Worshippers & Therefore Musicians
Theologian James B. Jordan on the Importance of Music in Christian Education
James B. Jordan (b. 1949) is an American theologian and author. He has written many articles, essays, and books on Old Testament theology, chronology, literature, and more. He is a musical theologian who argues for a more musical theology when it comes to reading and understanding the scriptures. By that, he means seeing the patterns and rhythms of repetition of themes in the scriptures much like are present in great works of music. He has visited my church over the years, and I’ve learned a lot from his lectures and writings.
In May of 2015, I attended a week-long intensive course hosted by the Theopolis Insitute in Birmingham, Alabama, where James B. Jordan and Ken Myers (Mars Hill Audio Journal) spent a full five days of lectures on music, worship, and more.
It was an enriching week of fellowship, singing, praying, and more. I came away with an even greater appreciation for the work of Ken Myers and James B. Jordan. I thought I would share an excerpt of James B. Jordan’s writing on music. In fact, to the best of my recollection, this quote was my first exposure to JBJ talking about music.
James B. Jordan on Music in Christian Education
This is a packed quote, and I recommend reading it several times.
I suppose most Christian schools do a fairly good job on Bible content, but what about music? If the second person of God is the Word of God, the third person is the Music of God, for Breath (Spirit) means the sounding of words out loud, which involves tone and timbre and rhythm, etc. It is pretty clear that worship in the Bible is musical (even if this is not much the case in American Christianity), and we are told that the Father seeks worshippers. The first goal of Christian education is to train worshippers, and that means to train musicians. It is clear in the Bible that the next thing people learn after they learn the Word of God is how to make music with it.
I posit as an axiom of Christian education that music is given as much attention as grammar and literature. If 'English' is taught for one hour a day, music must be taught the same. As grammatical theory is taught, so should musical theory be taught. As children write paragraphs, so should they do just a little bit of musical composition. (I know that musical composition is harder than paragraph and essay composition, but who knows what might happen if children were given a chance, at least occasionally?) If 'great literature' is read and studied, so should great music be read and studied, and just as much of it. Finally, every child, without exception, should have a musical instrument, if only a guitar or a recorder, because the psalms command us to worship God with instruments.
Now, of course, most such students will not grow up to be musicians. Most students will not grow up to write essays or work in the area of literature either. But music is far more central to the Kingdom of God than is essay-writing and literature. Biblical people were expected to be musicians; they were not expected to be able to read and write, because, before Gutenberg, few people could or needed to.
The Father seeks worshippers, not intellectuals. It is fine to be an intellectual, but we must be worshippers. And in the Bible, worship means the whole-personed participation that only music makes possible.
High school students should be in choir all four years, just as they study literature and read Shakespeare and Moliere out loud all four years. They should sing through a curriculum, whether they ever perform it or not. They should know the great plainsong melodies, read and study the isorhythmic mass of Machaut, read and study the seamless polyphony of Ockeghem's Missa Mi-Mi, do a bit of Josquin and Goudimel, wallow in Bach, and get a taste of Mozart, Bruckner, and some modern Christian choral music (such as is published by Fortress or Concordia, not the junk that is too often sung in evangelical churches).
They should study the courtship of man and woman in the sonata-allegro form; reflect on the changeableness of life in the theme-and-variations form; enjoy dance and conversation in the menuetto-trio form, and consider the return to sabbath after a day of work in the rondo form. Well, I could go on and on. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just consider what you might have learned if you had had a really Christian education!1
This quote comes from The Case Against Western Civilization, Part 5, which Biblical Horizons Ministries initially released in December 1997.
Thank you, Jarrod. What a concept! Singing together is so much more community-building than say, discussing together.
Do you know why he mentioned Fortress and Concordia specifically for modern choral music? As a Lutheran that made my ears perk (we Lutherans love to sing!).