The Spirit and the Song

Chris E. W. Green and Steven Félix-Jäger have struck a chord with me in publishing this edited volume on The Spirit and The Song. I warmly welcome this Pentecostal, socio-cultural, affective, and musicological composition into its unique place as an invaluable resource for integrative spirituality through song. Their creative and courageous affirmation of the personification of song, music as cultural gift, and the worship of the church, will no doubt challenge our perceptions about the songs we sing and the performative spirituality contained therein. Generations will benefit greatly from the scope and depth of their fully-orbed understanding of the nature of songs and their avant-garde experimentation. Sincerely, Thank you!

-- Johnathan E. Alvarado, Bishop, Grace Church International, Atlanta, Georgia

Like many who grew up in a singing Pentecostal community, I hope my children will sing but in different or newer, spirited ways. The commonality will be the God who makes (and remakes) our world even as we participate; it will not be simple transposing of culture, methods, chords or lyrics. The theologising in The Spirit and the Song, edited by Chris E. W. Green and Steven Félix-Jäger, has a way of holding on to the Spirit of Jesus as its authors examine the space between spirit and body, mourning and joy, past and present, sacred and secular. These stellar contributors weave a story capable of explaining music’s sacramentality and importance to Pentecostals themselves, as well as its observers. In this creative and, even at times, provocative volume, a hopeful vision is presented: sound, both sacred and secular, woven creatively together with emotion, wisdom, poetry, literature, history, science, and light.

-- Tanya Riches, director of master of transformational development, Eastern College Austr