Congregational music-making is a vital and vibrant practice within Christian communities worldwide. Music can both unite and divide: at times, it brings together individuals and communities across geographical and cultural boundaries while, at others, it divides communities by embodying conflicting meanings and symbolizing oppositional identities. Many factors influence congregational music in its contemporary global context, posing theoretical and methodological challenges for the academic study of congregational music-making. Increasingly, coming to a robust understanding of congregational music's meaning, influence, and significance requires a mixture of complementary approaches. Including perspectives from musicology, religious and theological studies, anthropology and sociology of religion, media studies, political economy, and popular music studies, this series presents a cluster of landmark titles exploring music-making within contemporary Christianity which will further Congregational Music Studies as an important new academic field of study.
By Marcell Silva Steuernagel
September 26, 2022
This book is an investigation into church music through the lens of performance theory, both as a discipline and as a theoretical framework. Scholars who address religious music making in general, and Christian church music in particular, use "performance" in a variety of ways, creating confusion ...
Edited
By Nathan Myrick, Mark Porter
September 26, 2022
The relationship between musical activity and ethical significance occupies long traditions of thought and reflection both within Christianity and beyond. From concerns regarding music and the passions in early Christian writings through to moral panics regarding rock music in the 20th century, ...
Edited
By Andrew Mall, Jeffers Engelhardt, Monique M. Ingalls
August 29, 2022
Studying the role of music within religious congregations has become an increasingly complex exercise. The significant variations in musical style and content between different congregations require an interdisciplinary methodology that enables an accurate analysis, while also allowing for nuance ...
By Mark Porter
June 28, 2018
Whilst Contemporary Worship Music arose out of a desire to relate the music of the church to the music of everyday life, this function can quickly be called into question by the diversity of musical lives present in contemporary society. Mark Porter examines the relationship between individuals’ ...
Edited
By Monique M. Ingalls, Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, Zoe C. Sherinian
March 07, 2018
What does it mean for music to be considered local in contemporary Christian communities, and who shapes this meaning? Through what musical processes have religious beliefs and practices once ‘foreign’ become ‘indigenous’? How does using indigenous musical practices aid in the growth of local ...
Edited
By Anna E. Nekola, Tom Wagner
October 12, 2017
Congregational music can be an act of praise, a vehicle for theology, an action of embodied community, as well as a means to a divine encounter. This multidisciplinary anthology approaches congregational music as media in the widest sense - as a multivalent communication action with technological, ...
By Jonathan Dueck
April 27, 2017
Congregational Music, Conflict and Community is the first study of the music of the contemporary 'worship wars' – conflicts over church music that continue to animate and divide Protestants today – to be based on long-term in-person observation and interviews. It tells the story of the musical ...
Edited
By Monique Ingalls, Carolyn Landau, Tom Wagner
September 09, 2016
Christian Congregational Music explores the role of congregational music in Christian religious experience, examining how musicians and worshippers perform, identify with and experience belief through musical praxis. Contributors from a broad range of fields, including music studies, theology, ...
