music in the liturgy seems even more extreme, especially at the hands of such an accomplished musician as Ulrich Zwingli. Yet such a reduction of the aesthetic dimensions of Christian worship among the Reformers resulted from an enormous drive to purify and to spiritualize worship forms in a period when the aesthetic and symbolic profusion of the Roman rites seemingly overwhelmed the central mystery of God’s gracious acts and the primary symbols of faith. The sixteenth-century simplifications were partly a result of a new stress on Scripture as a primary source for liturgical norms arising in that period; but they also depended upon an opposition between reason and emotion, alongside a dualism of spirit and the physically sensate. Luther was not such a liturgical purist. In fact, as the liturgical iconoclasm of the Reformation grew more extreme, he spoke, even while defending simplification of the rites, of his eagerness to “see all the arts, especially music, in the service of him who gave and created them.” The liturgical aesthetics of the three magisterial Reformers—Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli—show a remarkable range of differences among themselves respecting the material forms that worship employs. None of them refers substantially to the earlier traditions which struggled with these same tensions, namely those of the early patristic figures, most especially St. Augustine.

It was St. Augustine who asserted that, despite human sin and limitation, divine providence could yet work through the human experience of beautiful things to illuminate the ground of all human perception and understanding in God. For Augustine, the recognition of truth and beauty in and through the created order (the physical and the sensual) revealed a divine lure turning human beings away from desires linked with sensuality and mortality to the love of God. Before him, Basil, in his treatise On the Holy Spirit, had argued that honor given an image would move on to its origination in God. In contrast to the early theological suspicion of the arts and to the more extreme views of the Reformation, there has been an alternative tradition from Augustine to Aquinas, rediscovered in later historical and cultural periods—as with the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement and neo-Thomist revivals associated with Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson —which regarded aesthetic activity and its liturgical bearing as defined in light of the relation of God to all human perception and to the goodness of the created order itself.

The history of styles of celebration and the “ceremonial” employed in liturgical rites have shown wide extremes in the history of the church, especially in the West. This fact shows that the aesthetic dimensions of Christian worship are an ingredient in any change, whether of complex elaboration over time or of dramatic reform and simplification. The last third of the twentieth century is witnessing one of the most extraordinarily complex periods of reform and renewal in the history of the Western churches. The emergence of liturgical aesthetics as a discipline is partly a necessary outcome of these developments.

Liturgy as Art: Symbolic Form and Mystery

Any consideration of liturgical aesthetics must begin with the acknowledgment of this ambiguity in the long history of Christian faith and artistic expression. Still there remains the fact that liturgy itself employs cultural forms in imaginatively powerful ways. Liturgical action does not simply use art, it is art—dialogue with God in symbolic form. To speak of liturgical aesthetics, then, is to refer to that which is an ingredient in the enactment of the rites, both sacramental and nonsacramental. There is an intrinsically aesthetic character to all liturgical celebrations and environments. This fact is at the heart of what liturgy is, according to the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council. The liturgical assembly is the articulation and expression of the saving mystery of God in Christ, and of the nature of the church. The symbolic action of the liturgy is also an experience and manifestation of the church and participation in the mystery of the triune life of God which animates the world. Such manifestation and participation are always in and through specific cultural forms: language, symbol, ritual sign-acts, music, gesture, visual and tactile environments.

Explorations in the domain of liturgical aesthetics, therefore, seek to interpret and understand the various relations between beauty and holiness in particular liturgical contents. Bearing in mind the ambiguities of the human imagination per se and the possibilities of mistaking the symbol for the reality symbolized, liturgical aesthetics proceeds on the assumption that there is an ultimate connection between beauty and the reality of God. Liturgical aesthetics is based on the fact that liturgy is a complex art form and that right praise and thanksgiving to God require the engagement of the full range of human emotion, intellect, and will. Liturgical worship employs corporate shared forms that invite and engender fully human participation, neither exclusively cognitive (mental) nor exclusively emotive or volitional.

The symbolic value and the beauty of the various elements of the liturgy derive from the material and form of each, while the sacredness or holiness derives from the mystery of the events celebrated “in, with, and through” Jesus Christ. These principles are based on the claim that God has created all things and called them good and has become incarnate in Jesus Christ, gathering a historical human community—always culturally embedded and embodied—for worship and service in the world. Liturgical aesthetics is thus rooted and grounded in the doctrines of creation and incarnation. All things are rendered holy by virtue of creation and the redemptive action of God and are to be so regarded and brought to expression in communal worship of God. Liturgical worship respects the difference between creature and Creator, employing the things of earth to signify the glory and mercy and justice of God. This calls for a fundamental religious sensibility oriented to splendor and to appropriate sobriety and awe in the use of language, symbol, gesture, and the various languages of the rites.

Yet there is also a permanent tension involved in the use of material objects, the domain of the senses, and the imaginative powers of human art. This is because human beings are not in full harmony with the created order, nor is any human community or culture congruent with a fully transformed world. Our liturgies remain “east of Eden” and captive to the limits of human cultural perception as well. In short, Christian communities remain sinful and culturally bound. This means that whatever significant form is realized in liturgical celebration conveying the self-giving of God, we still “see through a glass darkly.” Hence liturgical aesthetics must always point to an eschatological self-critique of the use of forms. This permanent tension in liturgy as art is but a reflection of the situation of faith—we live in a good but fallen creation, between the initiation of redemptive history and its consummation. Any given liturgical aesthetic belonging to a particular time and culture requires a counterpoint in a religious sensibility oriented to that which transcended culture, that “which eye has not seen, nor ear heard,” which God has prepared for the children of earth.

The eschatological reservation concerning the cultural embeddedness of all aesthetic dimensions of Christian liturgy will be made more explicit at the end of this essay. To a discussion of various languages and the aesthetic dimension of all liturgical rites enacted we now turn.

Time and Space

From the beginning, Christian liturgical celebrations involved the use of cultural modes of communication, language itself being a primary instance. The words and texts employed in the liturgy operate within a complex of nonverbal phenomena. The sense and force of the words employed in worship depend radically for their range and depth upon the nonverbal features of the rites and how they are enacted. The meaning of a sung text, for example, has a greater aesthetic range than the same text recited. The same text or gesture—or their combination—has a different connotative range in different seasons or feasts during the church year.

Among the primary nonverbal languages that constitute the poetics of liturgical celebration is time. Because liturgical rites are temporal, unfolding the juxtaposition of text, symbols, and ritual acts over time, participation is itself a temporal art. Within the duration of a single liturgical rite, for example, a eucharistic celebration, the meaning of the texts and the symbols are cumulative and dramatic rather than self-contained. Each text or gesture or liturgical subunit may possess its own determinate sense, but the significance and the broader radiations of meaning can only be discerned in light of the whole pattern. Worship may be impoverished, of course, by lack of coherence or structural dislocation, illustrated by the proliferation of sequences in the Renaissance period. Thus the poetry of an Entrance hymn or a festival Gloria may be fully grasped only after its connection with the praise and thanksgiving of the eucharistic prayer is sounded. The remarkable complexity and aesthetic power of images in the Exsultet at the Easter vigil do not fully unfold until the temporal process of reading and hearing the whole sequence of readings is completed and the baptismal covenant is sounded. Liturgy is a temporal art and is, in this sense, properly analogous to music, to drama, and to dance. This is why liturgical participation requires a sense of the “dance” and the “drama” of the rites, even when these art forms do not appear explicitly. The temporal art of liturgical celebration is in this respect intrinsically musical and dramatic.

The language of time also works in the accumulative associative power of specific elements within a rite. Thus, the aesthetic range and significance of eating and drinking together take time. In everyday life, we come to understand the multiple levels of meaning of such acts only after we have had meals together on birthdays, after funerals, on anniversaries, and through the changing seasons of human lives in a wide range of ordinary circumstances. Symbols deepen as human beings mature with them. The source of the inexhaustibility of primary symbols is located here. At the level of texts, the same is true. The same antiphon or full responsorial psalm, when used in different seasons of the year, yields a different range of potential value and force in texts (hymns, psalms, prayers, and lections).

The language of time also involves discipline in cycles of the week, the day, and the year. The aesthetic depth of liturgical participation is related to the experience of feasts and seasons. The liturgical year is a treasury of the church’s memories of who God is and what God has done. The temporal cycles of day, week, and year intersect with the sanctoral cycle of holy men and women to form a powerful hermeneutical pattern.

A second nonverbal language is that of space. Because the liturgical assembly occupies a place and arranges the furnishings in that space, a pattern of acoustic, visual, and kinetic perception is set up. The places form environments that house the action of the liturgy. Each space and its interior arrangement may be said to possess specific aesthetic properties, encouraging specific kinds of actions and discouraging others. Some spaces invite a static and sedentary approach to God—in fixed auditoria, for example. Others invite freedom of encounter and movement or uncluttered contemplation. The visual focus of the room has a profound effect upon the poetics of textual images and the function of vestments, vessels, gestures, and the uses of light within the liturgy.

There is also the history of the use of the building and the interior spaces which influence the tone and style of the liturgical celebration. So in a space where families have gathered for generations, where weddings, funerals, and rites of passage have taken place, where the very sound of sung prayer has given association to the action itself, the aesthetic values of the space may dominate or even conflict with the actual style of celebration. At the same time, how we arrange furnishings—altar, ambo, font, musical instruments, presider’s chair, the paschal candle—bears strongly upon what can potentially be brought to expression within the assembly.

Sound and Sight

Within the temporal-spatial setting, the acoustic and visual domains come into play. The art forms of music, whether congregational, choral, or instrumental, depend in larger measure on the properties of the building and the arrangement of the space. The relationship of sound and silence is crucial to music, but it is also part of the intrinsic music of the rites themselves. So all liturgical utterance has pitch, rhythm, intensity, and pacing. The silences between words spoken and sung are as important as the sounds themselves, for together they create the primary acoustical images of praise and prayer. Analogously, the pace, intensity, rhythm, and tone of ritual actions are part of the hidden music of the rites enacted.

The aesthetics of sound and sight are not ornamental to liturgy but are intrinsic to the very nature of liturgical celebration. Thus music is not to be conceived primarily as something “inserted” into the rites. Rather, explicit music should seek to bring to expression the implicit music of the rites. The implicit music is at one and the same time related to the juxtaposition of texts, ritual acts, and symbols, and to the specific rites in their context. The actual acoustical experience of prayer or of preaching may carry more force than the semantic context of the actual words. Thus fully articulate musical liturgy is more festive and generates a greater range in levels of participation. At the same time, the style and quality of music must be judged appropriate to the nature of the rites and the nature of the assembly.

Following Vatican II, the United States Bishop’s Committee on the Liturgy published documents pertaining to the aesthetic dimensions of Christian liturgy. Music in Catholic Worship (1972, 1983) and Liturgical Music Today (1982) present complementary sets of guidelines concerning music in the liturgy and provide a theological groundwork for integrity in liturgical music. The earlier document deals with the role of music, both instrumental and choral/vocal in various rites, while the latter proposes criteria for planning and conducting liturgical celebrations.

The whole liturgical environment is to be served by the arts—this is the primary concern of a third document, Environment and Art in Catholic Worship (1978, English/Spanish edition, 1986). Particular emphasis is placed upon the liturgical assembly as a servant to God’s created world and its calling to be “sign, witness, and instrument of the reign of God” (par. 38). Precisely because the assembly seeks to remember and to cultivate the redemptive power of God, it must nurture a climate of wonder, awe, reverence, thanksgiving, and praise. Therefore liturgy must seek what is beautiful in its total ethos as well as in the specific objects, gestures, sign-actions, music, and related art forms employed.

In these documents, the acoustic, visual, and kinetic dimensions of liturgical celebration are integral to one another. The confluence of these arts in liturgy enables the assembly to discern the presence of God in the whole of the symbolic actions. The materials and the form are to reflect the beauty and dignity of the rites they intend to serve. Special focus is devoted to the climate of hospitality, the experience of mystery, the reality, and efficacy of the range of symbols through word, gesture, and movement. A paragraph in Environment and Art concerning the concept of the beautiful in Christian liturgy is especially noteworthy:

Because the assembly gathers in the presence of God to celebrate his saving deeds, liturgy’s climate is one of awe, mystery, wonder, reverence, thanksgiving, and praise. So it cannot be satisfied with anything less than the beautiful in its environment and all its artifacts, movements, and appeals to the senses.… The beautiful is related to the sense of the numinous, the holy. Where there is evidently no care for this, there is an environment basically unfriendly to mystery and awe, an environment too casual, if not careless, for the liturgical action. In a world dominated by science and technology, liturgy’s quest for the beautiful is a particularly necessary contribution to full and balanced human life (par. 34).

Liturgical Aesthetics and Human Emotion

The relation between liturgy and human emotion is complex, but it is evident that Christian worship forms and expresses particular patterns of emotional dispositions in human beings. Music, poetry, dance, symbolic actions—all these have to do with the affective capacities in human life. Liturgy may be regarded as a time and place where the language, sign-action, and symbols concerning the divine shape and express deep human emotions as gratitude to God, hope, repentance, grief, compassion, aversion to injustice, and delight in the created order. The Christian life itself is characterized by the having of such emotions and they’re having become wellsprings of attitude and action in life. The language of Scripture, prayer, and the sacraments have to do with elemental features of human existence: emotions linked to birth and death, suffering, sin, and oppression as well as with desire, joy, hope, and happiness. These deep emotions are not simply named or described in the language of liturgy; they are evoked, portrayed, sustained, and refined in the rites.

Holy fear, repentance, and amendment of life depend upon sharing deeply in the mystery of prayer and ritual action as in the shared meal of the Eucharist. The language of the liturgy in descriptive, ascriptive, and performative force shapes us in particular affectional ways of being by addressing God and being open to God. So eucharistic participation points toward a life of gratitude and self-giving. The very fourfold action of taking the bread and cup, blessing God over them, breaking the bread, and giving the gifts presents the pattern which the eucharistic community is to live out in daily life.

To learn gratitude to God or awe or love of God and neighbor one must learn to pray with the church. The graciousness, the holiness, and the love of God create the possibility of authentic worship. But the experiential power and range of liturgy is required in turn for the deepening of such dispositions. The integrity of the art of common prayer and ritual action requires that such gratitude, awe, and love is not confined to the liturgical event itself. That is, these religious affections are not simply aesthetically held states of feeling. Yet without the aesthetic dimensions of participation in and through the forms, no sacramental self-understanding in life can emerge. As Environment and Art rightly observes: In view of our culture’s emphasis on reason, it is critically important for the Church to reemphasize a more total approach to the human person by opening up and developing the non-rational elements of liturgical celebration: the concerns for feelings of conversion, support, joy, repentance, trust, love, memory, movement, gesture, wonder. (par. 35)

Christian liturgy that seeks emotional and symbolic authenticity and depth must always pay attention to the materials and the forms employed. Language that is only clear or cognitively precise with no overplus of poetic meaning will diminish the power of the symbols to hold together multiple levels of meaning. If the ritual actions are perfunctory or merely efficient, the texts and symbols will be diminished. If the music is always immediately accessible and without surprise or tension or durability, the texts wedded to such music suffer reduction in imaginative power and metaphoric range. The quality of texts, gestures, movements, and the form of the symbols is critical to levels of participation. Attention to each element and to their interrelation in the whole pattern of the liturgy is necessary to the power of liturgy to draw us, as church, into the gospel proclaimed and the saving mystery enacted. This is what leads Joseph Gelineau to say, “only if we come to the liturgy without hopes or fears, without longings or hunger, will the rite symbolize nothing and remain an indifferent or curious ‘object.’ Moreover, people who are not accustomed to poetic, artistic, or musical language or symbolic acts among their means of expression and communication find the liturgy like foreign country whose customs and language are strange to them.”

Liturgical Style and Culture

The question of style is not a matter of mere technique. If it were so, we could produce awe-inspiring liturgical rites by manipulating lighting and symbols. But the aesthetic dynamism of authentic liturgical celebration is the opposite of manipulation and magic; it is the opening of the mystery of the realities signified, proclaimed, and ritually participated in. This “opening” is a matter of faithfulness and attentiveness to the whole environment of worship. Each unit or element of the liturgical assembly, and each “sub-rite,” invites a particular quality of disposition that is appropriate to the nature of the rite and its context. This goes together with the honesty and integrity of materials and the aesthetic adequacy of the forms. Both the leaders and the assembly as a whole share mutual responsibilities for the art of the liturgy. The presider and other specific ministers become focal points and representations of the prayerful participation of the assembly. Activities of gathering, singing, praying, reading, listening, bowing, touching, eating, and drinking all require a heightened sense of receptivity and active participation as a community of mutuality. The cultural variables here are many, since different cultures exhibit differences in behavior in the course of such activities.

The church’s teaching and catechetical approach to preparing the worshipers—both long-term and immediately in the room of celebration—can not neglect the aesthetic dimensions of specific cultures. The study of liturgical forms and teaching the primary symbols of faith must create a hospitable environment. Assisting the worshipers to participate fully in the musical forms, for example, requires sensitivity to the range of musical styles available to the people. Giving the assembly a model of good “performance practice” in responsorial psalmody, the hymns or sung responses can open up new dimensions of the cultural heritage. The problems of musical participation raise all the issues of liturgical participation. Creating appropriate spaces of silence for reflection on the readings and in relation to the sign-acts and symbols is part of the nonmanipulative art of the liturgy.

The poetics of celebration requires examination of the specific cultural context of the assembly. In our post-conciliar period, new emphasis is being placed on the modes of expression indigenous to the social and cultural history of the people. If the liturgy is to signify the divine/human interaction, then modes of appropriating and sharing the basic symbols must be mediated in and through the language, music, visual, and bodily style of the people. The aesthetics of liturgy thus demands that we know the differences between, for example, patterns proper to a North-American cultural tradition formed principally in Northern Europe and patterns that are Afro-American or Hispanic.

At the same time, the symbolic action points to realities that are in tension with all inherited cultural assumptions and patterns of behavior. The permanent tension in the poetics of liturgy is between the necessity of local cultural modes of perception (expression and interpretation) and the common culture of Christian faith and life. Only by maintaining this tension can we also assert specifically Christian faith and life over against the assumptions of much postmodern and technological culture. Though each subculture has its own integrity, there is a manner of celebration which is Christian, stemming from the particular claims of the paschal mystery. There is a way of enacting the rites which is ultimately the human reception of what God has done in creation and in Jesus Christ. This has been referred to by Gelineau and others as the “paschal human in Christ”—a manner enacted in particular cultural languages that evidence “both reserve and openness, respect and simplicity, confident joy … and true spontaneity.… ”

Afterward

Liturgy belongs to the created world and thus is an art, for the created order belongs to God. The aesthetics of authentic liturgy concerns the intrinsic means, not simply the eternal decoration, or the rites themselves. Without such aesthetic considerations as honesty of materials, quality of craft and performance, appropriateness, proportionality, and integrity within the liturgy of the art forms and the people, the whole of the liturgy is diminished in its symbolic power.

Yet, lest we take delight only in the beautiful forms we have managed, and not discern the enabling grace of God in and through the forms, the final word must be eschatological. All artistic effort is itself proleptic as well as participatory in God’s creativity. The mystery celebrated is never exhausted or fully contained in the liturgy. Liturgical rites authentically celebrated point beyond themselves to the eschatological vision and the “heavenly liturgy” of Christ of which all earthly celebrations are but hints and guesses. This way all attention to the aesthetics of Christian liturgy is but a servant of the vision of a created order transformed and reconciled to the life of God. There all that is creaturely will be permeated with light, dance, and song. Insofar as we experience the prefigurement of that reality in particular times and places, the aesthetics of liturgical celebration become congruent with the holiness and the beauty of the triune life of God, at once incarnate in the world and yet transcendent in glory beyond all created things.

Historical and Theological Perspectives on Musical Instruments in Worship

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The use of instruments in worship has engendered great controversy throughout the history of the church. The following article describes the most important issues at stake in these controversies, highlighting important principles that can guide our use of instruments in worship today.

The Psalms contain numerous statements urging God’s people to praise him with instruments. The classic passage of this sort is the catalogue of instruments contained in Psalm 150.

Praise him with trumpet sound;
Praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with timbrel and dance;
Praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals;
Praise him with loud clashing cymbals!

A person knowing this and similar passages from the Psalms but not knowing anything of the history of the church would not be surprised by what he or she observed at most worship services in Western churches today. Whether Catholic or Protestant, just about any service this visitor wandered into would include the use of musical instruments. At a minimum, he or she would hear an organ or a piano or a guitar accompanying singing. But it would not be unusual to encounter churches where large ensembles not only accompany singing but also play alone before or after or during any number of other liturgical acts. Knowing the Psalms but not church history, this visitor would likely assume that the congregation being observed was simply following a mandate given in its sacred book, doing a normal Christian act of worship.

But, of course, there is a long history between the Psalms and the church today, and through most of that history, the church has been very reticent about using instruments in worship. From the New Testament through the patristic era, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, the use of instruments in Christian worship was highly exceptional. And even after instruments found their way into worship on a more regular basis after 1600, there continued to be questions about their proper use, and always there continued to be a few voices calling for their exclusion. Even today, despite the increasingly warm welcome instruments, have received in many churches, there are still a few bodies of Christians who worship without them and others that do not go much beyond instrumental introductions to and accompaniments of congregational singing. Donald Hustad summarizes the situation as follows:

Eastern Orthodox worship for the most part continues to use only vocal music. In the Western church as well, the use of instruments has been opposed from time to time, both before and since the 16th century Reformation. Until recently, a fairly large number of evangelical groups in America (e.g., the Free Methodist Church, primitive Baptists, old Mennonites, and certain Presbyterian bodies) perpetuated the “no instrument” practice, but the antagonism is waning. At the present time, the prohibition is most conspicuously continued and defended by certain Churches of Christ, whose leaders argue that they must adhere strictly to what the New Testament authorizes. (Jubilate! Church Music in the Evangelical Tradition [Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing, 1981, 42])

Obviously, the matter is not a simple one of literally following the injunctions of the Psalms. Just as obviously, there is no universal agreement among Christians as to how, or even whether, musical instruments are appropriate in worship.

The history of the church’s various and varying attitudes towards musical instruments in worship is long and complex. But the big picture is clear. Our current situation in which there is a widespread and often unquestioning acceptance of instruments in worship is “a minority position in the church’s whole history” (Paul Westermeyer, “Instruments in Christian Worship,” Reformed Liturgy and Music 25:3 [Summer 1991]: 111). The majority position over the whole history of the church can be summed up in the words of Rev. Joseph Gelineau: “vocal praise is essential to Christian worship. Instruments are only accessory” (Joseph Gelineau, Voices and Instruments in Christian Worship: Principles, Laws, and Applications, trans. Clifford Howell, S.J. [Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1964], 155).

I cannot trace here the long and complex history of musical instruments in Christian worship. Rather, I will focus on two instances in the church’s history when instruments were not used at all. Though I am not advocating a return to that extreme position (nor, on the other hand, objecting to any who would), I think the extreme position presents the clearest view of certain principles that should be in effect when we admit instruments into our worship. The two instances I am referring to are the patristic era and the Calvinist Reformation. But before turning our attention to these, we need to look briefly at Jewish worship before and at the time of Christ to see what light it might shed on the Psalm references to instruments. For that same purpose, we will also look briefly at what the New Testament says about instruments.

Little is known about the origin and early history of the Psalms. Tradition long ascribed the Psalms to David. But although it is likely that some go back to him, it is impossible to determine with certainty which are of his making. During the centuries following David, and probably under his influence, psalms continued to be composed, edited and compiled until by the third century before Christ the 150 Psalms stood together as a canonical Jewish hymnbook.

If the early history of the Psalms is obscure to our view, so is their function. Were they composed originally for liturgical purposes and were the instruments mentioned involved in the liturgy? Scholarly opinion is divided. Most scholars agree, however, that whatever their original functions might have been, the Psalms, in the process of being collected and compiled, were adapted for liturgical purposes—in particular, for singing at the sacrificial rites carried out in the temple.

There is scanty information about how the Psalms were used in temple worship. The few references in the Old Testament historical and prophetic books do not go very far towards giving us ideas about what music in temple worship was like. But we can be fairly certain that, at least for the second temple, the singing of Psalms at the sacrifices was quite an elaborate affair, performed by the Levites, that is, by highly trained singers and instrumentalists.

We have a somewhat clearer picture of temple worship around the time of Jesus owing to some fairly detailed description found in the Mishnah, a redaction of the Talmud from about the year 200 A.D. Every day of the year there was a solemn sacrifice in the morning and another in the afternoon. On Sabbaths and feast days there were additional sacrifices. With regard to instruments, we learn from the Mishnah that services began with the priests blowing three blasts on silver trumpets. Later in the ritual, trumpets again gave signals as did clashing cymbals, and the singing of psalms was accompanied by stringed instruments, the nevel and the kinnor. (See James McKinnon, “The Question of Psalmody in the Ancient Synagogue,” Early Music History 6 (1986): 162–163.)

It is significant that stringed instruments accompanied the singing. These were softer instruments that could support the singing without covering the words. This is an indication of the logocentric nature of Jewish temple music, a characteristic that set it apart from the music of the sacrificial rites of the Israelites’ pagan neighbors. Pagan sacrificial music typically featured the frenzy-inducing sound of the loud, double-reed instruments and the rhythms of orgiastic dancing. Words were superfluous. Temple music differed radically in each of these characteristics of pagan music. Words were primary and governed the musical rhythms. Instrumental accompaniment was by stringed instruments that supported the monophonic vocal line, perhaps with some heterophonic embellishments, but never covering or distracting attention away from the words. Instruments were used independently only for signaling purposes. Trumpets and cymbals signaled the beginning of the psalm and the places at the end of sections where the worshipers should prostrate themselves.

Music in Jewish synagogues was very different from that in the temple. The gatherings in the synagogues were not for sacrifice and did not require the priestly and Levitical classes. Their music, therefore, was not part of elaborate liturgical ceremony and was not in the hands of specially trained musicians like the Levites. It must have been simple and it definitely did not make use of musical instruments. Like temple psalmody, it was logocentric, but unlike temple psalmody, it did not make use of any instruments, not even those that could support singing without obscuring it.

Interpretations that read Psalm references to musical instruments as referring to Jewish worship practices receive little support from what we know of Jewish temple and synagogue worship. Furthermore, they receive little support from the New Testament. References to instruments in the New Testament are few and can easily be summarized. They are mentioned “in connection with pagan customs (Matt. 9:23; 11:17; Luke 7:32; Apoc. 18:22), or explanatory comparisons (1 Cor. 14:7–8; Matt. 6:2; 1 Cor. 13:1; Apoc. 14:2), [or] in an apocalyptic context where they have a symbolic value.… ” (Gelineau, Voices, 150). There is no evidence that the earliest Christians adopted a different attitude toward instruments in worship. They certainly did not read the Psalms as giving directives to use instruments in worship.

The indifference of the New Testament toward musical instruments does not, however, extend to song. Song, one can say, frames the New Testament. The birth of Jesus brought about an outburst of four songs recorded in the first two chapters of Luke. The second outburst occurs in Revelation when the song to the Lamb is picked up by ever-widening circles until the whole cosmos has joined (Rev. 4). In between Luke and Revelation, the New Testament says little about music. What it does say, however, unquestionably has a positive ring, as in the following familiar passages:

  • Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Col. 3:16)
  • Is any one among you suffering? Let him pray. Is any cheerful? Let him sing praise. (James 5:13)

But it is song, not “pure” music, that the New Testament speaks of so warmly. From its inception, the church, like its Jewish forebears, eschewed music separated from word. Without word, music is too vague, too mystifying. As P. Lasserre put it: Music expresses the sentiments but is not capable of defining them, and without the commentary of words, which are absent from instrumental music, the hearer always remains somewhat vague about the nature of the object of the sentiment by which the musician is inspired. (Quoted in Gelineau, Voices, 148)

For that reason, Christian musical thought has always insisted on the importance of logos for keeping music from drifting into vague and undefined spiritual territory. As Fr. Gelineau has put it, only singing, “because of its connection to the revealed word,” combines “explicit confession of faith in Christ with musical expression” (“Music and Singing in the Liturgy,” in The Study of Liturgy, ed. Cheslyn Jones, et al. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1978], 443). Word, he says elsewhere, “demystifies by naming.” Gelineau adds that “when word intervenes … the object of the lament is designated; the praise names its intended recipient” (“Path of Music,” Music and the Experience of God, ed. Mary Collins, et al. [Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, Ltd., 1989], 137-138). Christian musical thought has always been at odds with the Romantic notion of a “pure” music “which is all the purer the less it is dragged down into the region of vulgar meaning by words (which are always laden with connotations)” (Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 1801; from Dahlhaus, Esthetics of Music, trans. William Austin [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982],27).

Against this background, the negative attitude of the early church toward musical instruments makes sense. In fact, as James McKinnon pointed out, the non-use of instruments in early Christian worship was not because instruments were banished. Rather, because they were irrelevant to the logocentric musical thought and practice the Christians inherited from the Jews, they simply did not enter the picture (see “The Meaning of the Patristic Polemic Against Musical Instruments,” Current Musicology 1(1965): 78).

Logocentric music need not, of course, totally exclude instruments. Instruments that could support singing were used in the temple and most contemporary Christians would likely attest from experience that instruments can indeed lend support to singing without obscuring or engulfing the words. But that danger and others connected with the use of instruments are always lurking, so throughout much of the church’s history leaders have thought the dangers outweighed the potential benefits.

The fathers of the first centuries of the Christian era and John Calvin in the sixteenth century are perhaps the best known of those who decided not to risk the dangers. So they rejected all use of instruments in worship. Involved in both rejections was the principle just discussed: Christian music, like its Jewish ancestor, is logocentric. One indication of how thoroughly logocentric was the early church fathers’ thought on music is their vocabulary. McKinnon points out that they rarely used the term music; instead, their normal terms were psalms and hymns (“Patristic Polemic,” 79).

Central to both the fathers’ and Calvin’s logocentric ideas on music, and hence to their rejection of instruments, was the importance they placed on understanding in worship. The apostle Paul stated the principle simply and directly: “I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also” (1 Cor. 14:15). So, following Paul, St. Basil urged worshipers, “While your tongue sings, let your mind search out the meaning of the words, so that you might sing in spirit and sing also in understanding” (McKinnon, Music in the Early Christian Literature [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987], 66). Centuries later Calvin was particularly explicit in relating the need for understanding in worship to Paul’s instructions to the Corinthian Christians.

For our Lord did not institute the order which we must observe when we gather together in His name merely that the world might be amused by seeing and looking upon it, but wished rather that therefrom should come profit to all His people. Thus witnesseth Saint Paul, commanding that all which is done in the church be directed unto the common edifying of all … For to say that we can have devotion, either at prayers or at ceremonies, without understanding anything of them, is a great mockery.… And indeed, if one could be edified by things which one sees without knowing what they mean, Saint Paul would not so rigorously forbid speaking in an unknown tongue. … (Foreword to the Geneva Psalter, in Source Readings in Music History, trans. Oliver Strunk [New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1950], 345-346)

In his commentary on Psalm 33, Calvin connected instrumental music and speaking in tongues: The name of God, no doubt, can, properly speaking, be celebrated only by the articulate voice; but it is not without reason that David adds to this those aids by which believers were wont to stimulate themselves the more to this exercise; especially considering that he was speaking to God’s ancient people. There is a distinction, however, to be observed here, that we may not indiscriminately consider as applicable to ourselves, everything which was formerly enjoined upon the Jews. I have no doubt that playing upon cymbals, touching the harp and the viol, and all that kind of music, which is so frequently mentioned in the Psalms, was a part of the education; that is to say, the puerile instruction of the law.… For even now, if believers choose to cheer themselves with musical instruments, they should, I think, make it their object not to dissever their cheerfulness from the praises of God. But when they frequent their sacred assemblies, musical instruments in celebrating the praises of God would be no more suitable than the burning of incense, the lighting up of lamps, and the restoration of the other shadows of the law.… Men who are fond of outward pomp may delight in that noise, but the simplicity which God recommends to us by the apostle is far more pleasing to him. Paul allows us to bless God in the public assembly of the saints only in a known tongue. (Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 1, trans. James Anderson [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948], 538-539)

Calvin’s implication is clear: instruments speak in an unknown tongue.

Moreover, in this passage, in addition to expressing the ideal of logocentric music, Calvin gave an explanation of why God allowed instruments to his Old Testament people: it was a concession to their spiritual immaturity; it was “puerile instruction” that, after the coming of Christ, became as unnecessary as the other “shadows of the law.” Calvin’s thought here is precisely in line with that of the church fathers. St. John Chrysostom put it as follows: … in ancient times, they were thus led by these instruments due to the slowness of their understanding and were gradually drawn away from idolatry. Accordingly, just as he allowed sacrifices, so too did he permit instruments, making concessions to their weakness. (McKinnon, Music, 83)

The primacy of understanding through words, then, was fundamental in causing the early church to continue to practice a logocentric music like that which it inherited from its Jewish forebears; it was also fundamental to Calvin’s rejection of instruments in worship. But for both there was another reason almost as powerful. It is incapsulated in the phrase una voces dicentes, “singing with one voice.”

In his letter to the Romans, Paul wrote, “May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Jesus Christ, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (15:5–6). Although “with one mouth” does not here refer exclusively to singing, there can be no doubt that it articulated a principle that the early church took very seriously for its singing. The importance of singing “with one voice” is a frequent refrain among the early Christian writers. Listen to some of its variations over the first few centuries of the Christian era.

Let us consider the entire multitude of his angels, how standing by you they minister to his will. For the Scripture says: “Ten thousand times ten thousand stood by him and a thousand times a thousand ministered to him and cried out, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Sabaoth, the whole creation is full of his glory” (Isa. 6:3). Let us, therefore, gathered together in concord by conscience, cry out earnestly to him as if with one voice, so that we might come to share in his great and glorious promises. (Clement of Rome; trans. McKinnon, Music, 18)

And so more sweetly pleasing to God than any musical instrument would be the symphony of the people of God, by which, in every church of God, with kindred spirit and single disposition, with one mind and unanimity of faith and piety, we raise melody in unison in our psalmody. (Eusebius of Caesarea; trans. McKinnon, Music, 98)

[A psalm is] a pledge of peace and harmony, which produces one song from various and sundry voices in the manner of a cithara.… A psalm joins those with differences, unites those at odds, and reconciles those who have been offended, for who will not concede to him with whom one sings to God in one voice? It is after all a great bond of unity for the full number of people to join in one chorus. (Ambrose; trans. McKinnon, Music, 126–127)

Unity was an important matter to the early Christians and almost from the beginning, as these quotations show, singing “with one voice” became an expression of, a metaphor of, and even a means toward unity.

Calvin’s return to unison, unaccompanied, congregational singing was also spurred in part by his recognition of singing as an expression of the communal dimension of worship.

Moreover, since the glory of God ought, in a measure, to shine in the several parts of our bodies, it is especially fitting that the tongue has been assigned and destined for this task, both through singing and through speaking. For it was peculiarly created to tell and proclaim the praise of God. But the chief use of the tongue is in public prayers, which are offered in the assembly of believers, by which it comes about that with one common voice, and as it were, with the same mouth, we all glorify God together, worshiping him with one spirit and the same faith. (Institutes [III, xx, 31], 894-895)

The twin concerns for keeping the church’s music anchored in the Word (and hence in words) and for maintaining a liturgical activity that “touches on the essential mystery of the church as koinonia” (Gelineau, “Music,” 441) are the primary roots of the early church’s and Calvin’s avoidance of instruments. For the early church fathers, there was a third concern, a concern that had to do with association or context.

James McKinnon began his article on the church fathers’ attitude towards musical instruments with this striking observation: “The antagonism which the Fathers of the early church displayed toward instruments has two outstanding characteristics: vehemence and uniformity” (McKinnon, “Meaning,” 69). One need not read far to notice the vehemence, and no matter how far one reads, he will not encounter a significantly different view on the subject. It is hard to understand this vehemence and uniformity simply on the basis of the two concerns we have already discussed. After all, Calvin held those concerns as strongly as the early fathers did, but he does not display their vehemence. He objected to instruments in communal worship but his objection did not go beyond that. In his commentary on Psalm 33, he merely remarked that “if believers choose to cheer themselves with musical instruments, they should, I think, make it their object not to dissever their cheerfulness from the praises of God.” That is a long way removed, for example, from the fourth-century Alexandrian canon, which legislated: “When a reader learns to play the cithara, he shall be taught to confess it. If he does not return to it, he will endure his punishment for seven weeks. If he persists in it, he must be discharged and excluded from the church” (McKinnon, Music, 120).

Such legislation is likely to strike us as unimaginably harsh. Perhaps it was. But as one reads the fathers more broadly and begins to understand something of the context within which they wrote, their vehement and uniform denunciations of musical instruments become more understandable. The early church, we must remember, had music that was sufficient for its needs and for which instruments were superfluous. We must also remember that she found herself surrounded by a decadent pagan culture and, after Constantine, filled with people only recently turned from that culture. The music in that culture made prominent use of instruments, both in the sacrificial rites of pagan religions and in many morally degenerate activities common in the late Roman Empire. Invariably it is with specific reference to the religious or social context that the church fathers made their denunciations of musical instruments. Specifically, the church fathers’ statements about musical instruments come in the context of pagan cultic practices, the theater (often closely related to the cultic practices), pagan banquets, weddings, or, more generally, drunken carousing and sexual immorality. The following quotations are typical:

  • You will not honor these things, but rather despise them … and those castrations which the Phrygians perform, bewitched at first by the aulos.… (Gregory of Nazianzus; trans. McKinnon, Music, 71)
  • As the tragic actor loudly declaims, will one reflect upon the exclamations of a prophet, and as the effeminate tibicinist plays, will one call to mind a psalm? … (Tertullian; trans. McKinnon, Music, 44)
  • The irregular movements of auloi, psalteries, choruses, dances, Egyptian clappers, and other such playthings become altogether indecent and uncouth, especially when joined by beating cymbals and tympana and accompanied by the noisy instruments of deception. Such a symposium, it seems to me, becomes nothing but a theatre of drunkenness. (Clement of Alexandria; trans. McKinnon, Music, 32)
  • It is not the marriage of which I speak—one would hope not—but what accompanies it. Nature indulges in Bacchic frenzy then, those present become brutes rather than men; they neigh like horses and kick like asses. There is much dissipation, much dissolution, but nothing earnest, nothing high-minded; there is much pomp of the devil here—cymbals, auloi, and songs full of fornication and adultery. (John Chrysostom; McKinnon, Music, 85)
  • Therefore not without justification [does Isaiah say] woe unto them who require the drink of intoxication in the morning, who ought to render praise to God, to rise before dawn and meet in prayer the sun of justice, who visits his own and rises before us, if we rise for Christ rather than for wine and strong drink. Hymns are sung, and you grasp the cithara? Psalms are sung, and you take up the psaltery and tympanum? Woe indeed, because you disregard salvation and choose death. (Ambrose; McKinnon, Music, 128–129)

Similar quotations could be multiplied several times over. What they all point to are religiously repugnant and morally degenerate activities in which instruments were an inextricable part. The early Christians hardly knew any other use of instruments than in the music associated with objectionable pagan religious and social activities. Such close identification of instrument, music, and activity is what made the church fathers so uniformly and vehemently opposed to instruments, not only in worship but in all of Christian life.

Two principles—the primacy of words and the importance of community—led the early church Fathers and John Calvin to renounce the use of musical instruments in worship. A third principle—the need to keep free from inappropriate associations—reinforced the fathers’ position. Although conditions change from time to time and from place to place, the three principles that undergirded the fathers’ and Calvin’s renunciation of instruments in worship are relevant at all times and places. But none of the principles, nor all taken together, necessarily leads to a total renunciation of instruments in worship.

The principle of avoiding unwanted associations is, of course, the one whose application is going to be the most fluid. Suffice it to say here that in late twentieth-century Western culture the church should be wary of instruments, or at least the styles of playing them, that are inextricably involved in popular culture. The moral degeneracy of so much in that culture should make Christians today as wary as the church fathers were in the late Roman Empire.

With regard to the principle of “with one voice,” it should be obvious that the principle is most clearly practiced in unison singing and that it becomes successively less clear as part-singing, traditional instruments, and finally, electronic instruments are introduced.

From the moment human beings started to “train” their voices … there was the potential for driving a wedge between the song of the trained singer and the song of the rest of humanity. That potential took a large leap when instruments were introduced because now sounds were made by mechanisms different from that of the voice. The potential took a quantum leap, however, with the advent of electricity. Instruments severed sounds from the voice, but they still were forced to restrict themselves to acoustic boundaries. Amplification by electricity took away the acoustic boundaries and created sounds even further removed from the voice. (Westermeyer, “Instruments in Worship,” 114)

To this, I would add that the use of prerecorded music totally violates this principle. It is not the voice of any one of the gathered worshipers.

Finally, even the primacy of words need not necessarily negate the use of instruments. Although they can easily become distractions and overwhelm or obliterate words, if care is exercised, instruments can support and enhance singing in many ways. But even if this is granted, the question remains whether this principle negates the use of purely instrumental music. Again, not necessarily. Even the early church left an opening for wordless music. St. Augustine gave the classic description of the jubilus, the outpouring of joy beyond words.

One who jubilates (iubilat) does not speak words, but it is rather a sort of sound of joy without words since it is the voice of a soul poured out in joy and expressing, as best it can, the feeling, though not grasping the sense. A man delighting in his joy, from some words which cannot be spoken or understood, bursts forth in a certain voice of exultation without words, so that it seems he does indeed rejoice with his own voice, but as if, because filled with too much joy, he cannot explain in words what it is in which he delights. (Trans. McKinnon, Music, 361)

However, Augustine does add that proper jubilation ought to be “in justification” and “in confession,” which I take to mean in a specific context. In any case, it is worth noting that the closest music came to being wordless in the medieval liturgy was in the highly melismatic chants like the Graduals and Alleluias and even more so in the organa of Leonin and Perotin. But this music always had as its context the words of the liturgy. In fact, its context was not just words but the Word; it was always sung in the context of the Scripture lessons. If, as Augustine and medieval practice require, wordless music is kept in touch with words and the Word, instrumental music can have a place in Christian worship. But it must never be allowed to suggest that its beauty has some kind of spiritual efficacy. The ease with which Romantic thought about “pure” music slipped into a religion of music should serve to warn us about music’s seductive power. We must remember, as Fr. Gelineau’s memorable formulation puts it, that its beauty, indeed any perceptible beauty, “can be a sign of grace, but never the source of grace” (Voices, 26).

The Preaching of Augustine (354–430)

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Augustine represents the preaching of the Latin church, a style that may be traced from Tertullian through Cyprian to Ambrose, Augustine’s spiritual father, and mentor. The Latin style of preaching shows an acquaintance with classical literature, Latin rhetoric, and symbolism.

Augustine addresses the matter of homiletics in the fourth book of De Doctrina Christiana. He basically argues that the sermon should be an exposition of the text. Concerning approach, he urges the speaker to appeal to the intellect, feeling, and will (to teach, delight, and influence). He mentions three styles of preaching—the restrained, the moderate, and the grand. He advises against the grandiose style, however, because audiences will not tolerate it. Augustine makes a strong case for a restrained style in which the form of the sermon reflects the content.

Augustine has written works of very high literary merit, apart from his theological and homiletical writings. His Confessions form one of the most unique and strangely impressive works in all literature—one of the books that everybody ought by all means to read. His City of God has been called a “prose epic” and is a combination of history, philosophy, and poetry that has a power and a charm all its own. His work on Christian Teaching is the first treatise on sacred rhetoric and homiletics.

Augustine’s Sermons

But if we had nothing else from Augustine than his sermons, of which some 360 remain that are reckoned genuine, we should recognize him as a great preacher, as a richly gifted man, and should feel ourselves powerfully attracted and impressed by his genius, his mighty will, his passionate heart, and deeply earnest piety.

Augustine favored allegorizing, like every other great preacher of the age except Chrysostom. But his sermons are full of power. He carefully explains his text and repeats many times, in different ways, its substantial meaning. He deals much in dramatic question and answers, and in apostrophe; also in digression, the use of familiar phrases, and direct address to particular classes of persons present, using in general great and notable freedom. Yet freedom must be controlled, as in Augustine it commonly is controlled by sound judgment, right feeling, and good taste.

The chief peculiarity of Augustine’s style is his fondness for and skill in producing pithy phrases. In the terse and vigorous Latin, these often have great power. The capacity for throwing off such phrases is mainly natural, but may be indefinitely cultivated. And it is a great element of power, especially in addressing the masses, if one can, after stating some truth, condense it into a single keen phrase that will penetrate the hearer’s mind and stick.

The Early North African Liturgy

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It is thought that North Africa was the birthplace of Latin Christianity. Because of Muslim expansion, however, the church did not survive in North Africa beyond the eighth century. Since no actual texts of the ancient North African liturgy are extant, the outline of the rite can only be reconstructed from other sources.

It is certain that North Africa, the cradle of Latin Christianity, was likewise the first place to use Latin in the liturgy. Without discouraging the ancient practice of improvisation, councils and synods (e.g., Hippo [393], canon 25) provided guidelines for formulating liturgical prayers and insisted that prayers composed elsewhere be approved by the teachers (fratres instructiores). The composition of prayers by heretics prompted a later synod to direct that “preces, prefationes, commendationes and impositiones manuum” be composed under the supervision of the hierarchy and used by all (Carthage [407], canon 10).

African collections of libelli missarum and even sacramentaries are referred to in writings from the fifth century; but, apart from a few Arian fragments, no actual liturgical texts have survived. Nevertheless, details of the rite have been gleaned from non-liturgical sources, e.g., conciliar decrees like those already mentioned and especially the writings and sermons of Augustine of Hippo. The following order of the Mass is based on a reconstruction by F. Van der Meer (Augustine the Bishop [New York: Harper & Row, 1961], 388–402).

ENTRANCE OF THE CLERGY
Greeting

EPISTLE
PSALM (Augustine considered this a reading)

GOSPEL
Homily
[announcements]
Dismissal of the Catechumens
Solemn Intercessions
Offering with Psalm singing
Preface dialogue
Improvised Preface without Sanctus
Approved Eucharistic prayer
“Amen”
Fractio
Lord’s Prayer
Communion with Psalm 33
Final prayer

DISMISSAL

The year after Augustine’s death (430) the African church saw the beginning of more than a century of bitter persecution by the Arian Vandals. In 698, Carthage was taken by the Moors and the church that had given birth to Latin Christianity ceased to exist altogether.