Blended Music before “Blending” Was Cool-Part 2

Blended Music before “Blending” Was Cool-Part 2

       Although there are numbers of these songs that have been written is the past 100 years or so are anything but “classics”, time has already shown that they are not the only religious songs that often rightfully fall into obscurity after a short period of popularity.  At this point in time there is an emphasis on worship music that centers almost entirely on God with little or no content about man’s relationship to God.  The claims of the gospel are purposefully omitted from the bulk of praise and worship choruses.

Certainly, praise to God is not an option but rather a necessity for worship musicing.  However, as I have said often, so are songs of prayer, confession, contrition, the Trinity, Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, the second coming, and a host of other doctrinal and creedal content.

       So, the gospel hymns written by the hymnists listed in yesterday’s post were an integral part of the Moody, Sankey worship and evangelistic services.  Louis F. Benson notes that, “Their work [the gospel hymn] was appropriated in Dwight L. Moody’s English campaign and his later call upon American churches to add evangelism to worship.”  The Hymnody of the Christian Church, by Louis F. Benson, p.266   The concept of having an element of evangelism and fundamental doctrines of the church as a part of public worship is not popular in many churches today.  My philosophical question to those who oppose an element of evangelism in worship is, “Just when are songs that teach fundamental doctrines and have an evangelistic appeal appropriate for the modern audience?”