Postmodernism and Religious Music-part 1

Postmodernism and Religious Music-part 1

            Now that postmodernism is past its prime people are still struggling to understand just what is, or maybe better put, what it was. One definition of what it is [was] has been given by Edward Docx, “Postmodernism was a high-energy revolt, an attack, a strategy for destruction. It was a set of critical and rhetorical practices that sought to destabilise the modernist touchstones of identity, historical progress and epistemic certainty.  Above all, it was a way of thinking and making that sought to strip privilege from any one ethos and to deny the consensus of taste. Like all the big ideas, it was an artistic tendency that grew to take on social and political significance.”  by Edward Docx / July 20, 2011 / Leave a comment Published in August 2011 issue of Prospect Magazine  

                 No one knows for sure whether the postmodern movement has run its course and is being replaced with some new philosophical notion which is too new to even have an official name.  I suppose the thing that matters most about postmodernism is that first, Christian musicians must recognize that it existed for some time and second, that it has greatly influenced religious music.  One of the things that concerns me is that there is so little written by Christians about postmodernism and its influence on church music.  This is even more disturbing since postmodernism came into being, bloomed and now perhaps is being superseded by new philosophical notions, and Christian musicians seem to be oblivious of the fact that its influence exists and is affecting what is happening in religious music today.