Newcomers in evangelical/pentecostal churches in the Netherlands stress the importance of worship music and singing in their relationship with God. The contemporary style of singing and musical performance of worship music create a sensory environment that stands in great contrast to the worship style in Dutch traditional Protestant mainline churches. In this chapter, worship music is approached as a practice of mediating divine presence and as a social process that transforms how believers understand their place within the world, allowing them to question how the world is ordered in terms of relationships between people and between an individual and God. Furthermore, I argue that the transnational character of evangelical/pentecostal worship music creates a potential deinstitutionalizing force, enabling worshippers to identify with a revivalist global community.
The impact of music and singing turned out to be a far more important issue than I expected in my research on the meaning of conversion for newcomers in evangelical/pentecostal (hereafter e/p) churches in the Netherlands.1 When converts spoke about intense religious experiences, they often recalled the time of praise and worship during the church service. Since most of the new visitors and recent converts had previous experiences in mainline Protestant churches, for them the contrast in musical style and genre between mainline churches and e/p churches was obvious: not only was the organ replaced by a full band, but the performative style and repertoire of songs exhibited a rupture with former church traditions. For those with no church background, the contemporary style and performance of the music often came as a total surprise, contrasting sharply with their preconceived ideas about church services and Christianity in general.
The ways in which music was brought up in the narratives of new believers indicates that music and singing can serve as important media for experiencing the divine. This raises the general question of how experiences of music and singing, due to their sensational appeal, invoke the presence of God and can be persuasive as a revitalizing force in the lives of former members of mainline churches and new believers. In order to answer these questions, I will discuss the contextual arrangement of music and singing in a Dutch e/p church. By investigating aesthetic forms and discourses of worship music, I will demonstrate how worshippers have access to distinct semiotic domains of meaning that enable them to both situate themselves within narratives and embody them at the same time.
I will start with a brief overview of the rise of e/p worship music in the Netherlands. Following a theoretical discussion on music as aesthetic form and the distinctive features of my approach to worship music, I will present ethnographic accounts of music and singing in an e/p church in the Amsterdam area, based on a year of ethnographic research in 2006–7.2 I will demonstrate how this church uses mass-mediated products and practices from the global Christian marketplace to create a musical world of its own, with a particular configuration of words, music, and performance. In the local context of this Dutch pentecostal church, globally circulating pentecostal styles of worship are incorporated, including both musical and performative styles. This underscores the dynamic relationship between the global and the local, often described as the process of “glocalization” (Robertson 1995). I will close this chapter with a discussion of the importance of aesthetics as one of the main modes of bonding in e/p communities.
Characteristic of Dutch Protestantism is the strong division between mainline Protestant churches and e/p churches. The differences include baptism practices (for example, infant baptism by sprinkling versus adult baptism by immersion), liturgy (psalms and hymns according to the church order versus contemporary worship music), and church leadership (professional clergy versus lay pastors) (Klaver 2008, 2011a). While e/p churches operated outside or at the margins of the established mainline Protestant churches until the 1950s, their song repertoire had been of great importance for mainline Protestant lay spirituality since the early part of the twentieth century. The influence of e/p songs—an early form of glocalization within Dutch Protestantism—began with the hymnal of Johannes de Heer, published in 1905.3 De Heer, inspired by the revival in Wales, translated an extensive number of English-language revival songs, such as those composed by Ira David Sankey (1840–1908) and drawn from the Salvation Army repertoire. Initially, his hymnal was used in evangelistic tent meetings and conferences, and over time it became the main hymnal used in e/p churches (Klaver 2011b, 189).
In the 1930s and 1940s, these songs became popular among lay Protestants through radio broadcasts. They were often sung in the private sphere of the home and in extra-liturgical settings such as youth associations and camp meetings. In spite of the wide acceptance of these songs, various Protestant churches were able to uphold their liturgical traditions and church orders free from e/p influences, as the songs were not integrated into the hymnal repertoire of Dutch mainline churches (Elsman 1995, 141).
As church membership declined after World War II, the mainline Protestant hymnal culture was challenged in different ways. Through the rise of new media such as radio, television, and records, new popular musical styles became accessible to the masses. In the wake of these developments, a new repertoire of Christian music was introduced by American evangelistic organizations such as Youth for Christ (Roeland 2009, 38). Characteristic features of the new Christian music included easily accessible tunes and contemporary language and style, which made the pieces more suitable for accompaniment by a guitar or praise band than an organ. With the growth of e/p churches in the Netherlands in the 1970s, the evangelistic organization Opwekking (translated as “Revival”) has, since 1972, initiated the spread of new worship songs through the annual release of recently written, but mostly translated, English worship songs (Smelik 2006, 174).4 From early on, the selection of new worship songs has been determined by a team of independent e/p revivalist preachers, worship leaders, and musicians, part of the Opwekking network. As a result, the Opwekking songs—currently numbering more than seven hundred—display the development of the Dutch e/p movement, as well as that within the English-speaking world, since most of the songs have been selected from abroad.5 In the early 1970s, worship songs by Scripture in Song (David and Dale Garratt, New Zealand) and Maranatha Music were introduced; in the 1980s and 1990s, many songs by Thank You Music, Integrity Music, and Mercy Publishers / Vineyard were distributed. More recently, Hillsong Publishing and worshiptogether.com have been the major sources for new worship songs.
The new songs introduced by Opwekking differed from the songs of Johannes de Heer by virtue of their interconnectedness with the rise of popular youth culture in the 1960s, introducing a countercultural subculture with the new idiom of pop music. According to Koenig, in the 1970s, the tradition of evangelical revival songs was transformed into the genre of contemporary “worship music”—a synthesis of popular music and the charismatic/pentecostal experience. This alteration in style brought about a change in e/p liturgy: so-called praise and worship time has become a defining feature of e/p worship services (Koenig 2008).
From early on, the Opwekking songs were well accepted by and integrated into Dutch e/p churches, and gradually Opwekking became fully glocalized, serving as the main worship song repertoire of the Dutch e/p movement at large. A recent development, observed since the mid-1990s, is the selective adoption of the Opwekking repertoire in some mainline Protestant churches during Sunday morning services. Although sometimes in seeming conflict with the formal church liturgy, these contemporary worship songs are often included in an attempt to meet the needs of e/p-oriented church members and the younger generation. The cautious acceptance of Opwekking songs serves as an important indicator of processes of evangelicalization within the mainline Protestant churches (Klaver and Versteeg 2007).
The introduction of contemporary worship music not only changed the musical repertoire within e/p churches but also brought about a shift in performative style. This includes, broadly speaking, the use of musical instruments and idioms that resemble contemporary styles of popular music, and, more importantly, the e/p view of worship and music as mediating practice. The narratives of newcomers in e/p churches reveal the importance of music and singing as constitutive practices for religious experience and the construction of meaning. This underscores the necessity that scholars pay attention to all that happens in worship, in addition to what is being said (Chaves 2004, 11). I will therefore approach music and singing from a phenomenological perspective, considering the ways in which people sing, make music, perform music, and select the songs they wish to sing. In the following section, I will discuss my main theoretical framework with regard to music and singing.
What happens during a time of worship and how participants give meaning to music and singing are complex questions to answer. Since one of the key features of e/p worship lies in its sensational appeal, I will approach music and singing as a semiotic practice that functions within perceptible experience by virtue of its material properties. Following recent works that emphasize the “materiality” of religion—that is, the value attributed to bodies, things, texts, and gestures (Keane 2007; Meyer and Houtman 2012)—I regard music as part of a larger semiotic domain of meaning, encompassing doctrines and ideas that not only are expressed in material forms but also generate new meanings by the constitutive power of social practices. This perspective on worship music as a formative semiotic practice leads me to the following issues at play in the process of meaning making.
First, the interpretation and experience of worship music as a semiotic practice draw attention to the material qualities of sound and rhythm and therefore to bodily sensations that are experienced through embodied processes of learning and socialization. As Classen (1993), Howes (2003), and others have observed, the senses are socially and historically organized and influenced by the period of time in which people live. In this respect, the larger sociocultural development of the sensorium, as well as the contextual nature of sensory experience, is at play in the sound formation of the body. With regard to worship music, this prompts me to focus on the ways in which the body is mobilized through music and singing. In contrast to mainline Protestant churches, e/p churches create a distinct religious sensory environment through the integration of a contemporary musical idiom and the use of electronic media.
The importance of the social formation of the body and the senses leads me to the second issue: music is intrinsically connected to performance (Frith 1998; Small 1998). As one cannot disassociate music from enactment and performance, processes of meaning making will be determined by all those involved in the act of making music. Small captures the performative aspects of music as action in the use of a verb rather than a noun by introducing the concept of “musicking.” He states that “the act of musicking establishes in the place where it is happening a set of relationships, and it is in those relationships that the meaning of the act lies” (1998, 13). In musicking, these social and relational aspects are not merely evoked and imagined as expressions of longing and desire, but experienced as real: we experience the world as it is, and through the experience, we learn about the world as it should be. This understanding of music as enactment implies that music—as embodied performance—encourages the formation of identities. As such, instances of collective sensual arousal are crucial to social bonding and community building (Durkheim [1912] 1995).
A third issue with regard to worship music is the question of how one is to approach songs. Though music and words are inseparable in worship music, songs require separate analysis of lyrics and musical setting. In his study on congregational singing, Adnams (2008) focuses on the different ways in which lyrics are appropriated by individual worshippers, showing how the singing of hymns—as opposed to contemporary worship songs—presupposes a different relation to texts. Different types of songs posit a particular intentionality on the part of the singer. Adnams states that “song is the inseparable experience of music and word and in this marriage, many things happen to words when they are sung” (116). In fact, the meaning of words can even turn negative if texts are perceived as inauthentic or unbiblical. From a different angle, Sample (1998) shows how the meaning of words is affected by the use of electronic culture in popular music, suggesting that meaning emerges as an outcome of the convergence of different sensorial experiences. Versteeg convincingly demonstrates, based on extensive ethnographic research in a Dutch Vineyard church, the relation between worship music and the ideology of the pop musical form (2010, 232). He reveals the congruence between romantic ideology as found in pop songs and the charismatic Vineyard discourse as, in Frith’s terms, “formulas of love” (1998, 161). Therefore, the meaning of worship is not primarily found in the text of the lyrics but produced in the performance and musical style.
These three dimensions of the semiotic domain of music—namely, the body, performance, and the relation between words and music—lead me to focus simultaneously on the intersections between the different dimensions. In doing so, I consider the fact that the meaning and relevance of lyrics are contextually arranged in relation to the other performative features. In the following ethnographic account, I regard the experience of music and singing as being embedded within a number of narratives that dialogue with the worshipper. This constellation goes beyond the lyrics; the worshipper is physically surrounded by particular sounds that have the potential to bridge different domains of meaning. Moreover, as the worshipper is presented with a particular order of songs, certain song elements are stressed through repetition. The worship is thus performed within a specific configuration of musicians, vocalists, and audience members, in addition to a wide range of material expressions (or media). All of these different aspects have the potential to evoke emotions, moods, and memories and are involved in the dialogical process of meaning making through worship music.
The Living Gospel Church (hereafter LGC) was founded in the 1980s by members of a charismatic Bible study group that split off from a local Dutch Reformed church. On average, around seven hundred congregants now attend the Sunday morning service. The church owns and is housed in a former school building that has been transformed into a multifunctional church complex, including a large auditorium with a stage and extensive multimedia equipment.
From the beginning, the church has exhibited an international outlook on the world, shown in its receptive attitude toward international renewal movements. In the mid-1990s, the LGC attracted national attention, as it was known as the place to experience the “Toronto Blessing” in the Netherlands.6 The church’s location close to the national airport, family relations across the Atlantic, and many transnational business relations have fostered transnational connections among traveling pastors, revivalist preachers, Christian bands, and the LGC. In fact, the LGC has been recognized nationally for its use of contemporary worship music, as one of the first Dutch Christian worship bands was formed in this church in the 1980s.
The Sunday worship service at the LGC has the character of a spontaneous celebration and exhibits an informal liturgy. The band usually consists of four male instrumentalists—a drummer, bassist, and two guitarists (electric and acoustic)—and two or three female vocalists in addition to the worship leader. The worship leader takes center stage, while the vocalists stand on the left side of the stage. The drum is positioned on the right, and the guitarists stand behind the worship leader. The lyrics of the songs are projected in Dutch and English on a large screen centered above the stage.
The sound of the worship service is dominated by the drums, bass, and guitars. Generally, the volume of the music is rather loud; as the room fills with sound, little sonic space is left for the congregation itself. The worshippers are drowned out by the band, and consequently it is difficult to hear oneself singing. The band performs according to the aesthetic rules of pop music, in terms of volume, performance, and audience reaction, creating a complete and powerful soundscape (Adnams 2008, 225). Here, the mixing of popular music and contemporary worship practices becomes tenuous; the musicians’ performance assumes certain expectations of the relationship between stage and audience. Volume plays an important role in managing this power dynamic and bridging the gap between stage and audience.
The upbeat opening song acts as a call to worship. It invites and encourages the audience members to forget their mundane sorrows and situations and directs them to focus on God who is good, faithful, and worthy of all praise. The structure of the worship time consists of a successive progression of songs and musical styles according to the so-called tabernacle model (Cornwall 1983), based on the metaphoric movement of worshippers entering the temple in Jerusalem from the outer courts, moving into the inner courts, and eventually meeting God in the center of the temple, the holy place. This particular worship scheme offers the audience a structure for experience. In e/p worship music, a stylistic difference between praise and worship is recognized by worship leaders and the worshippers themselves: “Praise tends to be emotional while worship is devotional, and [praise] is often loudly exuberant while worship is more apt to be quietly exultant” (Cornwall 1983, 151). Whereas praise songs are “about God”—who he is and what he has done—worship songs are sung to God as a direct response from the heart of the worshipper. In practice, however, this distinction is not always clear, because the usual correspondence between the lyrics and musical style is not always upheld. The overall purpose of worship is to experience an immediate and intimate encounter with God—“to be in his presence.” As Tim, the LGC’s worship leader, explains, “Leading worship is like taking a group of people on a journey. We want to bring them to the place where we can be together with God, so that your heart is connected to the heart of God.”7
The expectation that worship leads to an experience of divine encounter involves a high level of participation from the worshippers. Their “successful” response is reflected in the performance of the worship leader. According to Tim, as a worship leader, “you are aware of what God wants to do and at the same time observe whether the audience comes along or not.” He fulfills a central role onstage and communicates with the audience members as he frequently encourages them to praise God with their voices by singing wholeheartedly and enthusiastically. At the same time, the worship leader communicates with God by praising him during short interludes between songs and during the singing and by voicing short prayers such as “Fill us, Lord” and “More, more of you.” The worship leader also directs the worship team in how to perform songs at particular moments during the service. With finger and hand gestures, he occasionally signals for the team to repeat the entire chorus or a certain line of a song. According to Tim, these improvisations depend on spontaneous divine inspiration, which is achieved through attuning one’s inner ear to the voice of the Spirit during the time of worship. However, in practice, the worship leader adjusts his songs to enhance a certain response from the audience, based on a normative understanding of progressive bodily engagement of the congregation throughout the service. First, during the time of praise, the ordinary body is transformed into an exuberant body, as observed in bodily movements such as clapping, the raising of hands, jumping, swaying, and dancing with happy, smiling faces. This is followed by the time of worship, when the outwardly focused, enthusiastic body is gradually transformed into the inwardly focused devoted body, expressed in postures such as closed eyes, outstretched arms and hands, kneeling, or even lying prostrate on the floor.
During the worship service, bodily movements serve as powerful indices for identifying the presence of God. Intriguingly, while Tim explains that the worshippers reflect what God is doing during worship, he himself mobilizes them in such a way that their visible bodily movements lead to the interpretation that “God is moving the audience.” The interplay of listening to the inner voice of the Spirit and, at the same time, watching the audience to see what God is doing is primarily based on the expectation of particular bodily responses from the congregation.
The question arises of how authoritative models of bodily responses are generated and informed. While live performances of national and international worship bands at conferences and concerts offer performative models of worship, the technological development of the Internet provides an additional venue for authoritative worship styles. As I was searching on the Internet for the composer of the song “This Is How We Overcome,” I came across a YouTube video of its performance by the megachurch Hillsong in Sydney.8 I was struck by how similar the bodily gestures exhibited in the Australian church were to those in the LGC: the turning of the body in a full circle while raising the right arm and pointing a forefinger in the air when singing the words “you have turned,” as well as the rhythmic jumping and moving of both outstretched arms with the palms of the hands turned outward at the phrase “this is how we overcome.” The reason for this marked similarity was confirmed in my conversation with the LGC’s worship leader. According to Tim, in his preparation for the worship services and in his selection of new songs, worship DVDs, in particular the Hillsong productions, serve as important media for inspiration. Mimicking the bodily expression seen on these DVDs may not be a conscious process. Rather, since viewing such a DVD involves the intersection of listening to music and watching a particular form of bodily expression, an interconnection between sound and image is created. Furthermore, the image of the “mega,” enhanced by the way in which Hillsong invites the viewer to be part of a huge audience, evokes e/p images of revival and embodies a seemingly tangible presence of God (Goh 2008). In the past, the imitation of sound has often been made possible by the distribution of cassettes and later CDs. However, exceeding time-bound and space-bound live performances, the technological emergence of DVDs and the Internet has made both e/p music and prescribed bodily performances available on demand; they are globally enhanced, mediated, and shared. This global flow and circulation of worship music and practices demonstrates the critical role of media in the globalization of religions (Csordas 2009, 6).
Thus, it is clear that the worship leader’s task—next to leading the worship team—is to bring about a transformation in the audience in terms of atmosphere and emotional engagement, resulting in the pre-scripted charismatic form of bodily expression that the audience recognizes and experiences as an authentic encounter with God. Paradoxically, a particular, globally spread aesthetic form becomes authoritative as an index for the presence of God and serves as the authentication of the desired experience.
So far, I have focused my attention on the performative aspects of worship, but I will now turn to an investigation of songs and lyrics.9 The Sunday services at LGC display not only a large variety of songs but also a high turnover of new songs. In addition to the latest releases from Opwekking, other resources are readily tapped; these include the latest songs released by Hillsong Church in Sydney and new songs written by international Christian music artists and worship leaders such as Chris Tomlin, Tim Hughes, and the band Delirious? Obviously, in the selection of songs, there is a fascination with the new that is intrinsically bound to the revivalist identity of the church. The longing for a time of refreshing and special anointing is reflected in “Touching Heaven, Changing Earth,” 10 a song that was included in one out of three services on average during my year of field research:
We will seek your face almighty God
Turn and pray for you to heal our land
Father let revival start with me
Then every heart will know your kingdom comes,
Send revival, send revival, send revival to us
As part of my research, I conducted an analysis of themes in LGC’s songs, and I found that the foremost theme of a number of these songs is that of revival. This theme strongly reflects the identity of the church, as it has been a center for national revival. These revival songs portray God as the coming king who will descend from heaven and bring revival, a depiction connected to eschatological notions of the dawning of the kingdom of God, as described in the song “God Is Great”:11
All creation gives you praise
You alone are truly great
You alone are God who reigns for eternity
God is great and his praise fills the earth, fills the heavens
And your name will be praised through all the world
The image of God as king, as ruler of the earth, and as creator of the universe was a recurrent theme in the LGC’s songs, stressing the powerful transcendence of God. The up-tempo musical idiom of these songs and the energetic, vigorous, and loud musical interpretation of the band created a soft rock sound and encouraged an atmosphere of joyous and positive celebration.
A second theme in a number of songs emphasizes individual transformation and conversion. Here, Jesus is addressed as the redeemer of the believer’s soul. The new life found in him is celebrated in festive songs with phrases such as “you turned my mourning into dancing” (“Touching Heaven, Changing Earth”) and “I know he rescued my soul” (“My Redeemer Lives”).12 More contemplative songs stress the crucifixion, suffering, and death of Jesus as the price paid for the sins of humankind.
More difficult to categorize is a third type of song that emphasizes the special name of Jesus in lyrics such as these:13
The name of Jesus
We exalt the name of Jesus
There is power, there is power in the name of Jesus
There is hope, there is hope in the name of Jesus
The name of Jesus
The narrative structure of these songs is rather meager, consisting of short phrases that are repeated over and over again. Eventually, through the practice of repetition, these fragments force a wedge between the intention of the singer and the uttered musical phrase itself, as the powerful cadence establishes a sense of flow. As these songs are sung, the words become almost independent from the music. As performative utterances (Austin 1962), they take on an aura of objective and transformative power. From the perspective of the worshippers, the proclamation of particular words is related to the church’s specific understanding of “spiritual warfare” and the effect of spoken words in the spiritual world. This category of songs, which employ powerful words and emphasize the name of Jesus, seems to point in particular to the understanding that words have a quality independent of the intention of the singer.
During the worship service, these three categories of songs are, in practice, not necessarily patterned according to theme; rather, they are mixed according to successive rhythms, from the fastest to the slowest. However, a fourth category of songs, which concerns the intimate relationship between the worshipper and God, is most often found at the end of the worship service. While in the other songs the worshipper addresses God as “he” or “you” (for example, “Lord You Are Good”),14 these songs switch to the “I” perspective of the worshipper and metaphorically speak of the love relationship between God and the individual. The emphasis on intimacy and love is, at the same time, connected to the holiness of God. While holiness might imply a sense of hierarchy and induce reflection on the unworthy state of humanity, the desire to be in the presence of God and the assurance of his acceptance through grace seem to overcome this tension. It is in these songs—for example, “Draw Me Close to You”15 and “Jesus Lover of My Soul”16—that the romantic ideology of the pop idiom and the worship song merge in an experience of intimacy, warmth, and closeness with the sacred.
Worship in the LGC church exhibits a double focus: it stresses the importance of being in the presence of God and also reflects a strong desire for change and renewal. If worship and singing are together regarded as an enactment of relationship (Small 1998), the relation between music and identity construction comes to the forefront. Music enables worshippers to position themselves within imaginative narratives (Sample 1998, 101). They begin to ask, “Who am I?,” “Who am I in relation to those around me?,” and “Who am I in relation to God and in relation to the world?” The act of singing facilitates reflection on one’s life while simultaneously making the enactment of one’s life possible.
On an individual level, participants say that they easily connect to the contemporary style of worship music because it greatly resembles popular music in everyday life. This contrasts with the musical style of the mainline Protestant tradition. Furthermore, the structural ordering of e/p worship embodies the importance of the recurrent transformation of the individual. Guided by the worship leader, each worshipper is expected to move toward the presence of God, which potentially leads to a divine encounter by means of active and expressive bodily participation. The importance of sound and movement, together with the rock style of the band, tends to suppress the song text, as hearing one’s own voice while singing becomes difficult at times and the singing of the vocalists blends into the band’s overall sound.
While the themes of the songs do not necessarily display cohesion, the LGC’s model of worship reflects a progressive journey into the presence of God. The congregation is directed from a more disengaged appeal to God as “he,” through a more personal address to God as “you,” to an eventual subjective turn to the “I” perspective of the worshipper, signaling a migration of the sacred from transcendence to immanence. As this progression is accompanied by changes in musical style, from celebratory and upbeat tempos to softer and mellower sounds, the words and the music blend together, enforcing a particular mood and sentiment among the audience.
Worshippers recall the encounter with the sacred as an immediate and unmediated experience. However, processes of mediation are always at play in the domain of religion (Meyer 2009; Meyer and Houtman 2012), because the sacred requires some media forms in order to be experienced and understood by believers. As this account of the worship service illustrates, the encounter with the sacred is mediated by the interplay of musical style, performance, and words, mobilizing the body in a sensory regime, submitting the body to successive phases of engagement, and surrounding the body with lyrics that underscore the transformation of not only the worshipper but also the sacred.
The revivalist theme and worship practices at the LGC emphasize the desired identity of the church while providing insight into its relation to the past. In the aftermath of the revivalist period (in this case instigated by the Toronto Blessing), the church has faced difficulties in establishing its identity. Its fascination with the new reflects a previous attempt to deal with tensions between the desired state of the church and its contemporary context. The continuous introduction of new songs underscores the deprecation of traditions and the past and reveals a global orientation, expressed by being in touch with new centers of revival through the field of music. Noteworthy is the association of the new with the presence of God, which draws attention to the extraordinary and, by contrast, runs the risk of desacralizing the mundane and everyday experiences of life. Paradoxically, the use of popular musical sounds and performative style in worship creates the possibility of sacralizing the everyday life. Noteworthy in this respect is the role of new media, which enforces a transnational mode of expression that is accessible and normative across e/p branches of Christianity on a global scale.
The importance of worship music and singing for believers reveals that suitable aesthetic forms are powerful means of creating commitments and modes of bonding. Embodied participation during the time of worship is not just an expression of commitment but, at the same time, operates as a mode of binding, as the act itself generates commitment and convictions. In addition to its emotive character, this form of community making is based on shared sensorial sensibilities between people rather than formal ties of church membership or other “official,” observable forms of commitment. This mode of bonding not only involves the actual community of worshippers but also has the potential to evoke a sense of community within a larger imagined and relational network. Similar to Maffesoli’s (1996) understanding of community, which is based on the sharing of aesthetic styles, worship music creates an imagined community (B. Anderson 1983) that is stretched over churches, conference sites, and retreats—and has a global outreach. The concept of “aesthetic community” has been introduced by Bauman (2001) to describe the fluid and event-like character of new forms of communities closely linked through entertainment; Bauman believes, however, that these communities are doomed to disappoint due to their lack of binding power (71). In contrast to what Bauman suggests, the instantaneousness and fluidity of the worship experience can be fruitfully applied to a new understanding of community as comprising powerful modes of binding evoked across local and even national boundaries. The intertwinement of narratives—rooted in the Christian tradition—and aesthetics has the power to move individuals beyond their own horizons and merge them into a larger world of faith. Therefore, the aesthetics of the e/p worship style operates as an important identity marker in the global e/p movement and, as a sensational form, “governs a sensory engagement of humans with the divine and each other and generates particular sensibilities” (Meyer 2009, 13).
1. My Ph.D. research (Klaver 2011b) was conducted in two independent Dutch churches: an evangelical church influenced by the seeker church movement, which was initiated by Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago (Sargeant 2000), and a neo-pentecostal or charismatic church loosely aligned with transnational revivalist networks. Both churches represent contemporary evangelicalism as Shibley describes it: they are world affirming and employ new organizational forms (1998, 72). Shibley divides these churches into noncharismatic evangelical churches and evangelical/pentecostal churches, based on a different understanding of the presence of the Holy Spirit. In the Dutch context, the connotation and content of the term “evangelical” is limited in comparison to the English-speaking world. In general, “evangelical” is used to denote movements and churches outside of the Catholic and Protestant mainline churches. From this perspective, Dutch pentecostal churches, established since 1907, are considered to be part of Dutch evangelicalism. However, the rise of the charismatic renewal movement in the 1970s, influenced by the pentecostal experience but within the boundaries of mainline churches, points to the difficulties in definitions. Since the 1980s, the term “charismatic” has often been used by newer or neo-pentecostal churches to distinguish themselves from denominational pentecostal churches such as the Assemblies of God (cf. A. Anderson 2004, 158). Since the 1990s, there has been an observable spread of the Pentecostal understanding of the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Dutch evangelical movement, including evangelical churches. Thus, I use the term “evangelical/pentecostal” because a clear theological distinction can no longer be made when discussing contemporary worship music.
2. From September 2006 to July 2007, I attended most of the church meetings and participated in courses and small groups. In addition to informal meetings and social gatherings, I conducted twenty-five life-history interviews. Since the research was conducted in Dutch, the quotations used in this chapter have been translated into English.
3. Barbara Lange has remarked upon a parallel instance of glocalization of nineteenth-century gospel hymns among Romani pentecostals in Hungary. For further discussion, see Lange (2003, 131–48).
4. The introduction of new songs takes place at the annual Opwekking Pentecost Conference, a three-day Christian festival. This conference started in 1974 and attracted more than sixty thousand visitors from mainline, evangelical, and pentecostal churches in 2014.
5. New worship songs composed by Dutch songwriters have increasingly numbered among Opwekking’s selections.
6. The Toronto Blessing was a sensational and controversial charismatic revival movement. See Poloma (2003) and A. Anderson (2004, 162–65).
7. Quotations from Tim are based on personal conversation.
8. “This Is How We Overcome,” by Reuben Morgan, ©Integrity’s Hosanna! Music 1998. See “This Is How We Overcome Hillsong” (2009).
9. I made an inventory and categorized the songs sung during fifteen Sunday services. On average, eight songs were sung per service, and sixty-two different songs were counted.
10. “Touching Heaven, Changing Earth,” by Reuben Morgan, ©Integrity’s Hosanna! Music 1997.
11. “God Is Great,” by Marty Sampson and Hillsong Publishing, ©Integrity Media Inc. 2001.
12. “My Redeemer Lives,” by Reuben Morgan and Hillsong Publishing, ©Integrity Media Inc. 1998.
13. My translation from Dutch to English. The song “De naam van Jesus” is sung in Dutch, but the church does not know the author. I have not been able to identify the author or publisher of the song (I also searched for an English version).
14. “Lord You Are Good,” by Israel Houghton, ©Integrity’s Praise! Music 2001.
15. “Draw Me Close to You,” by Kelly Carpenter, ©Mercy/Vineyard Publishing 1994.
16. “Jesus Lover of My Soul,” by Daniel Grul, John Ezzy, and Steve McPherson, ©Hillsong Publishing 1992.
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