Music, Theology, and Justice

Edited by Michael O'Connor; Hyun-Ah Kim and Christina Labriola - Contributions by Awet Iassu Andemicael; C. Michael Hawn; Maeve Louise Heaney; Chelsea Hodge; Michael J. Iafrate; Ella Johnson; Hyun-Ah Kim; Christina Labriola; Ann Loades; Bruce T. Morrill; Michael O'Connor; Michael Taylor Ross; Don E. Saliers; Jeremy E. Scarbrough and Jesse Smith

Music does not make itself. It is made by people: professionals and amateurs, singers and instrumentalists, composers and publishers, performers and audiences, entrepreneurs and consumers. In turn, making music shapes those who make it—spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally, socially, politically, economically—for good or ill, harming and healing. This volume considers the social practice of music from a Christian point of view. Using a variety of methodological perspectives, the essays explore the ethical and doctrinal implications of music-making. The reflections are grouped according to the traditional threefold ministry of Christ: prophet, priest, and shepherd: the prophetic role of music, as a means of articulating protest against injustice, offering consolation, and embodying a harmonious order; the pastoral role of music: creating and sustaining community, building peace, fostering harmony with the whole of creation; and the priestly role of music: in service of reconciliation and restoration, for individuals and communities, offering prayers of praise and intercession to God.
Using music in priestly, prophetic, and pastoral ways, Christians pray for and rehearse the coming of God’s kingdom—whether in formal worship, social protest, concert performance, interfaith sharing, or peacebuilding. Whereas temperance was of prime importance in relation to the ethics of music from antiquity to the early modern period, justice has become central to contemporary debates. This book seeks to contribute to those debates by means of Christian theological reflection on a wide range of musics: including monastic chant, death metal, protest songs, psalms and worship music, punk rock, musical drama, interfaith choral singing, Sting, and Daft Punk.

Lexington Books

Pages: 250 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-4985-3866-4 • Hardback • July 2017 • $123.00 • (£95.00)

978-1-4985-3868-8 • Paperback • February 2020 • $47.99 • (£37.00)

978-1-4985-3867-1 • eBook • July 2017 • $45.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Music / Religious / Christian, Music / Religious / Hymns, Religion / Christian Theology / General, Religion / Ethics, Religion / Theology

Music, Theology, and Justice

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Music does not make itself. It is made by people: professionals and amateurs, singers and instrumentalists, composers and publishers, performers and audiences, entrepreneurs and consumers. In turn, making music shapes those who make it—spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally, socially, politically, economically—for good or ill, harming and healing. This volume considers the social practice of music from a Christian point of view. Using a variety of methodological perspectives, the essays explore the ethical and doctrinal implications of music-making. The reflections are grouped according to the traditional threefold ministry of Christ: prophet, priest, and shepherd: the prophetic role of music, as a means of articulating protest against injustice, offering consolation, and embodying a harmonious order; the pastoral role of music: creating and sustaining community, building peace, fostering harmony with the whole of creation; and the priestly role of music: in service of reconciliation and restoration, for individuals and communities, offering prayers of praise and intercession to God.
Using music in priestly, prophetic, and pastoral ways, Christians pray for and rehearse the coming of God’s kingdom—whether in formal worship, social protest, concert performance, interfaith sharing, or peacebuilding. Whereas temperance was of prime importance in relation to the ethics of music from antiquity to the early modern period, justice has become central to contemporary debates. This book seeks to contribute to those debates by means of Christian theological reflection on a wide range of musics: including monastic chant, death metal, protest songs, psalms and worship music, punk rock, musical drama, interfaith choral singing, Sting, and Daft Punk.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 250 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-4985-3866-4 • Hardback • July 2017 • $123.00 • (£95.00)

978-1-4985-3868-8 • Paperback • February 2020 • $47.99 • (£37.00)

978-1-4985-3867-1 • eBook • July 2017 • $45.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Music / Religious / Christian, Music / Religious / Hymns, Religion / Christian Theology / General, Religion / Ethics, Religion / Theology

Author

Michael O’Connor is associate professor at St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto.
Hyun-Ah Kim is fellow of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies in the University of Toronto, and Hardenberg fellow at Johannes a Lasco Bibliothek.
Christina Labriola is doctoral candidate at Regis College, Toronto School of Theology.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part One: A Prophetic Role for Music: Protest and Liberation
Chapter One: Turning Hymns into Protest: Zilphia Horton and the Role of Musical Memory in Labor in the New Deal Era
Chapter Two: Punk Rock and/as Liberation Theology
Chapter Three: Mercy, Music, and the Prophetic Voice of Theology: Jon Sobrino’s Extra Pauperes Nulla Salus
Chapter Four: A Prophetic Role for Music: A Response and Synthesis
Part Two: A Pastoral Role for Music: Creating Community
Chapter Five: Sacred Love: The (Eco)Theology of Sting
Chapter Six: Music, Religion, and Peacebuilding: The Pontanima Choir of Sarajevo
Chapter Seven: Breaking Stereotypes and Building Bridges: Nihilism, Lament, And Theodicy Within The Extreme Metal Music Culture
Chapter Eight: A Pastoral Role For Music: Sacramental and Salvific Powers
Part Three: A Priestly Role for Music: Reconciliation and Restoration
Chapter Nine: Random Access Liturgies: Daft Punk as Robotic Priests Restoring Humanity
Chapter Ten: Recalling the Original Harmony of Paradise: The Nexus of Music, Ethics, and Spirituality in Hildegard of Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum
Chapter Eleven: The Nightingale of Christ’s Redemption Song: Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Musical Apostolate
Chapter Twelve: Music as Theology: Singing Prophetic Truth, Sounding the Reign of God
Chapter Thirteen: A Priestly Role for Music: Concluding Reflection

Reviews

This is a much-needed volume. As the theology and music conversation develops, it is all too easy to forget the embeddedness of music in webs of social interaction, including the struggle for justice. An imaginative, sophisticated and highly readable collection.
— Jeremy Begbie, Duke University

What can music tell us about the nature of Christian justice? Music, Theology, and Justice teaches us in a probing set of compellingly argued essays spanning the middle ages to the present, from Hildegard to Daft Punk and Mechthild of Hackeborn to Sting…a significant contribution to the growing interdisciplinary field of music theology and an incisive exploration of inter-related concepts, histories and disciplines.
— Bennett Zon, Durham University

This is a deeply moving and strikingly original collection of essays, offering eloquent testimony to the transformative power of music as an agent of Christian ministry. The editors’ approach to organizing their far-ranging materials according to the three Old Testament ministerial roles of prophet, shepherd, and priest as embodied in Christ is brilliant, creating a cohesive and compelling demonstration of the profound interlace between music, theology, and justice across an astonishingly wide span of space, time, and musical style. From medieval Germany to modern Bosnia, from plainsong to punk rock, the thirteen contributors chart music’s potent ethical capacity to enact, express, and empower positive spiritual and social change.
— M. Jennifer Bloxam, Williams College

Music, Theology, and Justice

Music, Theology, and Justice

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