“Blessed Is the One Whose Bowels Can Move: An Essay in Praise of Lament” in Contemporary Worship

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 This paper is full of passion and color. His (her) AEssay in Praise of Lament@ is clearly treated in the section entitled AIn Praise of Lament.@  I have questions about the content of the other sections.

2. Sacred Glurge. The author applies the negative term of glurge to Amany contemporary Christian songs written to be pleasing and pleasant.@ This claim may be justified, but it requires documentation. Next comes a speculative statement: A I wonder about the correlation between the absence of lament in the American church and the perpetuation of white supremacy and Christian nationalism.@ This speculative statement is presented as a fact in the next paragraph: AThe glurge of contemporary praise music distracts American Christians from hearing the cries of the oppressed.@

3. Guts to Glurge. This section is based on a generalization about Sunday worship and Friday night rock concerts. On Sunday, ALyrics of praise are lifted, praise and thanks for a >Great God= and >Mighty King.=" At the rock concert there are lyrics of lament, complaints, and angst. The participants at both events may not be the same people: church goers are increasingly old and female while the public of rock concerts tends to be young and maybe mostly male. The contrast between Sunday praise and Friday rock concert does not prove the absence of lament in churches.

4. Glurge to Guts. According to the author, it is time to move back to guts. The main reason is that it is the opinion of pastoral theology Keith A. Russell.

5. Resisting the Hallmark(et)ing of Worship. We return to the hymn of Isaac Watts from the early 1700s, ABlest is the one, whose bowels can move,@ presented in the introduction. In the 18^th and 19^th century, the imagery of bowers fell out of favor and was replaced by images of heart and love. This had negative consequences: ARemoving guts from our hymns, prayers, and preaching effectively numbs the church from having the same sort of gut reaction to the sin of oppression.@ It is hard to believe that the mere change of imagery could have such devastating consequences.

The last section, A7. In Praise of Lament@ answers the question, AWhere can I find (buy) songs of lament?@ The main thesis of this paper is that there is little interest in songs of lament, so why would anyone want to buy one?

The balance between praise and lament is a difficult one. There is lament in many liturgical churches. These liturgies usually include readings and prayers, not just songs. There are usually prayers of petition (laments) for the sick, the departed, and the great tragedies of the world like the war in Ukraine, famine in Ethiopia, or tribal massacres in Africa (rather than racism and white supremacy mentioned in this paper). Most Sunday liturgies include a psalm. Most psalm of lament express individual concerns, more appropriately read aloud rather than sung. The few psalms of collective lament are about disastrous Jewish events, hence not very appropriate for the liturgy. Psalm 22, AMy God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?@ is sung on Good Friday. Psalm 130, ADe profundis@ or AOut of the depths@ used to be sung at funerals. The negro spirituals are mostly songs of hope in lives of pain. Martin Luther King is mostly remembered for AI have a dream.@ The most popular song of the civil rights movement was AWe shall overcome.@ Of course there is also the very moving, AWhere were you when they crucified my Lord?@

The author is right in questioning the quality of church songs, but it should be based on the analysis of some data, like 20 to 30 popular hymns in the author=s church or 20 to 30 hymnals in various churches. Moreover, songs are only a small part of worship; there may be lament in the worship but not in the songs.

Author Response

I am grateful for these comments and suggestions. Overall, this essay is a turn in my scholarship and emerges from my personal experience and my students' concerns. The trajectory will be improved through these thoughtful comments, though the immediate essay will not reflect all the excellent prompts from the reviewer.

2. Sacred Glurge. Thank you for these points. I do hope to launch into a new season of research with empirical research in my upcoming research leave. As such, this essay is speculative and phenomenological-emerging from my two decades in worship leadership, including five years in the evangelical world as a Worship Director.
3. Guts to Glurge. This section is based on generalization from my experience as an evangelical, non-denominational church Worship Director and college student. Our demographics reflected the college, predominately 20-somethings, white, and middle class. As a process and practical theologian, I tend to articulate the particular and make proposals from there. However, I added research to strengthen the proposal.
4. Glurge to Guts. 
5. Resisting the Hallmark(et)ing of Worship. Indeed, it is a window into trends in hymnody, from the psalter to hymns and worship songs. Rather than make an arborescent claim (the change is this one seed), I hope to point to the rhizomatic change of cultural shifts entangled in time. I revised the language to be more propositional and less narrow on cause and effect.

The last section, A7. I don't mean to say that there is no interest, but an industry that is easily accessible and not interested. I get the question from students about where these songs are found, hence my offering some alternative resources.

This essay does not aim toward data analysis. Still, at this point, it is a proposal from personal experiences in two decades of contemporary worship leadership and participation in evangelical and mainline contexts. I have added some data from Michael J. Rhodes, who is in the thick of similar research. Also, a future essay will speak to the absence of collective confession and forgiveness in many contemporary worship services as part of the overall problem.

I am grateful for the time the reviewer took with this paper, and I will revise and add nuance to future research from these excellent comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

While there is much to commend about the basic thesis of this paper regarding the need for lament in Christian worship and song, there is also much that requires more careful attention and exploration. As a reader and scholar, I find that the focus on "bowels", "guts", etc. (even in the title), gets in the way of that basic thesis and seems to prevent you from giving close attention to American evangelicalism's evasion of what Saliers describes as the necessary truthfulness of worship and prayer as expressed in lament and confession. 

The paper would be strengthened by much more careful and thorough exploration and analysis of the arguments that Saliers, Brueggemann, and others make about the place of lament and of the Psalms in Christian worship as well as with contemporary scholarship on the Psalms of lament.

Lines 179 and 359: See Saliers’ chapter “Lamenting and Confessing: Truthful Prayer” in his book Worship as Theology and his discussion of the psalms of lament there.
Line 270: Fuller engagment with Brueggemann’s work would also strengthen the argument. See, for example, the final chapter in Breuggemann's book Israel’s Praise: Doxology against Idolatry and Ideology, where he explores “pain as the locus of possibility”. Your claim at this point in the essay is actually the "meat" of your argument, but you do not develop it.

There are a number of places where you provide incomplete information or simply overlook problems (such as with your discussion of Isaac Watts, which ignores his purpose in writing and his explicit anti-Judaism). Here you would be helped by careful study of several primary sources (easily accessed in various collections), such as the introductions to Watts' 1707 and 1719 hymn collections. 

More specifically, lines 309-317:
a. Do you mean “the lack of feeling with which Christians sang the Psalms”?b. Watts is more often quoted as complaining/asking why we couldn’t sing explicitly Christian song. In fact, in the introductions to both his 1707 and 1719 collections, his approach is explicitly anti-Jewish, claiming in 1707 that “keeping too close to David in the House of God, the vail (sic) of Moses is thrown over our hearts.”  In 1719 introduction he repeatedly laments the Judiasms of the Psalms and that the Jewish Psalmist David “longs for the aid of a Christian poet.
c. Moreover, Watts’ concern was not to evoke “feeling” but “warm devotion” even as his hymns attempt to give expression to “the variety of our passions”—love, fear, hope, desire, sorrow, wonder, and joy—“all refined into devotion” (1719).
d. Watts' hymns weren’t translations, but metrical paraphrases, some explicitly “christianized”.

Line 43: You make variety of claims about hymnody that are also incomplete--"the tune" for "When I survey" when even the United Methodist Hymnal includes two different tunes; the lack of analysis or examples from the contemporary hymn writers you name; the lack of comparison between the different repertoires. 

Line 137: Your brief turn to questions about white supremacy and Christian nationalism does not seem to have a place in the argument, at least in the way you have constructed it. Making a place for those concerns requires a much different essay.

Line 145ff: More of a concern is the total absence of attention to the place of lament in African-American Christianity, the place of lament in the traditional Black spirituals, and the connection between the blues and Black gospel as it emerges in the early 20th century.

Finally, it is not clear who you consider to be the audience of this essay. The essay seems "chatty", focused on words that no longer have resonance in contemporary English or that do not seem worth recovering--which requires a different argument that your goal "in praise of lament."

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for these excellent comments and suggestions. I've responded in the following ways.

I have added some more material on the need for lament in Christian worship as well as more substance to the argument for how the chasm grew. 

Lines 179 and 359: Re: Saliers, yes, that chapter is formative but I've leaned into the argument of Worship Comes to its Senses for the theological/liturgical importance of lament.

Line 270: Fuller engagement with Brueggemann’s work...due to the length of the paper at this point, I've removed Brueggemann. In future iterations of this project, I can give space for a deeper engagement.

More specifically, lines 309-317:
Given the limits of this single essay, I am not able to add the nuance re: Watts that the reviewer desires at this point. Thus engagement with him has been reduced. In book form, absolutely. And I am grateful for the suggestions.

Line 43: Given the limits of this single essay, I am not able to add the nuance the reviewer desires at this point.

Line 137: My hope is that the connection to white supremacy is stronger at this point of revision.

Line 145ff: I've added more material re: African American songs in the revised paper.

I would consider my voice playful and conversational rather than "chatty." My audience is practitioners and students leading or planning to lead worship in contemporary settings. It is a fundamental aspect of my academic identity to reach out to this audience.

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a well-crafted argument that I believe adds a very valuable voice to the current discourse on sacred music in America. The article is a well-written and engaging read. The biggest thing that could strengthen this paper would be the addition of more concrete examples to bolster the smoothly-organized rhetorical flow of the argument, as well as more explanation at certain points for those readers who may not be intimately familiar with Christian history and scripture.

For example, I would love to see, somewhere in the first couple of sections of the article, parallel examples of lyrics of praise and lyrics of lament as found in both traditional and contemporary Christian music. A few quotes from the Biblical Psalms illustrating the use of lament by the Psalmist would also strengthen the argument.

Also, in the paragraph around 245-252, can you give us more concrete explanation? Don’t assume the reader’s immediate familiarity with specific Biblical Psalms by number, or their history. Instead, please quote or summarize Psalm 22, tell us about the original context for the writing of the psalm, and then explain how was it appropriated by the early Christian church. How is that psalm commonly used in the discourse today?

In section 4, can you give us a little more of a history of lament in Christian history? Were there points in Christian history (before the current American moment) where there was a rich tradition of singing lament as a part of worship, and how did that affect the dynamic of the church? 

A few other details:

Put the hymn text AFTER the Introduction heading

Regarding use of the word “choreograph” in 62, 92, 118, 333, 376, 413: if you’re going to use choreography and dance as a metaphor for intentionality in the workings of the congregation as body of Christ, please make that metaphor clear from the very first reference. Be sure that your reader knows that when you use the word “choreograph,” it is part of a metaphor regarding dance. Otherwise, the use of the word can be confusing.

110 – there’s a colon at the end of the paragraph: are we seeing a block quote, or a continuation of Everett’s commentary? Where does the author’s commentary take back over again)?  

134 re-visit 134 grammar—complete sentence? Just take out the “Because”

137-138 clarify saying they are not overtly antagonistic – strengthen that statement

144 redundant use of “inundating”

195 fix “is will”

367 “butts” in seats

366-368 : clarify grammar – add a comma and use an exclamation point rather than a question mark?

Overall I found this article to be well-written, persuasive, and enlightening.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for the reviewer's careful reading of the text and excellent suggestions for improvement. I've addressed the concerns in the revised copy and commented to the editor about where the format needs to be fixed (hymn placement, block quote from Everett).

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The author has substantially improve his/her paper. Now it is much more balanced and convincing. Now it is more scholarly while retaining its populist flavor.

Author Response

Thank you. The author's paper was strengthened by the reviewer's comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for this much improved essay. There are a few primarily editorial concerns, one substantive concern:

1. line 44: as indicated in the first review, there are more than one standard tunes for "When I survey", so you need to name the specific tune you are referencing. The two tunes in The United Methodist Hymnal are "Hamburg" and "Rockingham."

2. lines 109-111, please separate the three forms listed with a comma

3. line 209 "was more present" rather than "was to more present"

4. line 241 you mean more specifically "Protestant metrical Psalters", which is what the Bay Psalm Book was.

5. line 250-251 delete "the psalmody" and just say "the singing of Psalms"

6. Watts, Wesley and Newton wer 18th century, not 19th century.

7. line 259--there is no obvious connection between what you have argued to this point and white supremacy and Christian nationalism. You don't make a case for this connection in any way. You can delete that paragraph and the first sentence of the next paragraph up to "I cannot help" and the argument remains very clear. 

8. line 345 there is no reason to center the Magnificat text

Author Response

The author is grateful again for the reviewer's careful attention and direction. The essay is stronger thanks to this guidance. All comments have been addressed in the updated draft.