Music in American Religious Experience

Music in American Religious Experience is a fine collection of essays that enlighten us on a great variety of research topics concerning sacred music in America. The articles that discuss Lutheran hymnody and worship are ground breaking, and it would do Lutheran church musicians well to read them. By doing so, their understanding of the music that they use weekly in worship will be deeper and their consideration of other religious groups will gain them appreciation for the musical traditions of those people. * Cross Accent *
Music in American Religious Experience is a welcome contribution to musicology.... Those who have contributed to this project have written essays as diverse as they are enlightening. * Journal of the Society for American Music *
This varied and insightful volume focuses on music as apart of the American religious experience, from the time of the The Bay Psalm Book (1640) to the present. The contributors are scholars in musicology and history, and the essays show the diverse ways that music has imprinted itself on the religious consciousness and history of the US. The editors divide the book into four parts. Offering a fascinating and unique look at American music and religion, this book examines topics and relationships previously unresearched and undocumented. * Choice *
Music in American Religious Experience positions music and religion at the very heart of North American everyday life. Central to the sacred journey embraced by the religious communities and traditions documented in this book, music contributes to the formation of communities Hutterites in Canada, Old Regular Baptists in Kentucky, Chinese Americans churches, Wabanaki Catholics, Jewish synagogues in Boston, and many more as they negotiate historical, contemporary, and frequently politicized identities. The rich essays included in this book suggest that a vibrant sacred soundscape exists in America's churches and synagogues, often in our own backyard. * Gregory Barz, Vanderbilt University, author of Performing Religion: Negotiating Past and Present in Kwaya Music of Tanzania *
Singing, which time out of mind has been everywhere constitutive of religious community, has only recently emerged as a subject of vigorous study. This expert and welcome volume joins other recent efforts that are trying to understand how and why music has been so central in different ways to different religious traditions. Its chapter on Wabanakis and Wesleyans, Muslims and Molokans, German Lutherans and the Chinese and Missionary Alliance, Isaac Watts and Fanny Crosby, and more provide solid individual studies; together they demonstrate the superlative importance of music in American religious experience. * Mark A. Noll, author, America's God, from Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (OUP, 2002) *