I went through different phases of liking and disliking contemporary Christian music. I never heard much of it when I was a Roman Catholic back in the 1970s. But I didn’t really like trendy folk masses 😀 even though I was into pop music.
Then, when I became an evangelical Christian in 1980, many of the newer charismatic evangelical groups were into contemporary choruses, and I used to enjoy them. In my Baptist churches, we would sing some of the newer songs but we were generally 10-20 years behind in our contemporary music, and most of it emerged from the newer charismatic scene.
Since the Protestant reformation, there’s been much debate within Protestantism and within evangelicalism (the part of Protestantism that focuses on the Bible, personal conversion and growth and evangelism. There’s always been newer movements and subcultures emerging. And established subcultures tend to be a little skeptical or suspicious of the newer movements.
In the late 1980s, I started growing more conservative, and I began to like the older hymns more – and the more established reformed evangelical churches. All the newer stuff sounded a little too “happy clappy”. It annoyed me. And more conservative people would often highlight the silly or sinister aspects of the newer evangelical movements. You’d hear about TV Evangelist or megachurch scandals, people barking like dogs in worship, people thinking God turned their dental fillings to gold, or people being promised miracles at healing crusades.
But whenever I met ordinary folk from newer churches they weren’t very different to what we were like. They wouldn’t approve of the silly or extreme aspects of their movement, no more than we’d approve of the silly or extreme aspects of our movement.
In the mid 2010s, purely for musical purposes, I started revisiting all the contemporary music. Up to that point, I didn’t mind anything before 1980, but I tended to dismiss the more recent stuff. And in recent times, I’ve become more aware of 21st Century contemporary music. The more conservative churches don’t listen to it because it reminds them of all that’s wrong with the movements from which the music emerges. But I don’t really know much about the movements. I’m confident that the individuals who write the songs are fine, but it isn’t entirely relevant to me if I appreciate the song. Maybe a time will soon come when AI will write all the songs 😀. It is delightful to read about the context of the classic hymns and the stories behind them. But I can appreciate hymns without knowing their background. So, I’m enjoying getting to know the more recent hymns.
So, I’ll list a “newer” song from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. If I were to rate how much I like them, the line would probably slope downward from left to right 😀. And I feel that way about secular music too. That happens as you grow old.
But I like the fact that new hymns are being written. And I don’t see anything in the Bible to tell me that a hymn needs to be restricted to a particular music style or beat per minute (BPM). And I’m hardly ever troubled by the lyrics of any evangelical hymn. They all help me to worship.
Hibernia Gospel 