Shout to the Lord

How music makes worship and how worship makes music in Evangelical churches Music is a nearly universal feature of congregational worship in American churches. Congregational singing is so ingrained in the experience of being at church that it is often misunderstood to be synonymous with worship. For those who assume responsibility for making music for congregational use, the relationship between music and worship is both promising and perilous – promise in the power of musical style and collective singing to facilitate worship, peril in the possibility that the experience of the music might eclipse the worship it was written to facilitate. As a result, those committed to making music for worship are constantly reminded of the paradox that they are writing songs for people who wish to express themselves, as directly as possible, to God. This book shines a new light on how people who make music for worship also make worship from music. Based on interviews with more than 75 songwriters, worship leaders, and music industry executives, Shout to the Lord maps the social dimensions of sacred practice, illuminating how the producers of worship music understand the role of songs as both vehicles for, and practices of, faith and identity. This book accounts for the human qualities of religious experience and the practice of worship, and it makes a compelling case for how – sometimes – faith comes by hearing.

Shout to the Lord is a remarkable book, beautifully written and analytically careful. Music is the heart of evangelical experience, so the book helps to explain that religion. But the book does more. It explains the way music can become prayer, and why it moves us., Songs and music are used in worship to help congregants reach an individual experience of God. But, as Ari Kelman shows, that individual experience only comes about because of the work of songwriters, marketers, and music producers who mediate individual religious experience. Shout to the Lordis a study of that work. Drawing on ethnography, interviews and participation in church services Kelman explores how worship music is produced, performed and experienced in U.S. evangelical churches. In doing so he masterfully draws out a series of fundamental tensions between entertainment and worship, technical skill and spirit, commerce and faith, and the danger troubling Christian musicians that they might & sing well but worship poorly., This is a fascinating book. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and dozens of interviews with songwriters, worship leaders, and record producers, Kelman reveals the immense cultural work that goes into producing evangelical Christian worship music. He is a sensitive guide, treating his subjects sympathetically while remaining keenly attuned to the tensions that underlie their work. He is at his best in explaining how his subjects understand the essential role that music plays in worship even as they disavow its necessity., In Shout to the Lord, Kelman meticulously elucidates for his academic readership the internal logics that undergird American evangelical cultural production. Because the study reflects the author’s generosity and responsibility toward his interlocutors, evangelical musical practitioners will find their histories and perspectives presented with patient nuance. This monograph on evangelical worship music, read in careful conjunction with the extant and burgeoning literature in Christian congregational music studies, promises to be an especially productive read for students and researchers of American religion, Christian liturgy, and popular music., An insightful and well-researched examination of the creation of worship music in American evangelicalism and the worship music culture it has birthed. Kelman’s work is not just an analysis of religious and sociological scholarship—it is an experiment in understanding where he immersed himself into various corporate worship settings that span several years.

Ari Y. Kelman is Jim Joseph Professor of Education and Jewish Studies at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. He is the author of Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio in the United States (UC Press 2009) and Shout to the Lord: Making Music in Evangelical America (NYU Press 2018).