In Imagined space in Sacred Harp singing, Jonathon M. Smith writes about controlling divisiveness by limiting leaders addressing the class from the hollow square. Today, this is often presented and misrepresented as the standard historical practice which must be held as the norm. Yet, Smith himself acknowledges this is a teaching method imposed in modernity that does not actually square with historical practice.[i] On page 246, footnote 139, Smith writes:
“Documentary evidence suggests that this norm was regularly breeched in Sacred Harp singings in the Southeast throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by singers who addressed the class when called to lead. However, modern singing schools promote the ideal of refraining from speaking from the center of the square as an important historical precedent.”
Just because you can get up a singing camp to promote the views of a select group as normative does not change historical facts. In days gone by, when the standard practitioner of Sacred Harp was a Christian, no one tried to suppress testimonies in the square. They were offensive to none, with the possible exception of someone who went on and on with no end in sight! However, that was about the consumption of time, not the content of the talk. Today, many modern practitioners feel a special need to suppress such spiritual expressions, since they offend their worldview of unbelief. Somehow they are able to compartmentalize the sacred nature of the old Christian hymns in The Sacred Harp, but cannot abide a real-time expression of the same sacred nature made by living Christian witnesses. May God help us.
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