Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns
Scott Aniol
I don’t have time to do a full-fledged review of this new book by T. David Gordon (author of Why Johnny Can’t Preach), but I do want to highly recommend it to you. I couldn’t agree more with Gordon’s approach, underlying assumptions, and conclusions in this book.
Gordon argues that pop culture has so changed the fabric of society today as to create an environment in which good music is almost impossible to appreciate. His historical, culture, and musical analyses are spot on, in my opinion.
One of the best points Gordon makes is that most people today, even most Christians, are driven by a desire to be “contemporary.” “Contemporaneity” has become itself a virtue for most people, even Christians. It makes anything traditional or historic unattractive or even detestable. But Gordon argues that this “virtue” runs contrary to biblical values.
I think his argument here is important because I’ve heard many who even claim to be “conservative” who insist that we’ve got to have “fresh” sounding songs or settings of old hymns. Who says? Certainly not the Bible. What they are being driven by is an underlying assumption that contemporaneity is a virtue in itself.
Anyway, I hope to do a more thorough review eventually, but I wanted to recommend this excellent little book to you for your edification.
About the author
Scott Aniol received a bachelor’s degree in church music at Bob Jones University and a master’s degree in Musicology at Northern Illinois University. He was ordained to to the gospel ministry by First Baptist Church (Rockford, IL) in April of 2004. He has taken seminary classes at Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN) Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary and did graduate work in choral conducting and church music history at Concordia University in River Forest, Illinois.
As the executive director of Religious Affections Ministries, Scott speaks on the subjects of music and worship at various churches and conferences. His most recent speaking engagements include the Great Lakes Conference on Theology, Central Seminary’s Foundations Conference, International Baptist College, and Bob Jones Seminary.
Scott’s book, Worship in Song, was recently released by BMH Books.
The Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns by Scott Aniol, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Scott,
Wouldn’t most of the conservative users of contemporary music defend the “fresh” stuff based on the scripture’s call for a “new” song? The Bible doesn’t require abandoning old, but it does ask for a new song that many would define as “fresh.” I think your suggestion that they are motivated by the virtue of contemporaneity is a straw man. Perhaps you could restate this legitimate problem in a better way.
I’m not against new songs, for certain. But most of those, even conservative, who claim that we need “new” or “fresh” songs usually (in my experience) do so on the basis that we need to keep people’s attention or engage them in some new way. That is an illegitimate argument in my opinion.
And I don’t think Scripture’s “new song” has anything specifically to do with music. It’s ironic that that passage is used to defend both the conservative and contemporary philosophy!
Scott, two comments:
Firstly, whilst I am in favor of quality contemporary music, it does sadden me that much of the historic hymnody is being forgotten. For example, I was recently reminded of the hymn “Our Lord is now rejected” (The Crowning Day) that I haven’t sung in 25 years, and I thought that the church has really lost something through the neglect of music like this (I hope it’s one you like). So I was wondering what do you think can be done to increase the use of more traditional music, given that it is going against the cultural tide.
Secondly (this is a bit off-topic but I couldn’t find the suggestion box), I’d love to see you give some examples of the sort of traditional hymns that you feel are appropriate for use in conservative worship.
Hi, Anastasis; thanks for you comment.
Here is a list of hymns that might answer your question: http://www.religiousaffections.org/articles/hymnody/hymns-doctrinal-categories