Singing Convention Reflections

“Sacred Harp” is part of my life story. In the beginning, only peripherally, in the sense of it being my family’s life story into which I was unwillingly and unknowingly brought. As a kid, I remember liking certain types of songs, even preferring certain styles in our church book over others – or perhaps intuitively knowing that the old hymns had a depth of soul not as obvious in many of the newer songs. The Sacred Harp book contained Christian words, the singers were Christians, and the singings were Christian gatherings of praise and worship.[i] That is the three-legged foundation of my Sacred Harp experience. As the news of and participation in the Sacred Harp Conventions began to spread over the last 50 or so years, the same cannot be said to continue. Things have changed. While singings in some places remain distinctly Christian, singings in other places are distinctly non-Christian (except for using a songbook with Christians words!)

How did we get from there to here? Beginning around the 1970s, the knowledge of the art and style of Sacred Harp singing began to take hold. People outside the traditional singing areas began to take notice and take interest. As an evangelist for Sacred Harp, Hugh McGraw traveled the country making converts. He taught the basics of the tradition – how to sing, how to hold conventions, and such like. However, you can teach people the mechanics of a tradition, but cannot just teach people into the Christian spirituality of the tradition.[ii]

Over the years many people were converted to the music and its traditions, but not converted to the hymns and their teachings. As things progressed, these newly converted singers began to host their own singings and conventions. The song book would spread north, east, and west – eventually crossing the ocean to regions beyond. Sacred Harp singers rejoiced that the old way of singing they held dear – and some thought was dying – was now flourishing around the world. But, weren’t we missing one part of the old way of singing? Converts came to the singing element, but not the biblical element. How did they sing the Lord’s song “in a strange land,” so to speak? How do the lost sing “I never shall forget the day, when Jesus washed my sins away” when they do not know, or even believe in, that day? How do they sing “Salvation! O the joyful sound” when they have never experienced the joy, the “pleasure,” and “sovereign balm” of it?

Disregarding this disconnect, Sacred Harp leaders begin to put unbelievers (however nice persons and good singers they might be) into places of leadership. They taught at camps, sat on boards and committees, and were otherwise elevated to places of leadership with (and sometimes above) their Christian counterparts. 

What caused all this, or brought it into ascendancy? In the 60s and 70s many older, traditional singers believed that this singing, the Sacred Harp, was a dying art. Sad to see it go, they were susceptible to welcoming in newcomers without the proper vetting, or teaching them to respect the tradition completely as they should. (Of course, people could even conform to all the outward traditions without any inward change.) One of our problems was the siren song of vanity. We were flattered and enamored that outsiders were so interested in the Sacred Harp music. We were used to expecting disdain from these classes of people—about something that’s been so close to our hearts, so important to us, but somewhat on the periphery of even our own society. It was looked on as old fogey, odd. Even children and grandchildren of singers might ask, “Why do they keep singing that old stuff?”

The work of Hugh McGraw brought outsiders in, making pilgrimages to the South—and they found their Mecca of Sacred Harp. However, most of them did not convert to the teachings of the book of their Mecca. Pilgrims were polite and respectful, and even sought (some of) the old paths. Eventually the scales tipped, and lack of respect and disdain began to be shown by some. They were neither rebuked nor clearly told that they were not properly following the decorum of Sacred Harp singing (by that I mean not even outwardly by that time). I remember meeting a preacher near Henegar, the pastor of a church where they used to hold a singing. He was frustrated by the disrespect or dress (or both) of singers who came to their church house. He said something about it. Some of the local singers got offended at him rather than taking the side of Sacred Harp and Christian decorum. It is probable that the pastor could have handled the situation in a better way than he did, but, at least in theory, the Christian singers among the singing class should have generally been in agreement more with what he thought was the proper way to behave oneself in the house of God than agreeing with how the outsiders practiced.[iii]

So, moving on, we, as those possibly practicing “a dying art,” were flattered by those who came. Pride got in the way of moving forward in the same fashion we always had, and of requiring the participation of nontraditional singers to conform to that practice.  And we know what pride does, don’t we? (Proverbs 16:18)

An integral part of our tradition is that it is comprised of Christian music, with Christian words, by Christian people. The songbook thrived for generations in churches, communities, and families that were Christian. The growing number of nontraditional singers simply thought of Sacred Harp as folk music that they liked, and the words were immaterial (and some traditional singers—falsely to our tradition—told them to not be concerned with the words). However, the longer unbelievers participated, some came to show their dislike of the words of the hymns—wanted to change some of the words, wanted to change some of the songs, would not sing certain songs, wanted some songs to be taken out of the book. They have appropriated our culture so long that they think it is theirs, and we have loved to have it so (Jeremiah 5:31). Have we not now arrived at a time when unbelievers realize they have power they can wield? And are wielding it?

It might be well to stop to consider that all churches do not have the same approach to how to worship with others – whether Christians with different beliefs, or those they do not recognize as Christians. Some are more ecumenical than others. Some are more separatist than others. (But most of us do not think our church is the only people going to heaven.) Therefore, there’s not really a one-size-fits-all explanation or description for all Sacred Harp singers on how they as Christians see their worship together with others at Sacred Harp singings. More of this will need to wait for another time.[v] However, I will add that I believe there are things that we traditional Sacred Harp singers have never really thought out—never thought out because it was never really necessary. The singing conventions were organized by Christians who came together to sing and worship God, to praise God, to sing about the things they believe in common that they believe the Bible teaches. When a mass group of unbelievers, some of them even antagonistic towards Christ and Christianity, come together with us to sing, it creates whole new complexities that we never considered in the old days. It’s past time to consider them.

There is a wide divide that all must admit exists, regardless of what you think of it. There is an elephant in the room. Don’t ignore it; don’t pretend if we don’t talk about then it is not really there. Knowing the situation that we’ve gotten ourselves into in the Sacred Harp community—we should recognize and admit we have made mistakes. On both sides. Here is one example, related to the incident mentioned above: if it was the decorum in a particular church for women to wear dresses, not wear pants or shorts or whatever, it would have been good and right for singers to inform visitors of what is expected in that regard when they came there. That would have saved both an offense to the church and embarrassment to the visitors, and more anger and animosity all around. We have not done well in that regard. A larger problem is non-Christian behavior that now goes even as far as mockery of Christian hymns and Christian beliefs. (See yesterday’s post for an example of a textual travesty to an old Christian hymn, and to know we are not merely tilting at windmills.)[vi] We let the camel’s nose under the tent with smaller things, and now the whole camel is moving in.

Endnotes:

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[i] As East Texas Sacred Harp Convention president M. S. Steger wrote, I can recognize that some people may have followed singings “for the loaves and fishes.” However, this did not determine the character of the singings, which were distinctly Christian (and almost always held in church houses).
[ii] You can teach them about it, but you cannot give it to them by teaching about it.
[iii] At the time, I thought the preacher was being sort of rancorous (and he possibly was). I did not know him personally, while I did know some of the singers. Knowing what I know now about how things have turned out, I feel a little differently about it than I did then.
[iv] Nontraditional – in this context, by nontraditional singers I mean singers who do not have any family, church, or community background through which they learned and interpret the traditions of Sacred Harp.
[v] What is the singing convention? How we answer this question will probably cover how we decide to relate to and/or worship with unbelievers and others who come to singing conventions. I believe that biblically the singing convention must be considered a social organization. It is not a church. It includes worship. It is spiritual, but it is not an organization set in motion by Jesus Christ. The singing convention is a social organization somewhat like or similar to my inviting people to come to my house for a singing. When we’re gathered there we’re not the church; we’re Christian friends in fellowship, socializing around the gospel, singing songs that are true and biblical, but that doesn’t make us a church organization. The singing, the worship, and the fellowship are governed by the rules that I have set in place in my home, my hospitality rules.
[vi] Notice also this past quote (August 2019) from a revision committee member, about how one might re-envision a particular hymn to “make it work.” “Like so many other texts in the SH, I feel like we need to afford ourselves some interpretative license to make the music work for us. ‘Chosen station’ would be better!” It is not a logical fallacy; the slope really is slippery. The popularly repeated motto, “religion and politics should not come into the hollow square” (or the convention, or at all), presents another incline that is icy. The motto is of unknown provenance and of dubious meaning and application. Wherever it originated and whatever it meant, it likely does not mean to modern proclaimers what it originally meant. Today it is wielded as a club to beat Christians over the head so that they might keep their personal religion out of Sacred Harp. That is an amazingly ignorant concept when the Sacred Harp song book is filled with religious songs with Christian texts! (And what few are not religious are patriotic.) Nevertheless, the perpetually offended create “do not call” lists to stymie songs that they find offensive from being led. If such a song “makes it through” anyway, they loudly slam their books shut and do not sing. It appears that those who are anti-Christian get louder and louder, while the Christians are supposed to curl up in a collective corner and suck their collective thumbs.