Samuel Adler, Composing for Worship

Summary

Matthew Arnold, in the later part of the nineteenth century, predicted that the twentieth century would see a sudden decline in the influence of organized religion whose function would instead be served by secular literature and art. Of his time, he already wrote: “Even now the Bible is no longer dogma, it is literature.” He was, it seems to me, simply echoing a contemporary of his, Friedrich Nietzsche, who prophesied that in the twentieth century, theology would be superseded by aesthetics.

How correct they seem to have been on the one hand, and how wrong thy have proven on the other. In their wildest imaginations they could not have dreamed what television has brought to the dissemination of religion and what popular culture has done to that religion's message. The religious establishment—and may I add here that the terms “religion” and “church” in this talk are used generically, for I include all denominations of Protestant¬ism, Catholicism, and Judaism—has embraced much of the sound and image of popular culture and has phrased its message pretty much in the vernacular.

Now was this not always so? Did not two of the greatest religious geniuses of the past use popular customs and tunes to gather their multi¬tudes around well-known, unthreatened rituals? I am referring to St. Paul, who combined pagan symbols with Jewish symbolism to create meaningful ceremonies for the new Christianity—witness the combination of bread and body, wine and blood, stemming from the Jewish Kiddush (the prayer over the wine to celebrate a Holy Day) and the Motzi (the prayer of Grace over ev¬ery meal where bread is broken in Thanksgiving), with less anthropomorphic beliefs which were popular and easily comprehended by the Greco-Roman world. Further, I refer to Martin Luther, who selected the best tunes of his day, regardless of origin, to lure the masses into religious fervor after having “tamed” them with stirring meaningful words and appropriate harmonic set¬tings. Well then, it was always so. Why not, therefore, leave the subject and accept what is happening today as a natural phenomenon, simply an evolu¬tionary development of all that has preceded it?.

Let us pause a moment and look at our contemporary scene. Are we utilizing the popular and metamorphosing it into the sacred? I contend with you that here is where our civilization differs.