wmfinck wrote:Funny, Clifton is also writing about music, in his Watchman's Teaching Letter #192, which I just proofread last week. Guessing it will be out the week after I get back from New York.
I just read Clifton's Letter #192 tonight. Although a bit tediously "scientific" with Pavlov's experiments & study of beats and its effects on dogs ... which carries over to people, the further I read the more disturbed I was ... not about the letter ... but the wicked use of it planned with Nikolai Lenin to disrupt society. (I had heard something like this some time ago, but Clifton's letter made a clear case.)
When my children were teenagers, I read books about backward masking and the beat of music and its effects. Mark and Clifton's articles should be
must reading. It put things into better perspective for me. I was a senior in high school when we were invaded by the four from England, but music was having an effect before that. We had been sliding down that slippery slope for years ... it just had not become "hard core." Our nation was still culturally, if not actually, Christian.
My Dad played in a country-western band back in the 1940's (before he was drafted), and, I am sure it had some affect, but, by and large, there was still an innocence about most of grass-roots America ... those who listened to the music. For the musicians, there were the same pitfalls there are today, but the 1960's brought in a new era of sexual "freedom" for the groupies ... taking it to the debauched level we see today ... that is promoted by the media at every turn.
Mark is so right about the church music. Back in the late 1970's and early 1980's our family sang with choirs. The music director once played in rock bands. When the orchestra was first brought in, I do not remember drums, but eventually they made their way through the front door ... not for every service. (The choir director was a drummer ... so ... he played them sometimes.) I can still remember the day I thought ... Some of this music is causing feelings within that should not be happening when singing of the holiness of God. I never mentioned it to anybody back then because I thought it was probably just me ... and I felt embarrassed. Eventually ... I changed my tune ... meaning ... I could no longer support that kind of music in a church. Today the music in many churches is truly unholy , as the discussion here makes clear. Some of it troubles me because of the repetitiveness ... like one is doing a chant of some sort ... It makes me weary to sing such songs, and it seems hypnotic to some extent. (I have only visited such churches.)
Speaking of that drummer/choir director, a few years ago I learned about his son who had become a minister. Unfortunately, he "ministers" in an emergent setting. His Dad's music apparently reverted to the rock sound. That was sad news. The senior minister from our church from the 70's-80's was ousted for inappropriate behavior ... and one of the other minister's began a work that was associated with panentheism (not pantheism). I am not saying it was all the fault of the music, but once the slide downward begins, there must be something rotting up the line.
Elle