Marching to a Different Drummer

Marching to a Different Drummer By Matthew Todd

Donovan Giesbrecht published a collection of photographs depicting the history of Mennonite Brethren in Canada, stating, “drums became common place in MB churches in the 1980s and 90s. What I found interesting was, no one seemed to ask the question “why?” Why weren’t the MB churches using drums before the 1980s in their doxologies? Why might the usage of percussive art in our churches be a good thing? I will attempt to briefly answer these two questions to help our churches come to terms with its historical legacy. I also hope to show perhaps, “a more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31b).
Why weren’t the MB Churches using drums much before the 1980s?
The historical foundations of the Mennonite Brethren and the Anabaptist worship practice finds itself part of the bigger story of the Church. The Anabaptists were birthed in The Western Church narrative whose policies carried a bias against the percussive arts in worship and sacred contexts. When we examine the historical foundations of the Western Church’s liturgical praxis (gleaned from the Patristics, Jewish history bridging into Christianity, the Churches’ official statements, public records, journal articles, religious indexes, mission statements, historians of Church praxis, and statistics related to worship practice) it supports the conclusion that the Western Church has persistently suppressed the use of percussion. The Western Church, including the Anabaptists and Mennonite Brethren, rejected the use of untuned percussive arts (drums) in worship for the following reasons:

• Greek dualistic presuppositions and secular associations: Historical Church music policy had been shaped by presuppositions and associations both of which carried a bias against percussive arts in sacred contexts.

• Creation’s materiality devalued: The Church absorbed Platonic attitudes towards matter, the doctrine of creation, the relationship between the body and soul, and the rule of reason over emotions, and the imperfection of, and focus away from, the senses. These ideas contributed to the Church viewing the use of percussive arts (drums) as being prone to negative spiritual influences.

• Allegorical interpretation: The Anabaptists and Mennonite Brethren would have to untangle themselves from a Western Church legacy that favored an allegorical system of interpretation of scriptural mentions of percussive art. Scriptures that referred to percussive art were not traditionally interpreted literally.

• Platonic suspicion of instrumentation: The Anabaptists and Mennonite Brethren had found themselves amidst the broader Church that attempted to control emotional and ecstatic expression that exalted the life of the mind over passions. The Church feared that rhythmic modes of music possessed the power to influence the listener’s feelings and behaviors. The Church’s fear of percussion (drums) effecting the moral constitution of sacred music would lend to the view that the percussive arts were unsuitable and profane for worship.

• Percussion fraught with pagan connotations: The Church stigmatized percussive art as being inappropriate for sacred associations because of its connections with heathen contexts and licentiousness. Church tradition warned against the use of percussion because it was associated with immorality, idolatry, musical abuses, the devil, deception, delusion, and with the capability of doing spiritual damage. Church leaders marginalized instruments and percussive art because they believed that God does not reveal himself with, or through, this form of musical instrumentation.
The Church fathers’ suppressive views of the percussive arts (untuned) would be foundational to the disposition of the Church. On top of all this Anabaptist history still keeps a memory of executioners using drums to play loudly “to prevent [the Anabaptist martyr] from being heard if they tried to preach to the crowd.”
With that kind of traditional background and history, it’s amazing that the Mennonite Brethren Churches ever assimilated the use of drums in worship.

It might be very difficult question to answer, ‘what brought about the changes.’ I would rather answer ‘why might the usage of percussive art in our churches be a good thing?’

Why might the usage of percussive art in our churches be a good thing?

The Church has a good reason to embrace percussive art because:

1. Corporeality and temporality, with its rhythmic order and laws, are all God-given gifts. Creation is good because God is good. The percussionist is realizing a rhythmic potential for worship communication from God’s good creation. Humans have an instinctive disposition towards rhythmic communication. Percussive art can increase the responsiveness to the liturgy’s message.

2. Human imagination, creative ability, and the compulsion to create are God given gifts that make percussive arts and sounds possible. Artistic imagination can be good. Human imagination can express percussive dynamics and bring them into spiritual associations.

3. Percussion can serve a symbolic role, if informed by association with the sacred, in helping to express truths of faith because there is no such thing as pious music. Theological ideas can be mediated and embodied in a percussionist’s art and doxology. Percussive art is one more symbolic gift through which we may worship and detect the coveted presence of God. Percussive art can be a worthy vehicle to praise God by drawing the senses into worship in a full-bodied way. The percussionist seeks permission to engage an order God loves and worshipfully love him back with it. God has not denied percussionists the freedom to enter and enjoy these given structures and realize percussive potential.

4. The doctrine of common grace points to the potential goodness of percussive art genres. God inspires activities in accordance with each person’s calling. It is in this dimension of common grace that the percussionist contributes gifting to the liturgy. The regenerate percussionist shares both in common grace and in the potential of the gift being enhanced by covenant grace. The redeemed are the body of Christ, and the regenerate percussionist is part of that embodiment, which means that percussive art forms can mediate the message of Christ. Percussive art can be used to offer new expressions to promote good, bless others, or facilitate religious experience by promoting change and unity and by intensifying a text’s message of truth or grace. The percussionist should be permitted to cooperate with the Spirit in renewal, redemption, and redirecting people back to the Father.

5. The Incarnation demonstrates that spatial-temporal events are valued and important. God values what humans do. The Incarnation represents God sanctifying corporeality and temporality as vehicles for spiritual presence. The Church should include the percussive arts in worship because the Incarnation sets up the principle that God encounters us through the physical realities of life, which would indicate that the percussive arts could be a means through which God encounters us. Jesus affirmed the physical dimensions of life even in the liturgical context. Christ does not call only a part of our being to worship he wants it all.

6. There needs to be an adopting of the percussive arts by the Church because the Church declares God is sovereign over all of creation and culture. To declare God sovereign over creation and culture is also to proclaim Him sovereign over the domain of aesthetics and the percussive arts. God’s sovereignty is the basis for the proposition and command of Mark 12:30 that includes all the kinetic, muscular, and sensory artistic activities that the percussionist engages in. God wants to be honored by our whole person. God’s plan is that redemption would extend to all of culture. Percussive art is part of the artistic and cultural domain that Christ is Lord.

The Church should give access to the percussive arts for extolling God because Christ is Lord of all. If Lordship is to be comprehensive and include every area of humanity’s culture-making and creativity, then to disparage the percussive arts by marginalizing them to a peripheral secular realm is a denial of that Lordship. If God is omnipotent and sovereign over all, including the domain of aesthetics and the percussive arts, and if He has given all to man to govern, then there is no reason to denigrate it. My argument here could be extended by an investigation into biblical texts that reveal doxological evidence of the percussive arts and the logical connection for worship practice. Given these truths, may we enjoy the rhythms of grace permitting the interface of the percussive arts in religious experience and sacred association.

Attitudes that have Shaped the Church's use of the Arts

Sample of Other Research manuscripts and articles by Matthew Todd:

Matthew Todd. Attitudes that have shaped the Church's Use of The Arts (2000) - Academic. (synopsis: A comprehesive overview of the Church's attitudes towards various arts in the past two milleniums.)

Matthew Todd. "Bridging the Worship Gap in Multi-Cultural Churches," Christian Sound and Song (2004); Issue No. 21.

Matthew Todd. "The Implications of Biblical Texts Support Rhythmic Worship Practices" MB Chinese Herald (2008) Issue No. 65.

(Sampling of some published articles, various topics, in popular journals)

Matthew Todd. "A Theology that addresses cultural adjustments in bi-cultural / bi-lingual churches navigating Identity and Selective Assimilation." Grace Literature Journal (winter 2008).

Matthew Todd. “How can Pastors be better prepared to serve in the Chinese MB English Ministry Congregations?” MB Chinese Herald (January 2008); No. 62, pp. 8.

Matthew Todd. "Destiny vision for English Ministries." MB Chinese Herald (December 2008), No. 67, pp. 17-18.

Matthew Todd. “The High value of Discipleship for Our English CBC Young Adults,” MB Chinese Herald (August 2005); No. 48, p. 9.

Matthew Todd. “For such a time as this: the tremendous potential of the emerging generation in our Chinese MB churches” MB Herald (February 2005) No. 02, pp. 11-12.

Matthew Todd. “The Challenge of Jesus' Great commission to Ethnic churches." Directions journal (Fall 2008)vol. 37 No. 2, pp. 238-242.

Matthew Todd. "The Close of a Chapter" MB Herald (2005); Vol. 44 No. 16.

Why Percussive Arts were historically suppressed in the Church

Why Percussive Arts were historically suppressed in the Church (a legacy up to the 20th century)
By Matthew Todd, MCS, MA
(an exerpt from published work with Word Alive press).

Greek metaphysics and secular associations influencing Western Church policies resulting in the denigration and suppression of the percussive arts in sacral expression.

The historical foundations of the Western Church’s liturgical praxis were shaped, in part, by Greek metaphysics that carry a bias against the physicaland temporal, especially when it comes to the relation of the percussive arts in worship and sacred contexts. The Church was forged in the midst of a background and context suffused with a Greek ‘ethos’ on music. There was a sense that music possessed the power to influence (create) the listener’semotions and moral or ethical behavior. Plato and Aristotle believed that rhythmic modes of music could guide or detract the mind therefore they must not be used to stir up human passions. They believed that percussion was part of the ‘imitative arts’ and that, Music can be formed in such a way that it imitates the character of man as it manifests itself in some action or state of mind. When a particular musical form is repeated, it can arouse a similar or related action oremotion in a [unsuspecting] person who might not otherwise be so aroused.Rhythmic instrumentation was factored into this mystical interconnection of causing psychological and physiological effects. The intoxicating and sensuous actions of certain modes of rhythmic music were to be controlled;otherwise, rhythmic complexity “could actually lead to…emotional instability”. Church fathers would adopt the view that the flesh was weakened by constant intercourse with matter; therefore, the material or corporeal sense of scripture should be discarded every time it leads to an inference unworthy of God. This foundation of interpretation would become paradigmatic and establish a normative philosophical tradition affectingliturgical praxis and the interpretation of religious experience. Thisinterpretive bias derives from Greek dualistic thought and from certainnegatively perceived secular associations that have resulted in much of theChurch overlooking, or intentionally ignoring, the robust sacral expression that the percussive arts have provided to other religious traditions. Dualism is a fundamental problem manifested over the entire history of theChurch. The recent innovation of liturgical sound in the past several decades represents an exception. The formative period of Christian thought is of particular interest because tradition and historical trends were established at that time and bequeathed as a liturgical legacy. To begin the argument we will investigate the ‘cradle’ of Christianity in the ‘soil’of Hellenistic Judaism.

A. Jewish Liturgical Praxis and its Influences over the Ancient Church’sPerspective on the Use of the Percussive Arts. Some scholars have suggested that the Church was the recipient of an unbroken liturgical pattern that continued in prolific Jewish Orthodoxmusical worship practices, similar to the first and second temple periods,which were affirmative of the percussive arts and replicated worship praxis found in Psalm 150. Christianity’s formative period falls right in the middle of the Hellenisticage which extended from about 334 B.C.E. to the fourth century C.E. Alexander the Great’s conquest extended deep into places like Syria andPalestine, a fateful move in terms of giving primacy to Greek worldviews, language and culture. Scripture provides some insights into the early confrontation between Jewish and hostile Hellenistic music cultures (Ps.137:2-6, Babylonian captivity; Dan. 3:5-15). After the captivity period theBible can be construed to portray the restoration and reestablishment of amultitude of musicians, grand orchestras, and mass singing processions, thatincluded percussive arts (Ezra 2:41, 3:10; Neh. 7:44). Danby notes that,with the new tolerance towards the Jews (Ezra 6:3) and the rebuilding of the temple, a renaissance of religious liturgical life blossomed, accompanied by the ancient prolific amount of Hebrew percussive arts. One could get the impression from the Mishnah that, later, extensive percussive art was performed in the temple’s music and forecourt but a careful reading would show otherwise. Literature and archaeological study of the period in question would suggest that the opposite was true. The Mishnah specifies how many of each instrument were allowed in the temple orchestra, essentially, one cymbal,with the exception of during the Feast of Tabernacles. Braun reports thatarchaeological findings, representing Hellenistic influence during theBabylonian-Persian epoch (B.C.E. 587-333), show that “chordophones [melodicinstruments] became more prominent during this period while” percussive instruments declined amongst the Jews. The use of percussive art in early Hebrew culture from the Bronze to the Iron Age (3200 B.C.E. to 585 C.E.) is represented in archaeological findings. But Braun questions whether the use of percussive instrumentation, patterned after the past golden era, had been re-established in the Jewish liturgy given the fact the archaeological data does not support the scant mention in scriptures or the Mishnah. Braun notes we are “confronted [with a] 300-year gap” where, The utter absence of finds relating to cymbals…[is] possibly an indication that cymbals were in fact not at all common during this period, either within mass culture or within institutionalized worship…[The] archaeological situation utterly contradicts the notion that the musical culture…[duringthis period], especially within cultic contexts, was in fact rich, varied, and new. Braun’s archaeological data and empirical evidence verifies that the use of the percussive instruments amongst the Jews diminished between the Iron Age(1200 B.C.E.), and the Hellenistic-Roman Age (332 B.C.E. -324 C.E.).Maynard-Reid indicates that “during and after the Babylonian captivity, aspects of worship were lost in the postexilic community.” The impact of Hellenistic thought upon the Jews of Palestine and of the Jewish Diaspora was profound. Greek philosophy and culture had penetrated Jewish religious and intellectual life to such an extent that it had affected the philosophical form and intellectual content of expression and arguments insupport of biblical doctrines. Platonism has been detected in rabbinical Judaism in some of the attitudes towards matter, the doctrine of creation,“the relationship between the body and soul…the dualistic conception of manwhich places body and soul in opposition to each other,” the rule of reasonover emotions, and the imperfection of, and focus away from, the senses. All these tenets have implications for liturgical praxis and percussive art. Judaism, and later, Christianity, would synthesize and express aspects of their religious life and worship within the trajectory of Hellenistic thought called Middle Platonism. Jewish Hellenism extended and connected into Christianity in its formative period. Non-canonical texts such as theApocrypha, Mishnah, rabbinical writings, and the Patristics provide some insight into the penetration of Greek ideas into Jewish belief and practice. These writings provide perspective into the historical phenomenon out ofwhich the first Christians emerged.First and Second Maccabees covers a historical period between 175 B.C.E. to134 C.E., a very significant period in tracking Greek influence and power politics in the Hellenization of Jerusalem and Judea. The narratives portray a movement among liberal Jews to adopt the customs and standards of the Greek world. These texts provide evidence of the process of Hellenization amongst the Jewish priests and insights into Hellenistic influence on temple worship. Sometimes there are glimpses of the use of the percussive arts in worship where the physical expression bears a similarityto some of the ‘Davidic glory’. In other portions of the Maccabeean narratives there are large traces of the influence of Hellenism on liturgical praxis. One citation does associate the playing of a company of hand drummers with pagan culture. Philo is representative of the trends and multifaceted interpretive tradition that were in practice within the religious Diaspora and inHellenistic Judaism during the Second temple period (20 B.C.E. to 50 C.E.).Philo wrote during the formative period of the Church. Philo attempted todialogue with the Jewish faith community from a religious framework with theintention to “organize worship experience” and provide a “biblical understanding of the world of the believer partly on the basis of Platonic constructs.” Philo borrowed the allegorical method from Stoic and Platonic sources and reinterpreted scriptural passages that referred to the physical dimension of religious life. Philo’s dualism is evident in his claims that humans are imprisoned in “the chains of corporeality.” When Philo addresses the physical, the rhythmic, or percussive instrumentation from scripture, he consistently reinterprets them allegorically or ignores the literal or functional implications. Josephus is also partly influenced by Greek philosophical notions in his discussion of the meaning of some percussion used in the liturgy. Ringer concludes that early Christianity made associations with music that were influenced by conceptual frameworks builton the “twin foundations [of] biblical Judaism and Platonic thought.”The Mishnah, beginning sometime during the earlier half of the secondcentury B.C.E. and reporting on Jewish religious activity in Palestine following the destruction of the second temple (70 C.E.), provides insight into liturgical practice that both precipitated and was partly bequeathed to the Church. It discusses liturgical praxis, sacred time, the holy things of the temple, and things unclean. These authoritative interpretations and records of the traditions and standards of the more strict Pharisean party would have also been used amongst the Jewish Diaspora. The growth of this body of literature receives impetus, in part, from Hellenistic civilizationimpinging upon Jewish religious life. The Mishnah contains texts that provide a historical Orthodox portrayal of the percussive arts in worship, and there are texts that either engage in allegorical interpretation or denigrate the role of percussion in worship. One can detect an atrophying of the use of percussive arts in the temple from the time of Ezra to the beginning of the Christian era. Ezra restored128 cymbal players of the children of Asaph to their traditional function(Ezra 2:41; 3:10). But by the time we reflect on the period that bridges into the beginning of the Jewish Christian Church, during the Second temple period, we see that the percussive arts were restricted predominantly to one cymbal (with the exception of the three key Jewish religious observances). This one cymbal only marked pauses or signalled starts and did not participate while the singers sang. Furthermore, there is no mention of the use of drumming with the liturgical praxis, and scarce mention of dance or bodily movement (1 Macc. 13:51; 2Macc. 10:7, only mention waving palm branches by the commoners) whereby rhythm is created and marked. The tendency to restrict mention of stirring percussive and signal instruments, as well as dance, seems to be the norm. By the time of Christ, the Hellenistic-Roman period in Palestine woulddisplay an “interpenetration of various musical cultures” and instrumentation brought into the region by ethnic groups and ritual associations. Braun comments that the Hellenization of musical life gained momentum from the foreign Greek musical institutions and cultural events like sporting programs and theatre, especially in urban centers such as Jerusalem, Tiberius, and Caesarea. This was particularly evident during the reign of Herod the Great (37 B.C.E. - 4 C.E.) for he offered “great rewards[to] musicians.”The impact of various Hellenistic musical cultures (Samaritan, Phoenician,Sidonian, Greco-Roman) and cultural exchange led to syncretistic inclinations that ran counter to Jewish teaching. Jewish religious leaders promoted cultural isolation by announcing prohibitions against dancing, beating on certain instruments, attending the theatre and public events. There was an understanding that some sectors of the population were notimmune to Hellenization. Some pagan rites and the sensuality attached to instrumental performances made Orthodox rabbis severely disinclined toward percussive art. The early Church was a part of the social fabric of the Hellenistic Greco-Roman world. Christianity began in a Jewish society deeply influenced by Hellenism. Judaism provided the bridge between the old covenant and new covenant, and paved the way for Christian thought. Acts 6:1 indicates thatthe Jewish Hellenised Diaspora, a group affected by Greek cultural ideals and educated in synagogues that conducted teaching in Greek, were part of the first Christian missions. Christians began to build their theology on a Jewish foundation that was also being shaped by Greek thinking. Hatch indicates that the “earliest methods of Christian exegesis were continuations of the methods which were common at the time to both Greek and Graeco-Judaean writers.” Some scholars believe that the influence of Philo’s ideas on the Christian theologians’contemporary with him may have started as early as the period of the New Testament authors. The Ancient Church’s preservation of and engagement withPhilo’s works would introduce them to Greek methods useful in its own apologetics. The Church would also be exposed to the allegoric method and a Platonic dualism that left an un-bridged chasm between the body and the soul as well as matter and spirit. This would inevitably influence the way the Church associated forms of music.The point here is that, based on representative texts in the Apocrypha, Philo, Josephus, and the Mishnah, which overlap the formative periods of Judaism and the Church, one can detect Platonism in some of the shared ideason rhythmic percussive art with the Hellenism of the time. It is important to realize that in Judaism there were probably at least two streams of thought concerning music, rhythmic expression, and percussive arts. There was the attitude we see in Michal, who with disdain watched David wholeheartedly dancing before the Ark (2 Sam. 6:5,16). Some interpreters and rabbis held a similar attitude, which contributed to an erroneous viewof the invention of musical instruments by Jubal, of the line of Cain. Jubal and his inventions have been perceived as responsible for leading culture into hedonism and God’s judgment through music’s combination with sinful amusements. On the affirmative side, there also was an Orthodox belief that music, which gave full expression to percussive art, was pleasing to God if the purpose was appropriate.The influence of Hellenism accentuated the prominence of the Word (dominatedby a logocentric, or Word-bound focus) in Judaism and increasingly relegated the instrumental components of the liturgy to an inferior position. The liturgy would eventually become, after the destruction of the second temple, nothing more than the vocal cantillation of scripture and a prayer chant tradition. Judaism was becoming more contemplative, opting for vocal musicas an ideal tool to convey ideas without the disdain of instrumental embellishment by the rabbis’ and Hellenised congregations. By the time Jerusalem found itself in confrontations with the Roman emperor around 69 C.E., the Mishnah forbade the use of the drum in Jewish cultural activities. After the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E., the use of Levitical percussive art for religious purposes was prohibited to signify ongoing national mourning over the loss of the Temple, which was a complete abandonment of orthodoxy in favour of a kind of Platonic vocal cantillationor silence. Given the fact that the first century Church had a large body of Jewish believers who recognized the value of the temple and promoted mutual respect for the values of Jewish believers, it is possible that some Christians in the region would have respected the prohibition as a token of respect and cultural identification. Laeuchli concludes that Judaism never solved its issue with the arts, and therefore Christianity “inherited the dilemma from Judaism and, to a lesser degree, from intellectual Hellenistic culture.” The dominant patterns ofHellenistic Judaism would provide the origins for a historical bridge to Christianity’s initial shape and character. Because the Church emerged as a branch of Judaism and received its Jewish ancestry as a heritage, ritual arrangement would be modeled after the liturgical practice with which Christians were familiar. The model provided by the synagogue was an oral tradition of psalmody and chant. Werner, Seayand Sachs have noted that there is an obvious close connection between the oldest chants of the Church and Jewish melodies.

B. Evidence that the Church, in each historical epoch to the present, has suppressed the Percussive Arts

A key point in this subsection is that the Western Church’s foundational and historical synthesis with Greek philosophical elements produced dualist ideals that affected liturgical praxis.

a) The Ancient ChurchJewish persecutions (44 C.E.) helped mute the percussive arts in the church. This would later be reinforced by the Roman persecutions that used percussion while practicing pagan rituals and punishing Christians (an association history still keeps a vivid memory of). For pragmatic reasons it would be more appropriate to keep the liturgy on the quiet side to avoid attracting hostility over visible and loud percussive worship. The Western Church begins with a view of liturgical praxis that resonates with the Platonic value of vocal music over instrumental. Seay points out that “many early Church fathers felt, as did many Jews, that God could be worshipped only through the human voice.” Therefore “the Church in the main[restricted] instrumental music because it was fraught with pagan connotations.” The issue of communicating with Jewish Hellenistic thinkers who had syncretized and merged Greek ideas with Orthodoxy was one of the priorities of the apostles Paul and John (John1:1-18; Acts 17; 2 Cor. 4:16; Rom. 5:12;7:15-18, 24; 8:23; Heb. 9:23-24; 10:1). However, early in the Patristics one can detect a misuse of the New Testament in treating the physiological aspects of humanity as being prone to negative spiritual influence and responsible for human depravity and disruption. The seeds of an antiphysical dualism in Christianity, aggravated by Greek philosophy, would later be amplified. Alexandrian Christians would develop a theology that would later be integrated and systematized with Platonic philosophy, and would lay the foundation for subsequent thought on music and percussion. Their constant dismissal of the “grammatico-historical interpretation of the Bible” infavour of an “allegorical system of interpretation” would contribute further to the improbability of the restoration of the percussive arts in theliturgy. Because a symbolic, allegoric, and spiritualised form of interpretation was favoured, a historical and literal interpretation ofinstruments for worship was readily dismissed. The Ancient Church fathers intuitively recognized socially and culturally conditioned associations and usages of the percussive arts and how different kinds of music connected with them. In their attempts to give a commentary on the Greco-Roman pagan licentiousness (displaying a type of Dionysian or Epicurean sentiment) associated with the use of percussive arts, the Church fathers drew on theology shaped by Platonic tradition (somewhat ascetic and stoic in nature) and favoured a dichotomy of the physical and spirit. Theywere affected by two polarized strains of Greek thought and practice. One of the ways that Platonism started to function in the Ancient Church’s beliefs and behaviour was the “unyielding conservatism in matters musical” in the attempt “to preserve a proper form of religious music” and isolate it from the secular. The Church fathers inherited this critique from Judaism and the philosophers. In regards to instruments, Viladesau indicates thatHellenistic Christians were suspicious of musical instruments for “moral reasons” because they, …appeared to favour the wrong side in the conflict of spirit against the flesh - a dichotomy that owed its prominence in the Christian community largely from the reinterpretation of Saint Paul in the light of Platonic thought. Musical instruments were associated with “the vices of pagandom…[and] considered intrinsically sensual leading to the excitement of the lower passions.” Philosophical ideals that interpreted the nature of worship in John 4:23 to be an interior versus exterior spiritual practice permeated liturgical praxis. Church fathers reinterpreted the Old Testament texts that mentioned percussion instruments as God making concessions by accommodating the weakness of His covenant people. The “more extreme forms of Platonism”would entice the Church to “view…the body,” and by extension, the world, as “the soul’s prison,” as Tarnas points out: Plato’s doctrine of the supremacy of transcendent reality over the contingent material world reinforced in Christianity a metaphysical dualism that in turn supported a moral asceticism…[Herein] the devout Christian perceived himself as a citizen of the spiritual world, and his relation to the transitory physical realm was that of a stranger or pilgrim.
A “platonic contempt of some forms of art” would be imported into theChristian context during the liturgical praxis. This would have negative implications for percussive art partly stemming from some of Plato’s suspicion towards the arts in general. He felt that art was the equivalent of a “superficial, distorted knowledge, and was removed several steps from reality” and therefore represented the “lowest form of knowing subject to illusion.” In The Republic Plato indicated that music and rhythms could be adversely powerful because they affect “the inmost part of the soul and fasten most firmly upon it,” thereby having the ability to bring about disgrace.In the first five centuries of the Church, Greek philosophical ideas are assimilated and references to percussion instruments seem to fit into about three categories. The first category focused on discouraging pagan music culture and keeping the Christian music free from percussive instruments.The Patristic period appears to be almost “unanimous in denouncing” percussive arts. The second category seems to be a concession in recognizing music as a classical Greek liberal art and therefore an academic discipline (in terms of the commentaries of Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle). This often factored into their allegorical and figurative commentaries of scripture dealing with instruments. A third category of early Christian references to percussive instrumentation uses musical imagery and figures of speech. Evidence of this is in commentaries on the Psalms. The influence of Platonism on the Alexandrian Church Fathers led them to a standard of biblical interpretation and exegesis that interpreted physical instruments as signs of spiritual reality. The allegorical method was one that these Fathers used “to look on the spiritual world as the real one and the material one as an illusion.”In typical Alexandrian ‘fashion’, percussion was often written about ins ymbolic or allegorical terms. Idelsohn claims that by the time the Church entered the fourth century, liturgical customs that included any scant mention of percussive instruments, hand clapping, or dance had almost vanished. Amongst the Syriac, Jacobite, Nestorian, and the Greek Churches the institutionalized instrument was the voice. By the fourth century, percussive instrumentation had systematically been ferreted out and an official Church view had been crafted. The ‘ideological wars’ against it had been fought and largely won, thereby creating a tradition to be written, as it were, ‘in stone.’ Pope Damasus (366-384 C.E.) prescribed the chanting of psalms in all theChurches. The Council of Logician (367 C.E.) officially banished percussion instruments from practice in the liturgy. Popes of the fifth and sixth century would legislate, organize, and codify the appropriate songs and chants, free of all instruments, to be used in the liturgy. Missionaries exported these chants (the shape of liturgical praxis) across Europe, and later to the nations. Singling out percussion (from music made up of harmony, melody, and rhythm) created an unequal triangle of what Sayer might refer to as a “Scalene Trinity”.

b) The Medieval ChurchThe period up to the thirteenth century represents an extensive period of the silence and suppression in the Western Church of the percussive arts inthe liturgy.

Apart from the significance attached to rhythmic “triple meter in chant, symbolizing the Trinity” and the introduction of bells, theA ncient Church position prevailed. The reintroduction of various percussive instruments back into a respectable role in the West, and later the Western Church, began when Christians encountered them during the Crusades and were exposed to exotic music traditions in communication with Byzantium and Arabs (1195-1204 C.E.). By the twelfth and thirteenth century, percussive instruments were used in secular celebrations, in the military, and as a symbol amongst the religious nobility. A Platonic view of the percussive arts as being unsuitable for artistic music because of its inferior quality and harsh crude sounds prevailed in the Church. One isolated mention of an experiment withbringing cymbals into a thirteenth century Church worship context was labelled as distasteful. Secular celebrations continued to popularly include the percussive arts into the fourteenth and fifteenth century. It is in fifteenth-century Burgundy that we find drummers being used in association with Philip the Good (1419-1467 C.E.) and the Royal Chapel. Tambourine players would “join the choir for important religious feast days.” One writer in 1511 C. E. indicated how disturbing drums were to the religious community, commenting: …now with us the name tympana is given to big army kettledrums of copper, which the princes have at court. These are enormous rumbling barrels. They trouble old people and the devotees in monasteries, who study, read and pray, and believe that the devil has invented and made them. Though percussion was predominantly omitted from Church worship, artists and theologians found it appropriate to portray percussion in other forms of art such as religious carvings, reliefs, painted Psalters, and paintings. As early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in some Psalters, angelic orchestras are portrayed playing percussive instruments such as drums, chimebells, nakers, and barrel drums. Thirteenth- to fifteenth-century Church carvings and reliefs depict angels playing triangles, tabors, tambourines and cymbals. The portrayal of angels’ use of percussion and other instruments, making up a sort of heavenly orchestra, was depicted long before percussion would become officially accepted in the Western Church. Christian artists were depicting popular associations connected with celebratory joyful expression from culture and giving the percussion spiritual associations by projecting it into Church visual art. In abstracting percussive worship and suppressing it from being materially and physically used in worship, the Church practiced a kind of “artistic gnosticism.”By the middle of the Renaissance, the use of percussion in secular contexts is encountered frequently in association with dance, royal courts, and the military. The authorities of the Church would continue to perpetuate aPlatonic resistance towards the percussive arts and identify them with negative associations. The closest percussive instruments seem to get is on the periphery of the Church. Mann includes one pictorial manuscript of the era that depicts a band of Flemish musicians and percussionists assembled on the Church steps playing a call to worship as a royal figure walks up the stairs, with hands prayerfully together, to go into the sanctuary. The only percussive instrument to gain full approval of the Church in this period, one that would become an important part of Catholic life, was bells.

c) The Reformation and High Renaissance Church PeriodLuther’s thinking was also shaped by the Church’s historic Platonic suspicion and indifference about the use of some instrumental music in the Church. However, his desire to see “all the arts being used to praise God” would open up some avenues in future developments with the percussive arts in Lutheranism. Luther’s notion that the secular state and the spiritual kingdom functioned as two ministries under God would lead him to conclude that the preservation of the secular order was important. Therefore, the vocation of a drummer in military defence, protecting secular order, would be viewed as a calling in which to serve God. This perspective begins to bear fruit by the early 1600s where we find Michael Praetorius (son of aLutheran pastor), in his works on sacred music (1614-1619), discussing how “uncouth instruments” like timpani and military drums, which fall outside ofthe “boundaries of art music and refinement” could be used to make “goodchurch music.” By 1659, some Lutherans were affirming the use of the kettledrums in the Christmas liturgy in Berlin. Lutherans would struggle and resist during their formative period over appropriate instrumentation in the liturgy. By the mid 1700s, two conflicting tendencies would emerge in Lutheranism: the Orthodox party, who favoured exploring instrumentation that included percussion in the liturgy, and Pietism, that held to the Ancient Church’s historic Platonic view on the percussive arts. The Pietist movement in Germany (late seventeenth andearly eighteenth centuries) held the Ancient Church’s Platonic view that NewTestament worship had no instrumentation and wanted to eliminate it from worship. Some Pietists rejected the creativity that prevailed in Orthodox Lutheranism and gave Bach a difficult time by “objecting to the emotional effects of his music.”J.S. Bach (1685-1750 C.E.) emerged out of this context and attempted to move beyond a dualistic view of the sacred and secular, and to explore the use of percussive instruments in the liturgy to glorify God. Bach’s contemporary,George F. Handel (1685-1759), also came out of an Orthodox Lutheran context that was evidenced in his innovative and dramatic use of the side drum, tambourines and triangles in exploring biblical themes. Handel would attempt to bypass the Church’s historic stern view towards percussion by importing the triumphal sound from a military context and associating it with the triumphal majesty of God, writing the timpani into works like the“Hallelujah Chorus” (Messiah). Despite the religious themes in his oratorios, many found his use of percussion in orchestras “too worldly for a sacred building” like a Church. Though Bach’s predecessor at Saint Thomas Lutheran Church cautiously used kettledrums, Bach would explore and expand their use to add to a mood of festivity within the liturgy. Thirty-nine of Bach’s forty-nine compositions that included kettledrums were written for the Church. His kettledrum soloparts, for dramatic effect, in the liturgy, along with the innovative use ofthe bells and side drum, were historically unprecedented in the Church. Christians embracing the official Church tradition towards percussion instruments “criticized Bach for the music being too ornate.” The lifting of the historic suppression of the percussive arts amongst Lutherans seems to have been brief for, after Bach, the Pietists would influence the later Orthodox Lutheran position on percussion, pushing it aside in favour of the tradition of vocal worship. Zwingli and Calvin refused to have any instrumentation in the Church and any appeal to the physical senses in the liturgy was abolished in Zurich. Calvin’s ideas reflect the Platonism evident in the Ancient Church fathers’views that “instrumental music was only tolerated in the time of law because of the peoples’ immaturity.” For Calvin instruments belonged to the secular sphere. With all of Zwingli’s and Calvin’s railing about the banishment of instruments, including percussion, it is likely that there may have been some contexts in which it was being used. Evidence of the usage and exploration of drums and other percussion instruments in the regions of the Reformers would be in the Burgundy Chapels (east-central France). In the Catholic Church, composers influenced by Renaissance thinking seem to have attempted to include some percussive instrumentation that eventually resulted in a ban and became classified as an abuse at the Council of Trent (1545-1563 C.E.). The Council stated, With respect to [purging] church music…[and] complaints heard about its frequent secular spirit…criticism was voiced about excessive use of noisy instruments in church…everything “impure or lascivious” must be avoided inorder “that the house of God may be rightly called a house of prayer.”(italics mine) During the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, there is a Platonic uneasiness with the introduction of instrumentation used in the Chapel Royal. Outside of that context, there was a resistance to any change fromthe Psalters. The Puritans, Pietists, and the Separatists in Free Church traditions maintained the Ancient Church fathers’ Platonic theology towards percussion in favour of voice and metrical psalms. They suppressed the use of percussion inside the Church, embracing the old view that it “allureth to vanities.” Religious authorities in Rome continued to warn of the dangers of percussion and instruments. One twist to this is that when Puritans and Pietists arrived in America, many tried to avoid using bells because they associated them with popery, so instead they would use a drum as a call to worship for the town on Sunday mornings. Notably the drum was not played inside the sanctuary but outside on the porch of the Church. Evidence of the use of percussive instruments on the periphery of the Church is seen in the American outdoor revivals and camp meetings, where they are used in the company of personalities like theWesleys and Whitefield. Despite this, the early Wesleyan Churches were in 1849 directed to “dispense with the instrumental music.” It would seem that the leadership of Wesleyan Churches was splitting life into two pieces where religion was in one and instrumentation, including percussion, was in another. According toWolterstorff, Pietists and reformers would refuse to recognize that “the aesthetic…[as a] dimension independent of the moral and religious.”

d) Modern and Contemporary Church Period

Several reactions to some of the Catholic Churches using art for art’s sakein the Mass came out of Rome in the early eighteenth and nineteenth century. The focus on, and use of, opera singers with orchestral high art, was confronted and severed from the liturgy in the interest of theological and moral accountability.In 1749, Pope Benedict XIV came down hard with an edict forbidding all instruments that were theatrical in character, used for dramatic effect, like percussion and kettledrums. Leopold Mozart noted in a letter to his father that he had attended one of these types of lavish Catholic masses in Italy in 1777 that used orchestra and “drums.” Again, in 1856, CardinalPatri, representing the Vicar of Rome, instructed all the Directors of Music in the Catholic Church: “The use of noisy drums, timpani, cymbals, …[and]all instruments of percussion is forbidden.” Failure to comply would resultin serious fines, “doubled or even tripled”, and “other punishments.” In the West, in America in particular, the use of percussion instruments continued to be plagued with the Platonic stigma of being inappropriate for sacred associations. Percussive art continued to have secular connections with martial, folk, classical, recreational, and pagan contexts. Caucasian Churches excluded it from the sanctuary; the Moravians, a group splintered from Orthodox Lutheranism, were an exception. It would seem that Caucasian Churches in nineteenth century America only permitted a functional sacred association with drums to stir up attention for outdoor preaching or for a call to worship made outside the Church. As Ellison has indicated, the Church has “mark[ed] the boundaries of sacred spaces by reserving different styles or sounds for sacred centers and profane peripheries.” For the Afro-American, the suppression of percussive arts by Caucasian Christians cast “the spiritual condition of slavery into unique poly-vocalforms.” Marini indicates, “The musical consequence was the prohibition of[the] drum on the plantation.” Slave owners gave hymn books to the slaves on the plantations, and for slave revival meetings, and restricted percussion because it was associated with emotional and ecstatic behaviour. After theCivil War, music in the emancipated Black Church incorporated incessant, syncopated, repetitious, rhythmic percussion, with song, hand clapping, footstomping and dance. This new form of worship confronted resistance from the older mainstream denominations. Caucasian suppressive attitudes towards the percussive arts in the liturgy were projected onto Black congregations, leading to repeated disputes and splits over the instruments used in worship.By the early twentieth century, Black Pentecostals began using the secular sounds of percussive instruments to transform the hymns. One of the reasons for the deep division between White and Black Churches was that White Christian Americans had been taught the historic Church’s Platonic view thatunrestrained rhythm, ecstatic expression, and percussive art were inappropriate for the liturgy. W.E.B. Du Bois likely would have associated this division in music culture with the psychology of oppression. Caucasian Christians had adopted the theology that Black (Christian) drumming was evidence of a syncretism of heathenism and Christian religion. Though theAfro-American and African Church would embrace a full-bodied tradition in the use of percussive instruments, the tendency of the Western tradition would be to remove and denounce it. Out of the revivalist and Holiness tradition (1880s), the Salvation Army conscripted the percussive arts to help them arouse curiosity forsoul-winning. The bass drum became a symbol, bearing the name of theChurch, and was often used as a focal point or an altar on the streets. Salvationists experienced many negative responses both from the culture and from denominations in their use of drums and percussion with religion. One American sketch, representative of mainstream Christian views, depicted the band (bass drum in front, women tambourine players in back, looking clownish), marching with a ridiculing sentence at the bottom saying, “All working to beat hell.” Sachs notes that at the turn of the twentieth century there were “alarmists who feared that music was receding into a ‘savage oriental’ stage because of the interest in percussion.” In the Catholic Church, Pope Pius X in 1903 would staunchly ban drums andpercussion from the Churches, stating, …the employment of the piano is forbidden in church as is also that of noisy or frivolous instruments such as drums, cymbals, bells and the like. In 1928, Pope Pius XI publicly reaffirmed his predecessors’ statements aboutthe Church’s traditional dualistic position with percussive arts. Though the Calvinist Hans Rookmaaker would say, “Beauty is expressed in rhythm and sound,” there remained an absence of percussive arts in association with the liturgy in the Anabaptist and Calvinist traditions. Many Mennonites had no instruments in their college music departments up until 1950, and no percussive instruments whatsoever until 1955.The 1940s and 50s seemed to suffer a dearth in the use of percussion amongst those Church groups that had formally accepted it. Broughton comments that even the traveling black gospel quartets were now almost “always singing accapella” because of the divisiveness drums and other rhythmic instruments evoked. Country and Black gospel were popular forms of Christian music of the era, but drums would have little to do with either musical style until after the advent of rock and roll. Kirk Allen and Keith Edwards note that, In the 1960s drums were still very much taboo for gospel music. The strong back-beat of rock n’ roll seemed to get in the way of preaching…[and] upset alot of people. Up until…[1970-1971], most of the newly forming bands [country and black gospel] at that time didn’t even have drummers. In this period (1963), Rome would make a statement at Vatican II based on the recognition that the Church’s historical position was suffocating indigenous music in the liturgy. The scarcity of entries on percussive arts in the general music and religious indexes between 1967 and 1976 suggests that few music directors were promoting the use of percussion to accompany Church liturgies. Authors like Nelhybel would write about a “Renaissance” of Church music, and mention every instrument with the exception of percussion. The omission is a general reflection of the Church’s theology. In 1968 Catholic music professor, Ralph Thibodeau criticized the drums that had been creeping into the Church with some of the current folk music: “If we may yet worship in the temple, then let us kick out the witch doctors…The honest alternative is a return to the silent Church.” In the controversial period of the1970s and 1980s, Protestant preachers like Jimmy Swaggart and Bill Gothard would popularize the historic Church’sposition against rhythmic patterns. Gothard would discuss the effects of rock rhythms on physiology, combining the Church’s tradition with findings similar to Carl Seashore’s studies in the psychology of music. One of the attacks against styles of music was aimed at the rock drum rhythm and beat. Seashore’s 1938 study suggested that the more complex the rhythm becomes in a piece of music, the more the intellectual powers of the listener decrease. Koestler concedes Seashore’s physiological observations that sound can narrow one’s field of attention, but he did not moralize this data. Preachers generalized from these studies on the effects of musical expression to prove that plenty of rhythm could contribute to losing touch with one’s environment. Their philosophy was that drum rhythm could effect the moral constitution of the Church’s music. Bob Larson attacked the rhythmic content of rock drumming, saying it caused the drummer to experience “frustrated energy [and] sensuous erotic bodily responses”because of the “syncopated and pulsated beat patterns” which act as “dangerous manipulation.” He labelled this genre of drumming as being capable of doing damage on a person mentally, spiritually, and physically. These popular, influential, modern thinkers attempted to maintain a historical tradition against the percussive arts, now assailing them onscientific grounds. The Ancient Church’s Platonic dualism as it bears on the use of percussive arts is still with us and is evident in Johansson’s Calvinism, which denigrates rhythm and repetitive rhythm because it causes pleasure, body movement and “toe tapping” that “take[s] attention away from the text…[and]God.” Lucarini and Smith also resonate with the Patristics when they hold the contemporary Churches’ use of percussion to be a form of hedonistic carnality that amounts to distraction. Lucarini advocates focusing on vocal simplicity that de-emphasizes the beat and ridding the Churches of drumsets: When the drum set finally appeared on the platform, I believe the Church reached the steepest and most dangerous part of the slope…the drums disproportionately influenced the music ministry…[and] choices became more and more ‘rocky’ to satisfy the drummer (and those in the congregation attracted to this style). Services became louder and edgier [sic]…[where] leaders try in vain to control the drums by encasing the drum set in a Plexiglas sound barrier [which simply] brings more attention to the drums and makes them look like a special object of worship. (italics mine) Zgodzinski, in 2002, calculates that 66 percent of the North AmericanChurches do not employ percussive arts. This fact, along with the Western European Church’s continued commitment to its historic liturgical tradition, indicates dualism still holds sway when it comes to the percussive arts and the liturgy. The Patristics notion that “God revealed Himself in Word, not music” has been perpetuated with a Platonic adhesion.

C. Evidence that the Church Exported Truncated Liturgical SensibilitiesImperialistically, Eclipsing the Percussive Arts in Indigenous SacredTraditions

The intention of this section is to provide a few examples from various mission fields to indicate that the Western Church exported truncated liturgical sensibilities imperialistically, eclipsing the percussive arts in indigenous sacred traditions. Many of the Church’s statements on official liturgical praxis were carried forward in its expanding mission activities overseas, and applied to the frontiers of Western culture (e.g., unconvertedEuropeans practicing folk music, Aboriginals, Hispanic, African, Asianmissions, and so forth) to educate the emerging generations. The Ancient Church’s policy on instrumentation and the percussive arts was introduced into each sacred context. For some Christian groups this has been a topic of contention. For example, the Ethiopian Coptic Church refused to conform to the norms and values of the Western Church and integrated into the liturgy “percussion-accompanied dances” allowing some liturgical drumming by members, leaders and priests. The Western Church could not get the Coptic Church to change so the West eventually “ignored”the possibility of using them “as a model of integration”. Evidence from frescos and history demonstrates that Coptic Christians have had a fuller relationship with the percussive arts. This relationship has “been less subject to change than in most other Eastern Churches,” where percussion is used in the liturgy “three times a week.” Webber notes that, …[one] concept in an African ontology is the perception of wholeness of life, where there is no separation into sacred and secular realms….Wholeness of life, epitomized in ritual action, necessarily involves the whole person, body and soul. For the African, religious expression included sacred drums and bodily engagement. Part of the Greek legacy still handicapping Western Christianshas been a rationalism that attempts to control expression and exalt the life of the mind over passions. Myers notes, “The mind-body split that governs Western thought seems never to have entered the African consciousness until imported there by missionaries.” The missionaries would be especially confronted with the issue of Africans and the percussive arts when they were Christianizing the coastal fringes of Africa between the late sixteenth century and the mid-twentieth century, a period when African missions were taken seriously, resulting in mass conversions. Missionaries, prior to the Second World War, following their Western Church music tradition, stereotyped the African use of the percussive arts referring to them in derogatory terms as noise, primitive, of the devil, unsuitable, not conducive for the liturgy, and unworthy art to be brought into the Church. In some villages, missionaries burned the drums. Anthropological theories that indicated percussion was a trigger for trance further distanced Western sensibilities from coming to healthy terms with the percussion so abundantly encountered in mission lands. Although Rouget has dismissed the faulty foundations of the neuro-physiological theory of the effects of drumming (some of it mixed with a Greek ‘ethos’ of the effects of music on emotions, character, and behaviour), the theory that the unsuspecting listener can be triggered in his or her behaviour and responseslives on. Missionaries promoted Platonic values of restraint, which downplayed enthusiastic rhythmic worship, and forced Western hymn tunes onto the peoples. After hymn translation into the indigenous language, missionaries proved to be insensitive to linguistic rhythm and intonational contour. Nketa indicates, “This situation has not been fully remedied in parts ofAfrica”. In 1949 Carrington noted how missionary activity was profoundly disrupting the African’s indigenous percussive arts tradition associated with the sacred (the talking drums). Christian missionaries made little attempt to graft their beliefs onto or make new associations with the African spiritual background that engaged the percussive arts. At the time Carrington was writing, missionaries who brought to Africa the Bible and the Church’s carefully cultivated music were training an entire generation of Africans in alien modes of worship. African youth were growing up not knowing or recognizing the tonal ‘drum language’ that corresponded with their tonal spoken language. Because of the restrictions and decline, Carrington wanted to record the knowledge and practice of the African ‘talking drums’ before missionary activity eroded them further. Many anthropologists recognized the impact of Western cultural imperialism and missionary influences in teaching the younger generation Western songs, and attempted to record indigenous percussive arts prior to their impending disappearance. Yoder has indicated that after two centuries of suppressive Western missionary influence, the African Independent Churches and others have gravitated to “more culturally relevant forms of worship where drums, hand-clapping and dancing” are being reengaged. Unfortunately, until recently, the African Church has not been able to completely move beyond “many [of the] Western hemisphere hymns.” The Churches exported a historic Platonic theology in reference to the percussion. Their attitude towards this instrumentation would evolve in tension with their traditions. In America, the Churches held dearly to the Ancient Church’s affirmation of the human voice as being the appropriate instrument for the liturgy. Twiss cites how missionaries to the North American aboriginals, and to aboriginals abroad, forced the Church’shistoric music tradition upon them and banned the use of the drum. The reason for this policy was deeper than a simple failure to contextualize; itsprang from some deeply embedded historical-philosophical presuppositions in Western Church music tradition. Twiss indicates that, The real issues stemmed from clashing worldviews. In Western mentality, there is the sacred and the secular, a natural versus spiritual split of reality. This split originates not in true Hebraic-Christian faith but inclassic Greek philosophy. This conflict between the integrated worldviews of the Indian and the compartmentalized worldviews of most Western Christians has been among the greatest hindrances to effective communication between the white man and native people. Western missionaries, with good intentions, also exported liturgical sensibilities imperialistically to India, thereby initially eclipsing the percussive arts and rhythmic expression in those sacred traditions. Ethnomusicologists cite the fact that the Indian culture places a heavy importance on rhythm, drums, and “complicated patterns” in all its music and has a “disproportionate percentage of drums”. White brought attention to this in 1957 in his discussion on how the Western missionaries were disregarding the peculiar percussive sounds of indigenous music and metrical form in favour of the unaccompanied Western Church hymn tradition. He stated, Had missionaries given equal attention to India’s musical culture there might have been less grounds for the charges that Indian converts tend to be de-nationalized and that the Church is essentially a foreign institution…[Ifthe Church wants to improve the situation] cast everything that savours of Western music out of the Church building. In its place substitute such instruments as the tambura, the hand cymbals, and the tabla drum. If ancient Israel worshipped God with harp, cymbals and drum, need Christians hesitate in Christian congregation worship? (italics mine) White was attempting to correct the exporting of a Western bias against the use of percussion. Missionaries were converting Indians, favouring thehymns, and having their converts worship in mostly-silent churches, occasionally adding organ music. Indigenous percussion was perceived as a syncretistic practice, something warned against in Church tradition. The net result of a dualistic view on rhythm was that it jettisoned indigenous percussive sounds and distanced its converts, and the unconverted, from their own culture and an affirming Gospel. Malm’s work on ethnomusicology in Japan is instructive, indicating that the hymn music brought by missionaries into Japan has not had much effect on the Japanese, nor has it been accommodated to indigenous music and the Oriental percussion that otherwise is associated with religious customs. In China, the missionaries also dismissed indigenous percussion in favour of Western melodic and harmonic instrumentation. Vatican II (1963) recognized that the Church, which had inherited a body /soul, spirit / matter dualism, had historically prevented indigenous percussive sounds and other music from being included in the liturgy. It stated, In certain parts of the world, especially in mission lands, people have their own musical traditions and these play a great part in their religious and social life. Thus,…due importance is to be attached to their music and a suitable place given to it, not only in forming their attitude toward religion, but also in adapting worship to their native genius. Therefore,when missionaries are being given training in music, every effort should be made to see that they become competent in promoting the traditional music of the people, both in schools and in sacred services, as far as practicable. Although a statement like this was long overdue, Ringer claims that its“effect on the religious musical attitudes of the broader church going population has been minimal.” One of the missionary legacies of the “drumtaboo” in the Hispanic and Caribbean liturgical scenes is that European andNorth American hymns still dominate and many leaders and laity continue to frown on the use of instruments (i.e., percussion) that will accentuate the meter, pulse, or beats. This kind of “rhythmic music [is viewed] assacrilegious, sensual, ungodly, and carnal.” A claim made in North American worship conferences is that the Western Church is currently incorporating sacred music from all over the world. In fact, the musical genre and instrumentation is still Western and still highly exported to the mission lands. The issue is more than justunderstanding that some cultures are more percussive. The problem is deeper than realizing that ethnic diversity requires being culturally aware. In fact it is even deeper than coming to terms with the fact that “North Americans have been exporting their worship culture” up to the very present! The philosophical premises behind the suppression of the percussive arts in the liturgy, the Western Church’s beliefs, assumptions, and presuppositions - need to be examined. Why have the characteristic sounds of percussion been embraced in some contexts and rejected in others? Why do other cultures find the symbolic sacred associations with percussive sounds so meaningful? Why has Western Church tradition attempted to mute or withhold a sonorous feature of nature? According to Bateman’s anthropological perspective, Western culture places a high emphasis on encoding in verbal symbolic communication and a low emphasis on context. Some missiological liturgical frameworks have been blind-sided by ethnocentrism and certain value orientations. This has led to a confrontation with the percussive nature of non-Western countries that place a higher value on the worship context and nonverbal behaviour as the main thrust of their communication. The non-West’s extensive use of percussion fits well with cultural values on context and ties in less with language. Although in recent years recognition of the need to contextualize has led missions to include percussion in liturgical settings, the theo-philosophical problem still needs to be addressed.

D.) ConclusionEvidence found in examining the historical foundations of the Western Church’s liturgical praxis (gleaned from the Patristics, Jewish history, theChurches’ official statements, public records, journal articles, religiousindexes, mission statements, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, historiansof Church praxis, and statistics related to liturgical praxis) supports the conclusion that the Western Church has persistently suppressed the use of percussion.

Western Church policy has been shaped, in part, by Greekdualistic thought, and in part by negatively perceived secular associations, that carried a bias against the physical and temporal, especially when it comes to the relationship of percussive arts in worship and sacred contexts. Some significant “wounds and injustices have been inflicted on indigenous people through the perspective of Western Christian emissaries” in regards to the percussive arts. Some of the concerns raised by Hatch in the late19th century regarding the existence of Greek ideas and Greek thought within Christian Churches are still valid today. In the Church’s “doctrines”, tendencies, assumptions, and praxis “Greece lives”. The Church fathers’ suppressive views of the percussive arts have been foundational to the pervasive, and perpetuated, disposition of the Church throughout history.


Bio on Author:Matthew Todd, MCS, MA, English Ministries Track Associate Port Moody Pacific Grace Matthew formerly has been an adjunct teacher at Pacific Life College (Philosophy /Theology) and a percussionist with the Sinfonia Mosaic orchestra. This is a segment from his recent book titled: The Interface of the Percussive Arts,Religious Experience, and Sacred Association, published by Word Alive press.

Biblical Texts Support the use of Drums in worship

The Implications of Biblical Texts Support Rhythmic Worship Practices.
By Matthew Todd
“Drums! Percussion! Noise! Who needs it?” Especially since the 1980’s churches have been using more drums. Why has the Church in the West only recently become friendlier to the percussive arts in church practice? More importantly, what is the biblical basis for this?
Various perspectives influencing particular time-periods have affected the Church’s interpretation of bible texts touching on the percussive arts. One of the constraining factors in the Church’s historic interpretive tradition has been methods of exegesis. Allegorizing, selecting, and redefining are some of the common strategies of interpretation that the Church has traditionally employed.
The New Testament’s silence on percussive art in worship has left some with the impression that we cannot be certain on how we should interpret or think about percussive art. Because the Church has historically employed suppressive arguments against the use of the percussive arts, two problems need to be addressed:
1) the treatment of the Old Testament as irrelevant to the New Testament era; and
2) the assumed silence of the New Testament on the use of the percussive arts.
Second Timothy 3:16 states that, “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching…and training in righteousness.” The early Church did not have a complete version of the New Testament; therefore, the scripture that the early Church engaged with, and held authoritative (relevant), was the Old Testament (referring to Old Testament narratives; 1 Cor.10:11 says that “these things…[are] examples…for us”, NASB). Paul encouraged the early Christians to use the guidance of the Psalms to exalt God in Col. 3:16 and Eph. 5:19.
Part of the reason for the New Testament’s silence on percussive art would have been that the Old Testament affirmations of a sovereign God, a good creation, natural and spiritual gifting, divine inspiration, and a holistic approach to worship never ceased to be authoritative. The canon speaks of the percussive arts directly in thirty-seven texts. We now turn to some of the specific narrative references and propositions that directly affirm the use of the percussive arts for worship.
A. Old Testament:
At least thirty specific references in the Old Testament directly refer to and affirm the percussive arts used in a variety of religious worship occasions and liturgical functions. Ten of the references make a specific mention of percussion, in particular cymbals (plural), used for liturgical purposes inside the temple, and played by male Levites and priests only. Some of these Levites were “singing percussionists. Their names were Asaph, Heman, and Ethan (1 Chron.15:16-19), and they…kept time for everyone playing the cymbals.” Two additional instructions certainly indicate liturgical purposes and may well have been for both the priests and musicians in the assembly. Six references refer to mixed genders of various stations playing with full-bodied expression, using a variety of percussion in worshipping God during religious celebration. One reference makes specific mention of hand drums being used by male percussionists in the school of the prophets. Six references refer to women percussionists playing hand drums, often in conjunction with a musical procession and dancing. Four of these six are religious celebrations of triumph and victory in God and the other two are linked with corporate and liturgical worship, evidence that women were included in some of the liturgical and religious festive music.
Braun claims that the latter period of the monarchy was one in which “drums and rattles became to a certain extent a mass instrument.” Terra-cotta figurines and reliefs depict the instruments’ spiritual status and cultural symbolic association in the motifs of female drummers in iconographic materials.
A closer scriptural look at the genre, linguistic meanings, and archaeological variety of the percussion instruments supports the argument that God intended a literal application of the use of percussive arts in worship practice. Only a small portion of scripture uses percussive language to communicate a metaphorical or abstract idea. In some worship contexts, percussive sounds were a symbolic ingredient in epiphanies in which musical art was associated with the realm of the prophetic. In these sacred contexts percussion awakened a holy sense, through embodied praise, that led to divine encounter and interaction. One possible conclusion that can be drawn from the Old Testament is that playing percussive instruments is just as forcefully commanded as singing, because praising God is a requirement of all of creation (Pss. 148,150).
B. New Testament:
Calvin assumed that the percussive instruments were to be “banished out of the Churches by the plain command of the Holy Spirit when Paul in 1 Cor. 14:13 [gives the] rule that we must praise and pray to God in a known tongue.” Many American churches have resonated with the logic that “only what God directly commanded can be used in his service, where the scriptures speak we speak, where they are silent, we are silent.” Paul’s metaphorical use of instrumentation and the percussive arts (1 Cor.13:1; 14:7-8) makes it difficult to determine if they are appropriate for the liturgy.
Percussion generates uncertain sound and has no capacity to articulate intelligible language. Gaebelein suggests that Paul was not denigrating instrumentation but making metaphorical use of what was familiar from scripture concerning temple worship (1 Chron. 13:8; Ps. 150:5) with a primary address to the excessive emphasis placed on other gifts (1 Cor. 13). Gaebelein also argues that 1 Cor. 14:6-19 is simply referring to music of temple worship that the Jews would be acquainted with, which means that sounds can be important if they are understood. Braun emphatically states that “it is an over-interpretation to…[take 1 Cor. 13:1 as] evidence of a hostile attitude towards any sort of instrumental music.” The argument that scripture is silent on the use of percussion in worship and is only referred to metaphorically is incorrect in that the Old Testament, which refers to percussion in literal propositional terms, also refers to percussive arts and sounds in metaphorical language. Webber claims the Old Testament period includes more instrumentation in worship than the New Testament because of “…the cultural position of the New Testament Church, which in most localities was regarded, by the authorities and by the populace in general, as a sectarian movement within Judaism,…[and] was violently opposed by the traditional community. The desires of the apostles and the local assemblies of Christians notwithstanding, there was little opportunity for Christians to conduct large-scale worship of the type that forms the background for the worship terminology of the Old Testament. Distinctively Christian worship usually had to be carried on in private gatherings, limited in size and scope.”
Ultimately, it is the scriptures that help reconstruct the evidence for percussive doxological activity and its logical connection for praxis. One God inspired both testaments, a God who is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). God inspired Paul to advise the Church to worship using the Psalms as a guideline, Psalms that advocate praising God with instrumentation like the hand drum and cymbals (81:2; 149:3; 150:5). The New Testament has affirmed that one can offer to God any bodily activity as a holy and pleasing form of spiritual worship to God (Rom. 12:1).
Given that the canon contains affirmative narratives and propositions about percussion, with a broad scope of themes in worship practice, the Western church needs to recover a biblical starting point for a holistic view of percussion’s potential. Matthew Todd is an English Track Associate of Port Moody Pacific Grace. He published a book recently on worship for church drummers titled, “The Interface of Percussive Art, Religious Experience, and Sacred Association”, which can be obtained through your local bookstore (i.e., Chapters, etc.) or online either through Kindred press or Word Alive Press www.wordalive.ca. The original article contains detailed footnotes and references. They are withheld due to the limitation of space.

Drums In Churches

Matthew Todd, English Track Associate of Port Moody Pacific Grace MB Church has published a book on worship for church drummers titled, The Interface of Percussive Art, Religious Experience, and Sacred Association, which can be obtained through your local bookstore (Christian bookstore, Chapters, etc.) or online either through Word Alive Press 1-800-665-1468 (ISBN: 1897373201, Stock: 9781897373200). The objective of this book is to theologically ground how drummers and percussionists practice their craft in worship contexts. The book aims to help drummers understand the history of drums and percussion in the church and provides a biblical foundation for its use in religious and sacred contexts. Here's what some have said: "...Thanks to Matthew Todd we now have a book written by someone who not only knows percussion but also something of the history of the church’s concerns. This is a must read for anyone interested in the issue" (Associate Professor NT, Regent College: Rick Watts PhD). "…For anyone that is serious about learning more about the role of percussive arts in worship and sacred contexts, this book is a 'must read'" (Dean of Chinese Christian Church Music Institute for Worship:Canada), Herbert H. Tsang, PhD.). "…May you be inspired to see the use of percussion in the Church in a whole new way as you read Matthew Todd's compelling treatise" (Mark Cole, Praise Charts: Arranger, songwriter, teacher, record producer, music director.) "Matthew Todd has been an integral part of the orchestra at our David C. Lam Christian Society festivals. His use of timpani and other percussion instruments has truly added to the magnificent sound to glorify the Lord. I have enjoyed his positive and joyful contributions to our musical worship in which his use of percussive art appears to have one aim, to extol the Lord" (The Honorable Dr. David C. Lam - Former Lietenant-Govenor of BC (1988-1995)).