Personal Jesus

Clive Marsh & Vaughan S Roberts, Baker Academic

The authors explain the connection between popular music and how it interacts with our lives, both religious and secular.

They contend that what is found in popular music is not just coincidental or arbitrary but is woven from the fabric of our lives. The lyrics used and the form the music takes is the expression not just of our physical beings but also the spiritual side of our being.

We ignore its import and importance to our spiritual peril. It is the youth of today expressing their meanings of life and trying to make the older generations understand what ideologies are arising out of their understanding.

There is a depth of theological expression in popular music that needs to be heard by church people. Young people are telling us with their music how they want the worship of God conducted and how they want corporate worship to be conducted — subconsciously and consciously.

It has been the way young people have tried to communicate their spiritual concerns to their elders for over a thousand years.

It was this information that was brought to their communities by musicians like Telemann, Pachelbel, Johann Sebastian Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Mendelssohn and all the composers we listen to so reverently these days — those whose music we bring to our worship services as definitive expressions of sacred theology.

The authors say the same phenomenon is happening with our pop music today and use a comparative table called the Magisteria-Ibiza-Spectrum to help explain their position.

They are trying to convince the rest of us to listen to what is being said by our younger generations, who just may be giving us the structural basis of church services and worship of the future.

A most interesting subject.

Lyn Housen