The Tangent College
I would like to talk about a subject that I’m sure many would deem to be uninteresting and irrelevant but I assure you it is not. The state of Christian music, or worship music, or religious music has entered a state of being comatose and could almost be considered dead. It is such an important subject because it is also a reflection on the state of the church at large and the Republican Party. The GOP is the party that represents the values of the Christian church whereas the Democrat party represents the values of the atheistic world. Republicans placate Democrats in the same way that the church placates the world in order to win converts. The Republicans and the church never stop using this tactic even though it has proven to never work. It actually causes the erosion of the values and stance of the Republican Party and the Christian church.
Religious music is functional music as is dance music and Muzak. Functional music can never be truly excellent or genuinely artistic precisely because it is created to perform a function. I’ve never been comfortable writing any type of functional music. Even the political parodies that I write do not fit in with the functional needs of politicians as they tend to be too artistic. I am equally out of place playing dance music at parties – although I enjoy it when people do dance, as I am leading worship music – although the songs I play are exhorting, truthful, musical and yes, worshipful.
The music that I write, and that which moves my soul, is never written to perform a function but to rather be a true work of art that stands on its own, and for its own sake. A true work of art at some level, directly or indirectly, speaks of the divine. So all true works of art can be worshipful. But of course the dumbed down Christian church of today knows nothing of this and considers it to be trivial to the endless activity of evangelism.
I’ve said many times that it is less volatile to question one’s religious beliefs than it is to question one’s taste in music. I learned something new this week after attending Radius Church for the second week. I returned to this church as I’ve returned to other churches, in hopes of finding an open door to change. But that door was closed upon talking to one of the musicians in charge.
Religious worship music in most of these churches has been reduced down to little more than religious karaoke. All the instrumentation – for this Sunday; a piano, an acoustic guitar, and a drummer – was nonessential because there was a track playing with all of these instruments already in it from which the five singers could karaoke to. Any one of the instrumentalists could stop playing and no one would notice as the sound would be exactly the same. So why are there instrumentalists at all? Apparently it is just for the show – to put on a fake show. Empty stages are not visually appealing. This is appalling to me and it should be appalling to you. I believe it is appalling to God. It is fake worship. The singers don’t really even have to sing because we could just put that in the track as well, as many secular performers do, as they dance around on stage and only pretend to sing by mouthing the words to the track.
I do not understand how these musicians can stand to play when nothing they play is heard by the people. Why learn how to play guitar or drums? Why try to play excellently? We don’t have to do anything anymore because automated worship will do it all for us. How far is the church from automated prayer and automated Bible reading and automated works of service? How about automated pastors?
The tracks are used so that there is a perfectly sanitized sound all the time, no mistakes, no danger, no reality, just clinical, robotic perfection. Why not just put cardboard cutouts of musicians playing their instruments? At least the cardboard cutouts would be more real and genuine – and funny. The musicians are slowly becoming animated cardboard cutouts. Does this honor God? Is this worship? I think not. This fake worship is a lie and it’s an insult to God. It’s “Automated Worship”.
All religious music has become all about the vocals all the time. Everything is to support the mostly female singers – the Christian divas. In the brave New World that were heading into, these Christian divas don’t need real musicians just like women no longer need real men. It can all be faked now. It can all be simulated. Like in a test tube.
I’ve watched this happen slowly for over 30 years – the slow descent of religious music into a comatose state. The people in the congregation hardly ever sing anymore, have you noticed? Many stare blankly off into space. This is both sad and angering what the church is doing to itself all in the name of creating a manufactured atmosphere with colored lights, moving graphics, and computer-generated worship music. Let’s all get into a trance-like state for God and call it worship. It is been so many years since they’ve heard good music performed for real, live, by real live human beings who make mistakes, that they don’t even know what has gone wrong. They’ve become comfortably numb.
The music leader I spoke to made the same complaint that I heard from another pastor that they need the tracks because they don’t have the musicians that can play. He also complained that they can’t find a worship leader (that would fit in the collective religious box). But the very fact that you have tracks is the reason that the musicians will never learn to play. The only way to learn how to play is to take the tracks away. The tracks are a crutch, as religion is a crutch. If you want to get up and walk you have to throw the crutch away. If you want to swim you have to get in the pool and take off the flotation devices. If you want to ride a bike, you have to take off the training wheels. If you want to have your child drive a car, you have to get out of the drivers seat and let them sit there and press the gas pedal for themselves – you can’t drive it for them. But the church is filled with children mothered to death, scared that their precious little ones will get their feelings hurt and so they never allow them to grow up and actually learn how to swim, how to ride a bike, drive a car, how to play guitar, how to play the drums and certainly not to write good music. Good music? What is that? Nobody knows anymore. No one is allowed to know anymore. There’s an app for that now.
And all the real musicians have gradually left because they have been continuously squelched and grieved and scolded by the church leaders, lest they actually play their instruments well and intimidate others, and lest they should dare be accused of performing. The vocalists can do all the performing they want and call it worshiping God, but the poor musicians are there to be slaves to support the vocalists. I have seen this over and over again throughout my Christian life. We are told we are prideful if we want to write good music and perform it well. It is all about collective worship and never about individual excellence. There is no longer a place for excellence in the collective Christian church.
The music leader became rather defensive as I exhorted him to get rid of the tracks since it was obvious the band did not need them as they played the last song without them. He became rather hostile, and when I informed him that I did not simply come “out of the blue” but have been involved with Christian music for well over 30 years, he stated rather bluntly “I hate Christian music”. This was just one of the odd contradictory statements that he made but I thought it was telling that here is a man on one hand who hates Christian music, and on the other hand is playing it every Sunday. But then it occurred to me that this is in fact far more common than I realized; that the majority of these fake Christian worship leaders actually detest the music they’re doing but continue in it as some sort of sacrificial service to God.
I don’t think God is impressed with this “sacrifice”.
The artificial worship in these churches continuously sends the message that we are not to be excellent, to try hard is to be prideful, to seek artistic beauty does not fulfill the function of fake worship and changing diapers in the nursery.
This could be the number one thing that I wish to break in The Tangent College. I have a dream of finding other musicians and other Christians with the desire to do something better, much better. Imagine real musicians, playing live music, having fun with smiles on their faces or at least expressing some kind of emotion, exploring new musical genres, working out chords and melodies and harmonies, working with the singers, with no tracks and no click beats (learning how to play in rhythm, together – what a concept! ), mistakes and all, and then correcting the mistakes, glorying in our mistakes as we strive to get it right. I think people would line up to come and hear such a church.
But if not that, why play at all? This is the question I sadly have almost all the time. The religious Christian collective has sucked the life out of the individual musician and music itself.
It’s all canned and faked. It’s all karaoke praise. I don’t do karaoke. So what am I supposed to do?