Ethnodoxology? Part 1

Worship Leader Magazine had a great theme in their last issue, "We Being Many, are One," focusing on a global view of worship. I was challenged by an article called the "The Great Misconception," written by an ethnodoxologist named Robin Harris. An ethno-what? An ethnodoxologist, a person that studies the way people worship the Lord around the world. Yeah, I didn't know there was such a thing either.

This article makes the case that the oft-repeated aphorism, "Music is the universal language," is false. Harris says that our responses to music are learned, not intrinsic, and because of this we need to seek to give people the opportunity to worship God in their own heart languages and music. Unfortunately, the Western church did a very poor job of this in the 19th and 20th centuries (probably before that too). Some call it, "music colonialism." There was (and often still is) this idea of cultural evolutionism, where Western/European culture is considered the most highly developed, and so all other cultures need to be brought up to our level. Oh the arrogance. So missionaries would translate the words in their hymnals, but keep the music the same, giving no consideration to this other culture's musical languages and how they might worship God in their unique way.

I've witnessed a bit of an example of this "colonialism" on my trips to Africa. In the summer of 2004 I attended a church service held in a tent in a squatters camp called Five Rand. An American team from a large church in the south had been there months earlier and had given this church an electric keyboard. As we worshiped the Lord in song, the person playing the keyboard used the same three chord progression in every song. It wasn't his fault, that was the extent of his abilities on this new instrument. What was worse was that the keyboard speaker wasn't very powerful, and the volume was cranked, so most of the time there was a very unpleasant distorted sound. To make matters worse, the only electricity this church had came from a generator, so that had to be running outside of the tent while we were trying to sing. Not to mention, this church had very little money, so it was costing them extra to buy the extra gas needed to use this keyboard on Sundays.

Later that week we were invited to this church's choir concert. To our delight, they performed in what was much more of their heart language and music. The only other instruments used besides voice were different sized hand-made drums. The sound was incredible! I remember having tears well up and sensing God's presence. I thought, "Lord this is the sound of the nations worshiping you." It was so great that one of our team members was able to record a CD of this choir and bring it back to the states to share with our culture. The well-meaning Americans that had donated the keyboard were trying to fix something that wasn't broken, and it sent the message to this African church that doing things the American way was what would be best for their ministry too. Ironically, it was this same church that helped fund the distribution of the CD our team had recorded. God sure has a sense of humor :)

In my next post I want to share a little bit more on this global view of worship and then bring these considerations into the more local arena of worship wars over style of music.