The Contemporary Christian Praise and Worship Music-Culture

Because music is part of a culture and is connected to a people’s beliefs, practices, and way of life, the term music-culture refers to everything involved in their relationship with music - what they believe about it, what they do with it, the institutions that support it, and the musical objects and materials they create and use.

Christian churches in diverse cultures around the world employ contemporary praise and worship music in their assemblies. The music is contemporary in that it reflects and sonically resembles its popular, secular counterparts. For the sake of streamlining, the term contemporary Christian praise and worship music will be abbreviated as P&W in this paper.

Music and the Belief System

P&W is Western music, created mostly in the USA, Britain, and Australia, but used around the world and often translated into local languages. While it is sometimes used in Catholic liturgy - especially those services designed for teens - P&W is most strongly tied to the evangelical Protestant tradition. The belief systems of Christian worshippers and the texts used to express those beliefs are inseparable. In fact, numerous P&W lyrics are pulled directly from Sacred Scripture: verbatim, paraphrased, and/or lyricized. P&W pieces are considered inspired, but not in the sense that the term is used to refer to Scripture.

All questions of ownership and rights of P&W correspond to the secular music business. There are songwriters, publishing companies, record labels, and radio stations that specialize in the genre. Christian Copyright Licensing International® (CCLI) issues licenses to churches to facilitate the legal use of the more than 260,000 P&W songs in the CCLI catalog.

Conversely, traditional hymns in the public domain are still used in the same set list with P&W. These evergreen hymns are held fondly as part of the Christian tradition. There is a sense of community ownership of the hymn repertoire. Many of these hymns have been appropriated by P&W songwriters who add original refrains. These rearrangements with additions are considered proprietary new works. Some of these reworked hymns are among the most popular in the genre. Co-written and popularized by Chris Tomlin, Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) is a prime example of a new arrangement of a public-domain title.

Aesthetics of Music

The P&W music-culture places a high value on memorability in songwriting, along with excellence in performance and audio production. The assessment of beauty to the P&W fan is pretty much the same as that of the general population. The expectation is that it should be at least as “good” as contemporary secular music. When considering traits that are typical of P&W, melodic simplicity and diatonic tonality are obvious. All of the top 10 songs on CCLI’s chart are purely diatonic in melody and in their chord progressions. There are no modulations, nor are there any secondary, altered, or borrowed chords. With very few exceptions, meter is simple, though vocal phrasing is often syncopated and irregular. Regarding vocal syncopation, P&W has its critics, since the form is intended for congregational singing. Critics point out that, compared to hymn meter, unpredictable phrasing is difficult for rank-and-file worshippers. This is an ongoing debate in the music-culture.

Black American contemporary praise music is harmonically and rhythmically more sophisticated than the most widely used P&W songs. Music created by African American and Hispanic artists is sometimes scheduled alongside mainstream P&W, especially in multiracial congregations.

Contexts for Music

P&W is most at home in the church sanctuary. There are still many dedicated worship spaces (i.e., churches), but the sanctuary may be a storefront, a school auditorium, the open field of a festival, or even a concert hall hosting worship events. Whenever Christians gather to worship, P&W almost always plays a central role. Churches that host contemporary services feature P&W performed using typical rock-band instrumentation, including drums, electric bass, electric and acoustic guitars, and digital keyboards.

History of Music

P&W finds its roots in Jesus Rock, music that was born in the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and ’70s. There were some popular vertical praise songs during that era, but most of the songs were directed to the culture horizontally. Jesus Rock had a more personal testimony bent, while the more communal P&W is geared toward congregational singing.

Activities Involving Music

The spectrum of musicians who perform P&W ranges from amateur volunteers to paid professionals. Men and women of every imaginable ethnic group and socioeconomic status claim P&W as their own.

YouTube is a rich source for finding new P&W songs and artists, as well as an effective outlet for its creators. Because of the strong tie to its message, the genre has thousands of lyric videos available. Very popular songs are covered by several leading artists, resulting in multiple millions of views for a title. The top three covers of Goodness of God have well over 500 million views.

Repertories of Music

It would be difficult to overstate the influence U2 has had on P&W. Top P&W artist Chris Tomlin even covered U2’s Where the Streets Have No Name on a charity album project.

Mainstream P&W has closely related genres that include rock, folk, neotraditional, Black Gospel, Hispanic, rap, and hip-hop. The common threads throughout the genres are the Christian movement and its message. As stated earlier, the texts are drawn from Sacred Scripture and traditional hymns. Compositions may be the fruit of a professional songwriting session in Nashville, individual worship artists, or a local P&W band. Transmission and distribution occur through all of the usual places, like YouTube, streaming services, and, to a declining extent, CDs.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if I met someone totally unfamiliar with P&W, I would let YouTube videos of live P&W performances do much of the talking. My student would see very hip-looking singers and musicians on theatrically lit platforms leading a congregation of mostly 20-somethings. The countenance of the worshippers in these videos is one of earnest reverence. Because the text of the songs is so central to the genre, the lyrics are almost always displayed in the videos.

For a Western, musically literate inquirer, I could take them on a tour of CCLI’s web page called SongSelect, which features lead sheets, chord charts, and vocal scores of thousands upon thousands of P&W songs.

On the surface, to my inquirer, much of this could appear as commercial as any other contemporary genre. But I would want them to understand that, at its core, P&W can be encapsulated in Psalm 40, verse 3: “He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.”