The way that church music assumes a central place in how Christians identify with their churches is nowhere more evident than in charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity—a fact borne out in the fascinating new book The Spirit of Praise (Penn State University Press, $32.95), edited by Monique M. Ingalls and Amos Yong. “Praise and worship” music has become far more than the beginning part of a worship service for Pentecostals; today this type of contemporary Christian music is represented by brands and movements spanning the globe and adapted by a wide range of believers. The contributors document the diversity of styles and uses of this music, including a chapter on Australia’s aboriginal Christian music, which forms a bridge between indigenous traditions (surrounding the myth of songlines) and the white Pentecostal traditions.
Another chapter on Australia looks at how its popular Hillsong music coming from a megachurch movement by that name is standardized and thus strongly unifying as it has circulated throughout the world from its Australian base. Other contributions look at how the CCM repertoire has made its way into the Gospel music tradition of black churches, bringing it into contact with churches of other ethnicities, and the growth of neo-Pentecostal churches and music among the Navajo Nation in the American Southwest, with its music’s effectiveness due to its similarity with the repetitive and “soaking” quality of native chants and songs. In the conclusion, Amos Yong argues that both homogenization and diversity take place through the globalized circulation of praise and worship music, adding that this two-way pattern may increasingly be evident in the theological reflection and teachings that accompany it in world Pentecostalism.
