Music as an Expression of Theology and Communication

COMMUNICATION THEOLOGY

Topic:        Music as an Expression of Theology and Communication

Convener: Frances Forde Plude, Notre Dame College, Cleveland

Moderator: Eileen Crowley-Horak, Union Theological Seminary, New York

Presenter: Tom Boomershine, United Theological Seminary,

Dayton/Lumicon Productions

Respondents: Thomas Beaudoin, Postdoctoral Fellow, Theology Department, Boston College

The arts provide special ways of knowing and distinct modes and languages for doing and expressing “theology.” To Karl Rahner, “theology cannot be com­plete until it appropriates [the] arts as an integral moment of itself.” This session explored music as a particularly apt mode of theology in ‘the digital era.’ Boomershine dates the era from the early 1960s when TV became dominant and Vatican II began. A distinct mode of communication stamps any era and creates systems that facilitate its specific mode. Digital communication is distinctive psychologically in being multisensory and sociologically in being highly commercial and consumption oriented.

Boomershine approached music by analyzing God’s dominant ways of com­municating with us throughout history and the systems the believing community developed to facilitate God’s self-communication. Following Barth, he sees three major forms of the Word—the Incarnate Word, the oral Word, and the written Word (Scripture and tradition). Each form generated distinct communication systems. In each music played a role.

Music played a role in the life of the incarnate Word at three discernible points. Jesus probably chanted the scriptures in synagogue as was customary. He entered Jerusalem to triumphal, probably sung, acclamation. And Luke presents his mother as singing her magnificat. Jesus’ modality was verbal-oral. He formed his disciples by wandering about Galilee with them, talking. And they spread his word primarily by talking. The early church was basically a network or system for keeping the energy of the Word orally strong, telling others about Jesus.

Though like Socrates, Jesus wrote nothing, his ministry relocated theology from an oral-tribal setting to a literate one. He wandered Galilee teaching but then sent his disciples into the literate Greco-Roman world to share his message. This social relocation led his disciples to record his life and teaching in texts. These eventually became normative. Most believers have experienced Jesus through oral and/or literate media—preaching or texts.

Music enhanced this transmission through chanting or the singing of associ­ated acclamations and hymns. Church leadership complemented its congregation based oral system with literary institutions—scriptoria, libraries, schools—and captured the chants also in writing. Singing the texts remains common to this day, including in the West until recently. As the printing press made reading in­creasingly private and silent, people grew accustomed to hearing the texts read with some music before and after. Protestant services became largely sermon and song.

Thus the energy of the Word generated in time oral and literary systems of communication—congregations, libraries, schools, seminaries, universities. Against that history, Boomershine pondered the church’s failure to use today’s digital media in its worship and teaching and to develop institutions to facilitate that use. He attributes this failure to the church’s attachment to the oral and written modes of communication. God however is using the digital media that are transforming education, commerce and culture. One could argue that God may be using digital media in the personal enterprises of such televangelists as Pat Robertson, Paul Crouch and Mother Angelica. God may even be the communicator behind the surprising impact of secular digital artists like Jackson Brown. Brown does not intend to create religious music, yet people report that his music opens them to God. Christian Rock is a digital format through which God is reaching people today, independent of the institutional church.

Turning to music as such. Boomershine opined that the digital era has seen more significant change in music than in any other area of our ‘God talk.’ Since 1960 the organ has given way to guitar and drums and digital keyboards. These instruments bring out a beat that enables physical movement by the people, involvement, participation. Digital amplification of the voice, as Brother Roger’s at Taize in the context of simple chants, allows an intimacy of tone that has transformed the proclamation of the Word: there is no preaching at Taize. Taize communicates theologically through music. Christian Rock establishes social identity for many young believers.

Music, with story and image, is the language of the digital age. Story has emerged as an important dimension of preaching and theology since 1960. Music does not organize its message in terms of concepts and words and arguments. Music gets at something deeper and more meaningful in people, connecting pro­foundly with the person’s life and connecting that life with God. Because of that, Boomershine believes music will be integrated again into the telling of the sacred story, as in singing the Gospel, but now with a beat. (Chant has no beat.) And he believes that as music and other digital forms of communication become still more dominant, the cultural location of theology will shift from university librar­ies to something new and different, systems God is shaping if the Church is not.

In discussion, Frank Buckley asserted that we are dealing with a left brain/ right brain shift. Mary Carroll remarked on the popularity of Hildegard of Bingen’s music and of the Spanish monks' chant. Such music puts people into an altered state of consciousness, enabling an experience that the merely verbal expression of the Gospel, oral or written, cannot. People today want an experi­ence of God, not just words about God. Stephen Martin observed that many young people can’t read books. New college grad Shawn Wilkins cautioned about leaving truth behind. Boomershine affirmed that the goal is a synthesis that enables today’s people to experience what the church holds precious and to know it as they know everything else.

Respondent Tom Beaudoin analyzed music epistemologically. Music is more than a container and carrier of verbal content that helps us remember the words. It is a distinct way of knowing, even theologically. Beaudoin offered four hypotheses: (1) musicality is an irreducible domain of knowledge; (2) musicality is an irreducible domain of theological knowledge insofar as it functions as a source for theology; (3) musicality is an irreducible domain of theological knowledge as a mode of theology, complementing the conceptual-verbal- linguistic mode; (4) musical knowledge can rework other theological domains, offering standard theology such concepts and language as ‘overtone’ and such distinct logics as, for example, improvisation. As theology has various ‘methods,’ it likewise has various ‘modes.’ Musicality is one of them.

Beaudoin developed his first thesis, that music is an irreducible form of knowledge, on whose validity his other theses depend. Referencing Jeremy Begbie, David Sudnow and Richard Viladesau, he positioned music’s kinetic images as irreducible to concepts. They are emotions, bodily states, feelings, all nonverbal. A musician has ‘handful knowledge.’ Her hands know! Beaudoin called for exploration of such knowledge as poiesis, paralleling theology’s use of Aristotle’s other kinds of knowledge: theoria and praxis. He cited Psalm 49:4, “I will solve my riddle to the music of the harp.”

Group discussion reflected on the profound impact singing the Eucharistic prayer has on congregations; on dance as knowledge, portrayed in the film Billy Elliott; on traditional organ improvisation, responding to what has happened in the liturgy, as a form of liturgical jazz; and on the music of Bach and Mozart. The session closed noting music’s power to communicate across generations.

BOB (BERNARD R.) BONNOT Unda-USA and Hallmark Channel Los Angeles, California