Believing in God

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HOW CAN MUSIC ASSIST IN THE SUBVERSIVE INTENT OF THE EUCHARIST?

CAROLINE LEGRAND

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty

of the School of Theology

at Mercer University

in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree

MASTER OF DIVINITY

Atlanta, GA

2021

HOW CAN MUSIC ASSIST IN THE SUBVERSIVE INTENT OF THE EUCHARIST?

CAROLINE LEGRAND

Approved: _________________________________________________ Date ________________________ Graham B. Walker, Ph.D. Faculty Supervisor for Thesis _________________________________________________ Date ________________________ Nancy L. deClaissé-Walford, Ph.D. Faculty Advisor for Thesis _________________________________________________ Date ________________________ Karen G. Massey, Ph.D. Associate Dean, Masters Degree Programs, School of Theology _________________________________________________ Date ________________________ C. Gregory DeLoach, D.Min. Dean, School of Theology

CAROLINE LEGRAND

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page ABSTRACT ..………………………………………………………………………………….. v

CHAPTER

1. INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………… 1

Introduction to the study ...……………………………………………………………… 1 Thesis question and subquestions ………………………………………………………. 3 Historical background of the study …………………………………………………….. 4 Limitations …………………………………………………………………………....... 10

2. HOW IS THE EUCHARIST, AS UNDERSTOOD IN 1 CORINTHIANS 11, A

SUBVERSIVE RITUAL FOR COMMUNAL CHANGE? …………………………... 11

3. HOW CAN MUSIC ALLOW THE SUBALTERN TO SUBVERT THE HEGEMONIC? ……………………………………………………………………….. 25 Music as solidification of a community ………………………………………………. 26 Musical hybridity as subversion ………………………………………………………. 28

4. HOW CAN MUSIC IN CONTEMPORARY WORSHIP ASSIST IN THE

SUBVERSIVE INTENT OF THE EUCHARIST? …………………………………… 42 Subversive music and Eucharist in context ...………………………………………… 42 Ways to incorporate musical hybridity at the Eucharist .…………………………….. 49 Challenges and guidance ……………………………………………………………... 57 The gift of recognition ………………………………………………………………... 61

5. CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………….. 65

Summary ………………………………………………………………………………. 65 Areas for future study …………………………………………………………………. 65

6. REFERENCES ………………………………………………………………………. 69

ABSTRACT

CAROLINE LEGRAND HOW CAN MUSIC ASSIST IN THE SUBVERSIVE INTENT OF THE EUCHARIST? Under the direction of GRAHAM B. WALKER Ph.D. This thesis explores the Christian ritual of the Eucharist in conjunction with another crucial

Christian ritual element—music. It first looks to scripture—1 Cor 11:17-34—and considers what

the Apostle Paul believed was the original intent of the Eucharist as established by Jesus Christ

at the Last Supper. The conclusion is that it is intended to be a subversive ritual for liberative

communal change. The thesis then takes a shift to explore music and its capacity to both solidify

and, contrastingly, subvert the existing structure of communities. Operating through the lens of

postcolonial theory, it asserts that music can allow subaltern peoples to subvert hegemonic

culture through musical hybridity. The thesis finally brings these two elements together—

Eucharist and music—to explore how music can assist this subversive intent of the Eucharist in

contemporary worship practice. The conclusion is that hybrid music can be applied in the

worship of congregations where a hegemonic culture is in the majority population in order to

disrupt the homogeneity of that congregation’s music practices and allow outside voices—the

voices of the subaltern—into the boundaries of the community, thereby beginning to shift a

community’s hierarchical social structure. This hybrid music worship practice, crucially at the

moment of the Eucharist, assists the Eucharist in fulfilling its intent to liberate oppressed

peoples. The hope is that the method established in this thesis can be applied wherever

hegemonic and subaltern forces are at play in the world.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Introduction to the Study

My first and greatest love in life is music—singing, to be specific. I have been singing

since before I can remember. My parents knew I would grow up to be a singer when at the age of

two, at a large family reunion, I unashamedly walked up to the band and grabbed the microphone

and sang Jesus Loves Me for the crowd. Singing is second nature to me. Because of this, I have

always been fascinated by the way music affects people. Through experience, I have observed

that music affects and effects emotions, convictions, relationships, communication, and ways of

being in the world. In other words, music is not simply something we do. It is something that

transforms our very being. I believe that music is second nature to human beings, whether you

have the performative gift or not. As a species, we have been making music since before we

knew what music was. Music-making is natural to human embodiment. It can express and

communicate what we do not know how to say in words. It points to something beyond

ourselves as we experience the divine or the holy in a way that is truly indescribable. This is

evident in the universality of music-making, though it takes vastly different forms cross-

culturally.

The central act of Christian worship is the Eucharist and its many manifestations across

denominations—Holy Communion, The Lord’s Supper, Mass, Breaking of the Bread, etc. It is

that ritual act that binds us as a community to the past, present and future. It is rooted in tradition

yet constantly reassesses the present to forge a better future. It grounds us in creation while

freeing us to work toward the coming Kingdom of God, joining together memory and

imagination and uniting the two by the sacrificial act of Jesus Christ on the cross—the place and

time where God entered humanity. Within the context of Christian worship, the Eucharist is a

central and unique ritual act instituted in the early church community that cannot be supplanted

by other ritual acts and elements, like the preached word, song, credal statements, etc. It is both

sign and sacrament. In other words, it points to something greater than ourselves while also

effecting something within us. Does this sound familiar? This idea of sign and sacrament is

where my interest in both music and Eucharist collides.

My central-most question, then, is: how do these two—music and Eucharist—converge

in contemporary worship? Tom Driver, in his book, Liberating Rites, describes a worship service

at the seminary where he teaches and contrasts the experiences within that service of communal

singing versus taking the Lord’s Supper. He says, “We have got the bread and wine in one place

and the Spirit in another.”1 The Spirit, he noted, was in the singing, not in the Lord’s Supper. I

cannot think of better words to describe my own experience of music and the Eucharist

throughout my life, which has led me to incessantly ask, is music eucharistic in its effect? In

many Christian settings, communal music-making gives way to a freedom and imagination for

communal transformation not fostered by the practice of the Eucharist. Furthermore, in the

secular world, too, music is critical to forming and shaping community identities. The Eucharist,

as it is contemporarily practiced, seems to be missing this central communal component. This

begs the question: what can the Eucharist learn from music?

As a seminarian preparing for ministry, I must ask of the church: what are we doing when

we practice the Eucharist? What do we believe that we are doing? During my time in seminary, I

have come across few who are openly asking this question. Especially for Baptist students who

are preparing for church leadership—in whose tradition the Eucharist is practiced a maximum of

1 Tom F. Driver, Liberating Rites (Charleston, SC: BookSurge, 2006), 199.

once a month, as a general rule of thumb, and is approached largely as a remembrance of the

Last Supper of Christ—we must ask ourselves: what does the Eucharist mean for our theology

and practice? Does it mean anything to us at all? As one of these Baptist students, I am seeking

to reimagine the Eucharist as an effective act that transforms participants into diversely unified

communities which will then be equipped to go out into the world and embody this Kingdom-

like communion. I am seeking the potential of a sacrament to enact the eschatological in the

present. And as a life-time singer and musician, I propose that music holds a valuable key to

unlocking this effective potential of the Eucharist.

Thesis question and subquestions

The overarching thesis question is as follows: how can music assist in the subversive intent

of the Eucharist? This is broken down into three subquestions.

The first subquestion is as follows: how is the Eucharist, as understood in 1 Corinthians 11,

intended to be a subversive ritual for communal change? This subquestion gives an exegetical

analysis of 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 and considers Paul’s argument to the Corinthian church about

right practice at the Eucharist. I argue that Paul advocates for a Eucharist that subverts rather

than solidifies the existing structure of a community, flattening the social hierarchy and turning it

into an egalitarian structure, in order to be an agent of liberation for the oppressed.

The second subquestion is as follows: how can music allow the subaltern to subvert the

hegemonic? This subquestion considers how music operates within communities—how, like the

Eucharist, it can both solidify and strengthen the boundaries of communities and subvert the

status quo of communities. I argue that subaltern peoples can subvert hegemonic culture through

music, and specifically, through musical hybridity.

The third subquestion is as follows: how can music in contemporary worship assist in the

subversive intent of the eucharist? This final subquestion brings the ritual elements of music and

Eucharist together and explores how musical hybridity can operate in worship to assist in the

subversive intent of the Eucharist.

Historical Background of the Study

Throughout this thesis I operate broadly through the lens of postcolonial theory.

Underneath this wide umbrella of postcolonial theory are specialized fields that I utilize,

including cultural hegemony, subaltern studies, and hybridity. I also utilize ritual criticism in my

discussion of music and the Eucharist.

Postcolonial theory is a broad field of study of literature, history, politics, religion, and

the acquisition of knowledge as a whole that acknowledges that “the world we inhabit is

impossible to understand except in relationship to the history of imperialism and colonial rule.”2

The field arose around the 1970s in the aftermath of decolonization movements in the 60s and

70s and the questions that arose for formerly colonized peoples about how to proceed. It also

arose alongside other humanistic fields like feminism and critical race theory. The term

“postcolonial” is not meant to distinguish the present day as an era devoid of colonial powers

(because it is not) but to establish it as a field dedicated to assessing and working to deconstruct

lingering forms of colonialism and to imagine what a future without colonialism ought to look

like.

The concept of cultural hegemony technically precedes postcolonial, although it has

largely been appropriated by postcolonial critics, and today it is often lumped together with

2 J Daniel Elam, “Postcolonial Theory,” Oxford Bibliographies (2019, retrieved 14 March

2021, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780190221911/obo- 9780190221911-0069.xml#obo-9780190221911-0069-div1-0011).

postcolonial thought because of its similar resonances. The concept of cultural hegemony was

developed by Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) in the late 1920’s out of Karl Marx’s

theory of a working-class revolution to overthrow the ruling elite. However, Gramsci differed

from Marx in his emphasis that hegemony operates not by political dominance or force but by a

subtle ideological and cultural dominance, where the ideals and values of the dominant class and

are purported and spread as ultimate standard in society. Deviations from this standard are seen

as unnatural. Cultural hegemony more often than not goes undetected and is rendered invisible

because it infiltrates every aspect of social life, through institutions and systems like schools,

churches, the work force, popular culture, and the media.3 Throughout this thesis I will use the

term hegemonic culture to generally to refer to any dominating class culture, except for in the

fourth chapter where I name a specific type of hegemony: White racial supremacy.

The term subaltern was also coined by Gramsci to contrast his understanding of

hegemony. According to him it refers to the class of people subordinated by the dominant class

under the system of cultural hegemony; in the case of his context, it referred to the proletariat.

The term subaltern was then adopted into a specific field called “subaltern studies” by South

Eastern postcolonial scholar Ranajit Guha in 1980. In this case, subaltern is “a name for the

general attribute of subordination in South Asian society whether this is expressed in terms of

class, caste, age, gender and office or in any other way.”4 The term subaltern was also

3 Nicki Lisa Cole, “What is Cultural Hegemony?” ThoughtCo. (2020, retrieved 14 March

2021, https://www.thoughtco.com/cultural-hegemony- 3026121#:~:text=The%20Italian%20philosopher%20Antonio%20Gramsci,interests%20of%20th e%20ruling%20class.&text=As%20such%2C%20the%20group%20that,controls%20the%20rest %20of%20society).

4 Bailey Betik, “Subaltern Studies,” Scholar Blogs (2020, retrieved 14 March 2021,

https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2020/02/17/subaltern- studies/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=subaltern-studies).

popularized within subaltern studies by Indian deconstructionist theorist Gayatri Chakravorty

Spivak in her 1985 seminal essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Though Spivak is largely

understood as a postcolonial theorist, she has rejected this label for herself in its Western usage

for its tendency to ironically use imperialist ideology in its study of so-called “Third World”

countries.5 In her essay she critiques postcolonial thought for attempting to speak for the

subaltern and deny them the agency of their own voices. She objects to the broad use of the term

subaltern to refer to anyone who is oppressed and insists on a narrower definition as “anything

that has little or no access to cultural imperialism.”6

Throughout my thesis I will use the term subaltern generally the way Gramsci does, as

any class of people dominated by hegemony. However, in the fourth chapter, along with my

association of hegemony as White supremacy in the context of the United States, I will use

Spivak’s postcolonial classification of subaltern as those peoples specifically dominated by

Western and European colonialism and its lingering effects: non-White peoples in the United

States.

The term “hybridity” is even broader than the field of postcolonial theory itself. The

already existing term was adapted into postcolonial theory by Homi K. Bhabha. He used

hybridity to articulate the inescapable hybrid nature of the identities of colonizers and the

colonized because of the influences of multiple cultures at once. According to Michael

5 Michael Syrotinksi, Deconstruction and the Postcolonial: At the Limits of Theory

(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007; ProQuest Ebook Central; retrieved March 14, 2021, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/merceru/detail.action?docID=380748), 41.

6 Michael Kilburn, “Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty,” Scholar Blogs (2017, retrieved 14 March

2021, https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2014/06/19/spivak-gayatri- chakravorty/).

Syrotinksi, hybridity “points to the ways in which the foregrounding and active reappropriation

of hybrid cultural identities, and the disruption of homogeneity in all its forms, opens the way for

counter-discursive and counter-hegemonic political theory and practice.”7

Hybridity has been appropriated to encompass a wide range of topics on culture mixing,

including musical hybridity. Scholars began to incorporate music into the concept of hybridity in

the late 1980s and early 1990s. The idea is that the effects of colonialism have manifested

themselves in cultural changes like literature, art, and music—changes which are still ongoing.

Like Bhabha’s concept of hybridity, it still holds that hybrid music production is an essential

factor in identity formation. Theorizing and exploration of musical hybridity is especially

prominent in diasporic groups and immigrant communities around the world as they find

themselves caught in between two or more cultural spaces.8

Throughout this thesis I will operate under the assumption that the Eucharist can be

considered a ritual and that music can likewise be considered a ritual element. I make this

assumption using the research of ritual critics such as Ronald Grimes, Gerald Klingbeil, and Tom

Driver.

Ronald Grimes is considered the “founding father of ritual studies.”9 Though rituals have

been studied for quite some time, ritual studies emerged as a fully interdisciplinary field in the

7 Syrotinksi, Deconstruction of the Postcolonial, 26. 8 Kariann Goldschmitt, “Hybridity,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music Online 2nd

ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett, Oxford University Press, 2013, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/ omo-9781561592630-e-1002256796.

9 Paul Post, “Ritual Studies,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (retrieved 14 March

2021, https://oxfordre.com/religion/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore- 9780199340378-e-21).

1970s, reaching into theatrical studies, anthropology, sociology and psychology, philosophy,

cultural history, religious studies, and liturgical studies to systematically study ritual in its

broadest sense. Because Grimes believes that the term “ritual” suffers from “contemporary

linguistic confusion,” in that it has been limited to religious ritual and in is widely misunderstood

as something of the past, or something that “developed” humans so do not engage in, he gives a

purposefully open definition of “ritual” to focus rather on “ritualizing,” which emphasizes that

ritual is a process.10 He says, “ritualizing transpires as animated persons enact formative gestures

in the face of receptivity during crucial times in founded places.”11

The term “ritual studies” was first used by the American Academy of Religion in 1977

against the backdrop of the liturgical renewal movement following the Second Vatican

Council.12 It is liturgical studies, focused on the ritual of the Eucharist, that is my entrance into

ritual studies for this thesis. Along this road of liturgical studies, I consult the work of Tom

Driver in his book, Liberating Rites. He emphasizes the transformative and effective power of

ritual for Christian sacraments, most specifically in the practice of the Eucharist, arguing that

Christian sacraments in contemporary practice have diminished or even lost their potential to

effect the present and liberate people in the actuality of their earthly lives.

10 Ronald Grimes, “Ritual,” in Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. Willi Braun and Russell T.

McCutcheon (London: Cassell, 1999), 260. 11 Gerald A. Klingbeil, Bridging the Gap: Ritual and Ritual Texts in the Bible (University

Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007; elec. ed.: ProQuest Ebook Central; retrieved 19 April 2020, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/merceru/detail.action?docID=3155494), 16.

12 Post, “Ritual Studies.”

Further, I examine the contributions of those who study ritual in biblical texts. Biblical

ritual is a newer addition to the fields of ritual and biblical studies that explores both the nature

of the ritual text and the history behind the text in an attempt to shed light on the ritual’s

meaning.13 I apply the principles of biblical ritual to the language in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34,

using the work of Gerald A. Klingbeil and Peter-Ben Smit. Klingbeil establishes the legitimacy

of the Eucharist as a ritual when he says, “Jesus, who inaugurated the powerful ritual of

communion based on the important Passover ritual, emphasized this aspect of connecting the

past with the present by looking toward the future: ‘I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the

vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom (Matt

26:29, NIV).’”14

In the way of music as ritual performance, many musicologists, ethnomusicologists,

anthropologists and sociologists have explored how music interacts with society and culture as a

ritual function. More specific to my interests is the work of art historian David F. Martin, who

contrasts the “participative experience” of group music-making against the “spectator

experience” of simply listening to music, and how the participative experience creates a sense of

unity in groups. I also refer to the work of anthropologist Iain Morley, who describes how

participatory music performs a ritual function that resembles the effect of religious rituals.15 He

emphasizes participatory music’s ritual function in that it affects outcomes in the world and

transforms people, and he specifically notes its ability to create unity in groups.

13 Klingbeil, Bridging the Gap, 66-67. 14 Klingbeil, Bridging the Gap, 244. 15 Iain Morley, “Ritual and Music—Parallels and Practice, and the Paleolithic,” in Becoming

Human: Innovation in Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Cultures (ed. C. Renfrew and I. Morley; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

As for the integration of music and Eucharist as a unified ritual, surprisingly minimal

work has been done. This is where I use the research and models of those scholars who

separately address the rituals of music and Eucharist and critically engage them together to forge

a unified ritual. I am certainly not the first to create a guideline for liturgical criticism—many of

the scholars I am studying have done so. However, my guideline is innovative in that it will be

acutely focused on how music and Eucharist can be performed together effectively.

Limitations

I must here briefly acknowledge that I, as a White American woman, am implicated in

my own research. While I attempt to operate through the lens of postcolonial theory, I, myself,

am descendants of colonizers and carry their legacy in my being. Therefore, there are limits to

what I can offer to this effort. I provide a “subaltern” voice as one who experiences the

oppression of patriarchy, but I cannot speak for those who have suffered under European

colonialism. Furthermore, as I promote musical hybridity to allow the subaltern to subvert the

hegemonic, I acknowledge the critique of some within postcolonial thought of hybridity studies,

who argue that attempts at hybridity often result in further silencing of the subaltern because they

are a disguise for the promulgation of Western ideals. I will fully address these critiques in

chapter three. I maintain that I am committed to restoring the agency of subaltern voices to

express themselves through music however they see fit, whether it be through hybridity or not.

CHAPTER 2

HOW IS THE EUCHARIST, AS UNDERSTOOD IN 1 CORINTHAINS 11, INTENDED TO BE A SUBVERSIVE RITUAL FOR COMMUNAL CHANGE?

I am asserting here that Paul’s understanding of the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper, as

evidenced in 1 Cor 11:17-34, is that it is a subversive ritual for communal change. As has been

established in the introduction to this thesis, I call the Eucharist a ritual because of its capacity to

engage Christian communities in an encompassing of past, present, and future, rooted in the

sacrifice of the Jesus Christ on the cross. By subversive, I mean that it disrupts an existing

subjugating system.

While some rituals work to tighten the boundaries of communities and reinforce

homogeneity, Paul asserts that the ritual of the Lord’s Supper, as distinctly Christian, is a

different kind of ritual. The Eucharist subverts, rather than stabilizes, the present community

structure. In other words, it works to disrupt, rather than solidify, the status quo—the existing

hierarchical structure of the community—, forging communal change, which for Paul is a

redistribution of access to power so that all members of the community have equal access to

power. Following his understanding of Jesus’ life and the meaning of his final meal with the

disciples, Paul believes that at the Lord’s Supper, there should be no distinctions between rich

and poor, haves and have nots. All should be considered equal because Christ died for all,

equally. Therefore, the Eucharist is an agent of liberation for those on the underside of society. In

order for this liberative vision of the Eucharist to play out, the practice and celebration of the

Eucharist must subvert the cultural standard of social stratification in Corinth.

Here I will be applying postcolonial theory to understand the social stratification of first

century Corinth, based on the work of New Testament scholar James Dominic Crossan in his

book, God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now.1

In 1 Cor 11:17-34, Paul addresses the Corinthian community in the form of what we

might today call a ‘strongly worded letter’ in regard to their practice of the Lord’s Supper.

According to him, instead of allowing for the practice to produce communal change towards a

greater equality and liberation of the oppressed, the more powerful members are using the

practice to reinforce the strict social hierarchy of the community.

Paul’s agenda is, first of all, to tell the Corinthian community what they are doing wrong

at the Eucharist and why, and second of all to show them how they ought to be doing it instead.

The seriousness of the matter and Paul’s anger at the violation is evident in his strong and

mocking tone: “In the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come

together it is not for the better but for the worse . . . When you come together, it is not really to

eat the Lord’s Supper.”2 This is a deep insult to the Corinth church: they are practicing a

superficial Lord’s Supper. Why? His contention is on the basis that he has heard there are

divisions at the table of the Lord’s Supper. It is not altogether clear who he heard this from, but it

is possible that the poorer members of the community, whom Paul alludes to “remaining hungry

while another gets drunk,” brought complaints to him.3 In biblical scholarship there has been

some confusion over Paul’s statement in verse 19: “Indeed, there have to be factions among you,

1 James Dominic Crossan, God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (New York:

HarperCollins, 2007). 2 1 Cor 11:17-20 (NRSV). 3 Peter Ben-Smit, “Ritual Failure, Ritual Negotiation,” Journal for the Study of Paul and His

Letters Vol. 3, No. 2 (Fall 2013): 189.

for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine.” Other English translations have

used “have God’s approval” or the “approved” instead of “genuine,” which might shed light on

Paul’s intent with this statement. Why would he be arguing in favor of divisions here, when it is

clear in the rest of this portion of the letter that he is against divisions? Scott Nash suggests that

this statement makes more sense read in a mocking tone, where Paul is, in effect, saying: “Of

course you would split yourself into little cliques so that you rich ones could be easily

distinguished.”4 He is mocking their obsession with social class and status.

Our next line of questioning is: what are these “divisions” Paul talks about, and why are

they such a problem for him? The divisions look like some members (the wealthier ones of

higher social status) eating beyond satisfaction and leaving little food for other members. This is

not a metaphor, since the Lord’s Supper was most likely originally observed as a full meal—

serving much more than just bread and wine—prior to a liturgical order of worship.5 This meal

would have been held in the evening (Saturday), as opposed to a Sunday morning, and hosted in

the homes of members of the congregation—a fact that we will revisit later on. When Paul says,

“some of you go ahead with your own private suppers,” it suggests that the meal was a type of

potluck meal, where everyone was asked to bring a dish to share. This potluck meal was an

embodiment of the equality promoted by Jesus, as well as the acknowledgment that all material

things belong to God and therefore must be shared equally.6 Under this scenario, the wealthier

ones would have been able and expected to bring more substantive dishes, while ones of lesser

means would have brought smaller dishes or no dish at all. This discrepancy alone would have

4 R. Scott Nash, 1 Corinthians (Interpretation Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary; Macon,

GA; Smyth and Helwys, 2009), 335. 5 Ibid., 336. 6 Crossan, God and Empire, 170.

put on display the inequality amongst members of the community. One imagines that the poorer

members might have felt ashamed that they could not bring adequate food to share. If some

people were going ahead and eating their own suppers, this suggests that they were able to arrive

at the event earlier than others. The wealthier ones would have held less laborious and time-

consuming occupations and would be able to get to the meal earlier, whereas the poorer ones

who worked manual labor and longer hours would have arrived later in the evening.7 According

to Paul, the wealthier members went ahead eating their own food that they brought instead of

waiting for all members to arrive and eat together, overriding the intent of a potluck and leaving

the poorer members with little to eat. Not only do they eat their food ahead of the other members,

but they openly gorge themselves and “one goes hungry and another becomes drunk.”8 Scott

Nash translates the Greek word used—prolambanei— in the phrase “each of you goes ahead

with your own supper” as “devours.”9 This illustrates the gluttony of the rich members that is so

counter to Paul’s understanding of the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. It is is selfish, with little

regard for the entire community, and is unacceptable, Paul says.

Another reason to believe that the social stratification of the Corinth culture was

maintained in the Corinthian church is the fact that the Lord’s Supper was generally held in the

private homes of members, those who had homes large enough to accommodate dozens of

guests. This is not to say that there existed a separate liturgical event practiced in a separate

building; there were no such separate church buildings in Paul’s time—the entirety of worship

time was conducted in these church-homes, which included the full meal that was the

7 Crossan, God and Empire, 336. 8 1 Cor 11:22 (NRSV). 9 Nash, 1 Corinthians, 336.

Eucharist.10 Regarding the Corinthian context specifically, Crossan explains Paul’s relationship

to the wealthy patron couple, Priscilla and Aquila, temporary residents of Corinth, who Paul

notes a few times as hosting church in their home.11 Traditional large private homes had dining

rooms that could seat roughly ten to twelve people, suggesting that the remaining guests would

have to eat elsewhere in or on the outside of the home. It is fitting with tradition that those who

got to eat in the dining room with the host were of similar social status, hence exacerbating the

divide between the rich and poor in the Corinth church.12 Crossan describes the social

stratification at large group meals like this:

What happened, then, at Corinth, when a villa owner gave a feast for friends, clients, freed slaves, and maybe even some very special and privileged slaves? Such a feast might well have been conducted according to a strict hierarchy, not only with regard to place and seating but also when it came to food and wine. A feast could be and often was a ritual of social discrimination and overt humiliation.13 Important to note is that it is likely that the majority of the members of the Corinthian

community were not aware that what they were doing was “wrong.” They were most likely

treating the Lord’s Supper as they would treat other secular communal meals, according to

common practice, not recognizing the Christian Lord’s Supper as a unique ritual. They were

simply acting in line with traditional societal norms. J. Ayodeji Adewuya describes the cultural

atmosphere in Corinth and how it affected the church community: “Upward mobility was the

rule of the day in Corinth since its rebuilding. It was a land of opportunity that promoted freedom

10 Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and

Preaching, Westminster John Knox Press: 1997), 193. 11 Crossan, God and Empire, 167. 12 Nash, 1 Corinthians, 337-38. 13 Crossan, God and Empire, 169.

for oneself and allowed little thought for others . . . The attitude of self-importance within the

larger community had spilled over into the believing community, standing at the heart of the

divisions and dissensions within the community.”14 This failure to distinguish between cultural

practices and Christian practices is the root of Paul’s critique. He holds that the Lord’s Supper

must be a unique practice among other routine practices; it must not reflect the social

expectations of the culture, which looked like stratification based on class.15 In essence, Paul is

saying to the wealthier members, “I know you’re used to eating however and how much you

want, but we don’t do that here. Here you are not better than your less privileged peers. Here you

must all be equal.”

The Lord’s Supper is distinctly Christian. This means that there is unity even in diversity.

Since Jesus made community with both rich and poor, sinners and saints, so too should his

church exemplify this diversity. Diversity itself is not equivalent to divisions. But if at the Lord’s

Supper the unequal wealth and power distribution of the community is perpetuated, then the

community is not unified, it is divided. Paul says that when those wealthier members hoard the

potluck food to themselves, they both cause the poor to go hungry and be humiliated for having

their lack of resources put on display. They strip away their human dignity by rubbing their

poverty in their faces. He mockingly suggests that the wealthier members gorge themselves in

the privacy of their own homes if they so choose, but to keep their gluttony to themselves rather

than letting it harm other members of the church.

14 J. Ayodeji Adewuya, “Revisiting 1 Corinthians 11:27-34: Paul’s Discussion of the Lord’s

Supper and African Meals,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 30.1 (2007): 96-97. 15 Nash, 1 Corinthians, 34-35.

In the next section, verses 23-26, Paul takes a notable shift. He recites the tradition that

he “received from the Lord,” and which he specifically notes that he “also handed on to you”

(the Corinthian church). This signifies to the church that the tradition Paul received is what they

ought to be following. It is the tradition of Jesus, the ultimate celebrator of the Lord’s Supper.

This section is purposefully contrasted to the prior section: Paul intentionally places side by side

what the church is actually doing and what they ought to be doing, according to the tradition of

Jesus, showing the embarrassing gap between the two. One the one hand, the church makes a

mockery of the diversity of its community, shaming the members of lesser means by hoarding all

the food and putting their poverty on display. On the other hand, Jesus’ Lord’s Supper is an

occasion of self-sacrifice, reverence, remembrance, and unity in one body. By this contrast,

Adewuya says that Paul “shows the folly of the Corinthians in their attitude of self-absorption.”16

While Jesus used the cup of wine to signify his blood through his sacrificial death on behalf of

the church, the wealthy Corinthians used the wine to get drunk.

In the final section, verses 27-34, Paul combines these two opposing versions of the

Lord’s Supper to warn of the consequences of violating the Lord’s Supper in the way the

Corinthians have. Not only have the wealthy members physically starved and shamed the poor

members, but they have also brought judgement on themselves. Since the Lord’s Supper

signifies Christ dying for others, if those who celebrate the Lord’s Supper do not embody this

sacrificial “for others” mentality, then they not only void but also distort the significance of the

“for others” that Christ intended to have passed on through his death.17 Then the Lord’s Supper

16 Adewuya, “Revisiting 1 Corinthians 11:27-34,” 100. 17 Nash, 1 Corinthians, 341.

becomes the opposite of what it was intended to be. Therefore, those who violate this purpose of

the Lord’s Supper are liable to judgement from the Lord.

This is why the Corinthians must “examine yourselves, and only then eat the bread and

drink of the cup.”18 This means that they must reflect on their actions and attitudes and how they

compare to the traditional standard of the Lord’s Supper, which is self-sacrifice for others. If

they fall short of this standard, they cannot partake in the Lord’s Supper. There is question about

what Paul considers “the body” when he says, “For all who eat and drink without discerning the

body eat and drink judgement against themselves.”19 Given Paul’s understanding of the church

as the “body of Christ,” it is likely that he means here both the actual body of Christ on the cross

and the entirety of the church, for which he died, as the communal body of Christ.20 Therefore,

perhaps he is saying, “if you take the Lord’s Supper without regard for the other members of the

body of Christ, you are also disregarding the physical body of Christ himself and are therefore

bringing judgement on yourselves.” Here, again, is Paul’s focus on the entirety of the community

and the rich’s mistreatment of the poor.

The gravity of this malpractice of the Lord’s Supper is so intense for Paul that he asserts

it is the cause for members of the community falling ill and dying. Though it sounds like Paul is

being a little dramatic, it is possible that he is referring to the poorer members experiencing

illness and economic hardship from a possible famine in the mid-first century, or that they are

undernourished exactly because the rich have continuously not shared their food with them.21

18 1 Cor 11:28 (NRSV). 19 1 Cor 11:29 (NRSV). 20 Nash, 1 Corinthians, 342. 21 Ibid., 338-42.

Based on my analysis, I assert that Paul considers the Lord’s Supper a subversive ritual

because it should undermine the present cultural standard and create a unique practice that is

counter-cultural to what the Corinthians grew up understanding to be the proper way of life. It

subverts the socially stratified way of life under the Roman Empire. Crossan says, “The

radicality of God’s egalitarian Christian meal opposed the normalcy of Rome’s hierarchically

patronal meal.”22 The Lord’s Supper is subversive because it radically opposes the ways of an

empire within the constraints of the empire itself. It seeks to change the empire from the inside

out. In this subversive ritual, some members (the richer members) will experience discomfort—

the discomfort of giving up their power and lessening themselves in order to exist on the same

level as the have nots. If they want to come to the table, they must both literally give up their

abundance of food and drink and their seat at the rich-folk table, as well as be forced to really

examine and change their own way of life, not only inside the church, but also outside it. This is

hard, hard work. It is not just another socially acceptable ritual meant for leisure and pleasure.

Brian K. Blount says to this point, “In 1 Corinthians 11, the apostle demanded that the kinds of

status separations that may have had significant meaning between non-Christians should not

impact the manner in which Christian believers came together in the meal . . . Paul is ultimately

bringing a challenge to the ideology of privilege.”23 Paul insists on the uniquely Christian—

egalitarian—nature of the Eucharist that purposefully and subversively stands in contrast to the

ways of the Roman empire. He is sending the message to all who may hear: “we do things

differently here.”

22 Crossan, God and Empire, 170. 23 Brian K. Blount, Then the Whisper Put on Flesh: New Testament Ethics in an African

American Context (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2001), 141.

The practical application for today’s practice of the Eucharist is not difficult to discern.

Though the contemporary Church rarely practices the Lord’s Supper as an actual full meal, there

are nonetheless lessons from the Corinthian church that we can apply to our current context.

According to Paul’s understanding, if our practice of the Eucharist is a feel-good, care-free,

comfortable moment of self-indulgence, then we are doing it wrong. We are conducting an

artificial Lord’s Supper—the same critique that he lodged at the Corinthian church. In a modern

context this is not a self-indulgence in the literal sense where someone took one too many wafers

from the communion tray, but in the sense that it allows us to remain content with our ways and

does not probe us to challenge and critique ourselves and our own community about the power

dynamics maintained in and by the community.24 In other words, the Eucharist should forge

communal change rather than maintain the status quo. And this change can only come about

through tension wrought by subversion. Adewuya puts it this way: “Paul's main point is that this

observance ought to cause the believing community and its constituent members that participate

in the celebration of the Lord's Supper to stop and examine themselves.”25 Our modern practice

of the Lord’s Supper is subversive when it undermines and stands in contrast to the societal

standard of social stratification based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and class.

In the same way that James Crossan draws connections between the social stratification

of first century Corinth and twenty-first-century United States of America, I am asserting that the

critiques that Paul lodged against the Corinthian church can be applied to the contemporary

Church at large. Our actual practice of the Lord’s Supper tends to embody self-indulgence and

24 Adewuya, “Revisiting 1 Corinthians 11:27-34,” 101. 25 Ibid., 102.

perpetuate social hierarchy rather than forge equality. If Christians applied Paul’s instruction that

one must examine themselves to see if they are acting in line with the purposes of the Lord’s

Supper—subverting the status quo and forging equality—in order to actually participate in it, I

am not sure how many of us would pass the test. Poignantly, Richard Hays notes that “The

Revised Common Lectionary appoints 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 as the Epistle reading for Holy

Thursday each year but never designates the full passage (vv. 17-34) for reading in worship.

Consequently, many Christians may know that Paul retells the story of the institution of the

Lord’s supper without having any sense of the context for the retelling.”26 Therefore, Christians

are very familiar with the words of institution but not with Paul’s scolding of the Corinthian

church which gives him the impetus to tell them the words of institution. This fact prompts the

question: why is this necessary context left out of our common reading? And what would happen

to our practice of the Eucharist if we brought our attention to that context? Ritual theorist Tom

Driver discusses the tendency in modern churches for their practices of communion to be

privately individualistic and overly symbolic rather than communal and prompting us toward

action and change:

A false gospel will pretend that if that sacraments are faithfully performed and the message of salvation loudly preached, all is well. A false gospel will be triumphalist, whether in personal, political, or ecclesiastical terms. It will be success-oriented. A truer gospel helps the children of light to see that their sacramental experience of communion with the living God will increase the pain they feel in passing from the ecstasy of sacrament to the misery of the world’s poor. Out of this sympathetic pain is born the Christian contribution to the redemption of the world.27

26 Hays, First Corinthians, 193. 27 Tom Driver, Liberating Rites (Charleston: BookSurge, 2006), 222.

By this definition of the Lord’s Supper, it should propel us not to maintain the status quo but to

desire to make the world look more like the equality embodied in the Lord’s Supper. It should

cause us not to comfort ourselves with the façade that “all is well,” but to ache from seeing the

inequality in the world and be driven to eradicate it.

While Paul perceived and taught his partnering churches that the Eucharist is a

subversive ritual with a liberative intent, the Church at large, in contemporary practice, has

diminished this liberative intent of the Eucharist. Our practice of the Eucharist has become

domesticated and stabilized rather than renewing and liberative. It reinstates the status quo

instead of opening up new possibilities—opportunities to change the present.

In Liberating Rites, Tom Driver explains that the practice of the Eucharist began as a

communal gathering to eat and drink in celebration of the risen Christ, all the while invoking the

presence of the Holy Spirit. But over time, this egalitarian celebration turned into a hierarchical

“rite,” where the priest alone has the power ordained by God to confect the Eucharist and

mediate the “real presence” of Christ in the elements.28 The Eucharist thus becomes an occasion

for upholding hierarchy rather than flattening it. The same societal issues that plagued the

Corinthian community continue to plague the human race into the present. Christians in any age

must continuously battle against the societal tendency towards inequality, knowing that they are

called to fight for a radical equality. However, it is the natural tendency of any human ritual to

affirm what was rather than challenge what is. This is what grounds Christians in tradition and

gives us a stable sense of shared identity, allowing us to maintain continuity with the generations

of practicing churches that came before us. But the Christian ritual of the Eucharist must not only

look to the past; it must also challenge the present. Paul used it to change his present. He saw the

28 Driver, Liberating Rites, 210-11.

Eucharist as an opportunity to enact the vision of the Kingdom of God that Jesus inaugurated in

his time on earth, practicing that grand banquet that we will experience in heaven. In the act of

diverse peoples coming together and sharing a meal as equals, we get a glimpse of heaven. Paul

wrote this “strongly worded letter” to the Corinthians with the vision of bringing diverse peoples

together in a new power arrangement, where the poor dine with the rich and no one can

distinguish which is which. But the Eucharist is not some game where we simply pretend for one

hour each week that everyone is equal. That would render the Eucharist ineffective. It is done

with the vigilant hope that, if you realign the power structure at the Eucharistic table, you can

realign power structures in society at large.

What the Corinthian community needed to grow and challenge their status quo was for

the voices of the poor—the oppressed—within the group to rise up. Whether or not it was

actually the poorer members who notified Paul of the divisions at the Corinthian eucharistic

gatherings, the concerns of the poorer members were heard and brought to the forefront. In a

sense, those oppressed members brought an “outsider” perspective—the perspective of the

Other. Though they were indeed members of the Corinthian community just like everyone else,

they were made by the rich members to feel like outsiders, like they didn’t belong, in a space that

Jesus deemed equal for everyone. In the language of postcolonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty

Spivak, they were the voices of the subaltern, those who have little or no access to cultural

imperialism.29 In the case of the Corinthian community, the poorer members would have reaped

few benefits from Roman imperialism as opposed to their wealthier counterparts, the patrons,

which is why these poorer members can be called the subaltern, while the wealthier members can

29 Leon de Kock, “Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: New Nation Writers

Conference in South Africa,” Ariel, vol. 23, no. 3 (1992): 29–47.

be called the hegemonic. The subaltern must be allowed to speak for hierarchical social

structures to change. This concept will be explored in depth in chapters three and four. If the

homogenous group is enclosed on itself, with no “outside” perspective, it cannot see where it is

failing. It will perpetuate the status quo without someone from the outside to confront it. What is

appropriate ritual practice to those inside the group may not be perceived as appropriate to those

on the outside. That is why Paul, as a “ritual negotiator,” stepped in to mediate the division

between the poor and wealthy members and help the community as a whole reinterpret the

meaning of the Lord’s Supper.30

The distinctly Christian aspect of the Lord’s Supper that Paul clearly saw and argued for

was that it prompts us to reimagine the present in light of what could be: the Kingdom of God

that Jesus spoke of and embodied in his ministry. In his assessment of Jesus’ vision, Paul sought

to bring together diverse peoples under one umbrella and in a new power arrangement.

30 Smit, “Ritual Failure, Ritual Negotiation,” 166.

CHAPTER 3

HOW CAN MUSIC ALLOW THE SUBALTERN TO SUBVERT THE HEGEMONIC?

According to Paul’s vision of the Lord’s Supper, it is a subversive ritual that challenges

the existing structures of communities and redistributes power from the oppressor to the

oppressed. Music, as a crucial ritual element of the contemporary practice of the Christian

Eucharist, has the potential to be similarly subversive. Music can be “ritualized,” or

domesticated, in the same way the Eucharist has been, encouraging conformity, homogeneity,

habituality, and stability; it can either stabilize its participating communities, reinforcing their

present structure, or it can disrupt communities and open the door for changing the present

structure. Through hybridity, which I am placing in opposition to homogeneity, subaltern groups

can subvert music from the hegemonic culture by blending it with elements of their own

subaltern culture to create a third, new space, negotiating their own unique identity. Approached

from a different angle, hybridity also allows for the music and culture of oppressed groups to

enter into the conversation of the hegemonic culture, piercing the homogeneity of the

hegemonic, thereby forcing oppressors to contend with the voices of the subaltern. The

hegemonic is forced to negotiate and morph its present structure to recognize the subaltern.

Invoking the subaltern theory of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, this chapter proposes how the

subaltern can speak and better yet, sing, through music. This chapter has two aims: first to show

how music can solidify the existing structure of communities and unify its members, and second

to show how music can conversely subvert the structure of existing communities and allow for

outside voices to enter in.

Music as solidification of a community

Music has a unique and intense power to bring people together and strengthen the ties

between them. Don and Emily Saliers, in their book A Song to Sing, a Life to Live, reflect on the

eternal and universal nature of music and its effect on the human race. They say:

Whenever human beings have gathered for worship, prayer, or meditation, music has been there. Certain ordered sounds, our ancestors discovered long ago, awaken and sustain certain states of awareness. Often these sounds communicate specific messages because they are part of ritual gatherings, like the monks’ prayers or the ancient Israelites’ trumpets. In other traditions as well, ordered sound evokes feelings and captures the attention of communities that are attuned to them.1

As this quote explains, music has long been a crucial element of ritual practice for community

formation and identity. Humans were making music together long before we could articulate

what music is. Though music takes on many forms in varying communities and traditions around

the world (as we will see later in our discussion of hybridity), the essence of music—with its

ordered sounds and embodied experience—is universal. Furthermore, singing, which is the only

universal instrument, is an especially embodied experience.

Music is a fully embodied experience. The Saliers note that rituals are carried out by

engaging our bodies—the act of doing that informs our being.2 This will be important later as we

think about music and the Eucharist together. Iain Morley similarly says that music as a ritual

function cannot be understood outside of the context of human bodies and groups that perform

and listen to the music.3 Our bodies were made to both perceive and make music. Vibrations

1 Don Saliers and Emily Saliers, A Song to Sing, a Life to Live: Reflections on Music as

Spiritual Practice (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2006), 20. 2 Ibid., 21. 3 Iain Morley, “Ritual and Music—Parallels and Practice, and the Paleolithic,” in Becoming

Human: Innovation in Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Cultures (ed. C. Renfrew and I. Morley; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 160.

from music resonate in our bodies, connecting us to the outside world. What is more, our breath

and heartbeat connect us to rhythms of the world. In the most profound way, the same breath that

allows us sing also allows us to live. Therefore, singing is intimately connected to the core of our

existence and survival. In group singing, individuals learn to sync their breathing with the others

around them, by practice and attentiveness to the presence and movements of their musical

neighbors. We take each other’s cues through a number of bodily movements: gestures, eye

contact, facial expressions, head nods, or leaning toward someone.

As a seasoned choral singer, my colleagues and I have grown accustomed to carefully

watching each other’s movements in order to anticipate our collective intake of breath. One of

the most miraculous experiences of human connectivity I have had is in small choral ensembles,

absent of a conductor, where the singers stand in a circle and conduct ourselves together. There

is no single leader—we must all figure out how to move together and simultaneously lead and

follow. That is the immense power of music to strengthen the bonds of human communities. Roy

Rappaport explains this experience through the lens of ritual studies: “To sing with others, to

move as they move in the performance of ritual is not merely to symbolize union. It is in and of

itself to reunite in the reproduction of a larger order. Unison does not merely symbolize that

order but indicates it and its acceptance. The participants do not simply communicate to each

other about that order but commune with each other within it.”4 Coparticipating in music making

actually enacts the sense of unity that the act of music making purports to symbolize. Group

singing is a profound experience of unspoken communication in the sense that your participation

4 Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1999; ProQuest Ebook Central; retrieved 14 March 2021, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/merceru/detail.action?docID=153384), 220.

in the experience is based on the extent to which your neighbors participate, and furthermore on

the extent to which you perceive that your neighbors are participating and vice versa.5

Musical Hybridity as Subversion

While music can strengthen the bonds within communities, it can also create tension and

dissonance amongst communities, challenging the status quo. Music can invoke what Charles

Taylor calls the “politics of recognition.” His definition is this:

A number of strands in contemporary politics turn on the need, sometimes the demand, for recognition . . . and the demand comes to the fore in a number of ways in today’s politics, on behalf of minority or “subaltern” groups, in some forms of feminism and in what is today called the politics of ‘multiculturalism’ . . . our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, often by misrecognition of others, and so a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves.6

The subaltern seek recognition mainly of the collective dimensions of individual identity, like

race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion.7 But this is not a recognition that can be confused

with assimilation. It acknowledges an individual’s whole self which need not conform to

hegemonic standards. The subaltern does not seek recognition in order to be more like the

hegemonic but to be more fully themselves and respected as such. Kwame Anthony Appiah uses

the example of African American identity and describes this recognition as the difference

between being equally respected as Black rather than being respected despite being Black.

The recognition that the subaltern seeks can come about through musical hybridity.

Hybridity in and of itself, as understood in postcolonial studies, is the inevitable result of the

5 Morley, “Ritual and Music—Parallels and Practice, and the Paleolithic,” 165. 6 Charles Taylor et al., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton,

New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994; retrieved 14 March 2021, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400821402).

7 Ibid., 150.

mixing of the culture of the colonizer with the culture of the colonized, a legacy that has evolved

across generations. The tension from this cultural clashing results in the creation of a new

cultural space—what postcolonial critic Homi K. Bhabha calls the “Third Space.”8 Considering

the cultural hegemony forced onto them, colonized individuals have had to articulate and

negotiate their own identity in light of a foreign presence that seeks to absorb their identity into

itself and force assimilation. The third, hybrid space is an act of resistance to assimilation.

Equally, hybridity in music creates a “third space” when different music styles clash. In a

postcolonial context, this clashing of music styles occurs across cultural, racial, and ethnic lines.

Scholar Yim Tan Lisa Wong explains musical hybridity like this:

When elements are brought, coerced, or drawn together, they may either repel, mingle, or do a bit of both . . . The colonized and colonists affected and influenced one another. The diaspora of migrants contribute to the fusion of different cultures’ musical instruments, structure, and sound. The result of hybrid musical forms demonstrates a new world sound, one that cannot be compartmentalized according to land, language, and political borders.9

It is that “new world sound” that signifies the agency of the colonized in creating their own,

unique identity. The strength of this formed identity is in tolerating the ambiguity of being in an

“in between” state, which evades and frustrates the either/or dichotomy of colonial dominance

that sets “Western music” against that whole conglomeration of non-Western music that gets

lumped into the single category of “world music.”10 If the hegemonic cannot distinguish if your

8 Lisette Blanco-Cerda, “Introducing Hybridity,” (retrieved 12 March 2021,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2KcMJFNHB8). 9 Yim Tan Lisa Wong, “Hybridity and Postcolonial Music,” Scholar Blogs, (retrieved 14

March 2021, https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2014/06/20/hybridity- postcolonial-music/).

10 Kariann Goldschmitt, “Hybridity,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music Online

2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett, Oxford University Press, 2013, retrieved 14 March 2021,

music is “Western” or “world music,” its power that has its grounding in binaries and

demarcation of groups and peoples is weakened. Adam Hearlson, in his book The Holy No:

Worship as a Subversive Act, explains that music naturally bends toward hybridity and urges this

constant reforming of the new from the old. He says, “Music routinely evades categorization.

The idea of a genre requires a set of social categories that label the music as being similar in

tone, rhythm, and content to other music . . . These categories are not innocent. They serve a

cultural function as a social barometer of power.”11 What makes music such a powerful tool for

subversion is that it can so easily and fluidly join multiple genres together to create a

categorically ambiguous sound, frustrating humans and their social atmosphere operated by

categorizing the world.

In her dissertation, “Examining Musical Hybridity and Cultural Influences in Valerie

Coleman’s Wish Sonatine and Fanmi Imén,” Brittany Trotter names the many and various

manifestations of musical hybridity, including: “borrowing, influence, allusion, quotation,

emulation, texture, parody, programmatic writing, sampling, and imitation.”12 Therefore,

hybridity as a concept in music can be quite broad, and it is tempting to call every musical work

a hybrid, considering that everything, in theory, is built on what came before it. While this could

https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/ omo-9781561592630-e-1002256796.

11 Adam Hearlson, The Holy No: Worship as a Subversive Act (Grand Rapids, MI: William

B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), ch. 5. 12 Trotter, Brittany Marie Trotter, "Examining Musical Hybridity and Cultural Influences in

Valerie Coleman’s Wish Sonatine and Fanmi Imèn," (DMA diss., West Virginia University, 2019), 3, retrieved 14 March 2021, https://search.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/examining- musical-hybridity-cultural-influences/docview/2402988061/se-2?accountid=12381.

accurately be argued in another context, for our purposes here, we are specifically examining the

way subaltern voices can use musical hybridity to subvert hegemonic culture.

Hearlson has an interesting dialogue about the musical creativity of those he calls

“subversives,” a term that is keenly appropriate for our conversation here. He says,

The subversives among us have a keen sense of ways in which taste is exchanged into status. For the underprivileged, access to certain genres is blocked . . . the sacrifice to become legitimate in one cultural sphere requires becoming illegitimate in another. Given such a difficult decision, the subversives often go a third way by creating something that is new and uncategorized . . . Subversives find comfort in the middle space between genres.13

Hearlson then proceeds to use Chuck Berry’s song “Maybellene,” which interestingly blends

Western swing music and Mississippi Blues, and Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton as examples

of creating something new and yet to be categorized from two or more existing genres. Though

Hearlson does not use the term “hybridity,” he nevertheless uses similar language of a “third

space” to refer to the subaltern who struggle find expression for their identity entirely in one

musical genre [read culture] or another. Miranda took two seemingly irreconcilable genres that

he loves— musical theatre and hip-hop—and merged them into a unified whole, subverting the

common societal notion that hip-hop and musical theatre have nothing to say to each other.

Hip-hop music is a prominent example of music allowing the subaltern to subvert the

hegemonic. Hip-hop, as a culture, was invented by young African Americans and Latinos living

in the under-resourced borough of New York City, the Bronx, in the mid-1970s.14 At the time of

hip-hop’s inception, the Bronx was being devastated by economic distress, gang violence, mass

13 Hearlson, The Holy No, ch. 5. 14 Soren Baker, The History of Rap and Hip-Hop (Greenhaven Publishing LLC, 2012;

ProQuest Ebook Central; retrieved 14 March 2021, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/merceru/detail.action?docID=5538370), 12.

incarceration, and police brutality. Looking for an outlet to express themselves and use their

voices in their own unique way, Black and Latino youth and young adults used the streets of

their hometown and the resources at their disposal to create something new. DJ Grand Wizzard

Theodore, the inventor of the disc-scratching technique, described the state of things at the time:

“It was that boiling point to give birth to something from nothing. All that turbulence was the

birth of hip-hop.”15 Similar to the way that hybridity is born out of the tension from clashing

cultures, hip-hop was born out of the racial and socioeconomic tension of America in the 1970s,

with Black and Brown youth longing to discover and declare their own identity in a hegemonic

society that sought to assimilate them into White culture. Although, I will depart from DJ Grand

Wizzard Theodore statement to propose that hip-hop was not born from nothing but from a rich

groundwork of cultural and musical styles that came before it. We will return to this idea later.

From within the hip-hop movement, four segments of hip-hop culture were formed: disc

jockeying, rapping, graffiti art, and B-boying (otherwise known as breakdancing). Originally

facing great skepticism from mainstream culture and disregarded as a true art form, with rap

especially coming under fire from music critics, hip-hop soon proved to be highly successful on

the national commercial market, and subsequently on the global market. One of the originators of

rap, Afrika Bambaataa, who launched the first European hip-hop tour, aptly captures this

trajectory of hip-hop culture when he said, “I had a vision that this was more than just party

music for the ghetto.”16 And it did become so much more. A niche, underground, unconventional

culture worked its way into mainstream culture and now dominates the popular entertainment

15 Darby Wheeler, Hip-Hop Evolution, performance by Shadrach Kabango (Banger Films,

2016; Netflix; retrieved 14 March 2021, https://www.netflix.com/search?q=hip%20hop%20evolution&jbv=80141782).

16 Baker, The History of Rap and Hip-Hop, 35.

industry and constantly occupies the minds of young people everywhere. In the words of Baker,

hip-hop today “reaches into virtually every aspect of life” as a billion-dollar global industry.17

Particularly in its early stages, hip-hop employed hybridity. Journalist Soren Baker says,

“One of hip-hop’s key characteristics is its ability to take an idea, a practice, or a way of doing

something and make it into something new.”18 Before copyright laws prevented it, rappers

heavily used sampled music in their songs from various genres, like soul, funk, disco, rock, and

reggae music [note that sampling was referred to above by Trotter as one manifestation of

hybridity]. Kool DJ Herc, who is acknowledged for hosting the first hip-hop block party, played

funk music, but with a twist. He stripped the tracks down to merely their percussion parts and

extended and repeated the “breaks,” essentially creating a new song. It was these broken beats in

songs to which dancers began to “break dance” and explore new moves.19 Therefore, Herc used

what was already in existence to create something revolutionary. Rappers took their method

example from politically minded poets who recited their poetry over playing music. The work of

Gil Scott-Heron is one example of this. In fact, depending on who you ask, Scott-Heron is

considered by some to be the first rapper.20 The inception of rappers was also at block parties,

where DJs would have their friends take the microphone to talk to and entertain the audience

between musical sets. Originally called MCs—master of ceremonies—the first rappers would

use call-and-response techniques, reminiscent of church services, and started to incorporate

17 Baker, The History of Rap and Hip-Hop, 117. 18 Ibid., 8. 19 Darby Wheeler, Hip-Hop Evolution. 20 Ibid.

simple rhyming into their sayings, creating an entertainment show in its own right.21

Furthermore, Grandmaster Flash revolutionized DJing when he experimented with existing

forms of disc jockeying and then broke from the tradition when he accidentally touched the

middle of the disc and produced an unheard sound. But rather than call this an accident and move

on, he forged ahead with his experimentation, consciously defying the norms of DJing in order to

create something new. He said of his process: “It was a taboo thing to put your finger in the

middle of the vinyl. It was like, DJs are gonna hate you if you do that.”22 In this instance, like

jazz music, Herc used the traditional form of DJing to then subvert that form, using its essence,

to create an entirely new sound. This is a hybrid act in the sense that he added a variation to an

existing practice, which birthed a new practice in its own right. What was already in existence

was not enough to express the individuality of the DJ. He challenged the status quo even within

his own culture

Researcher Reiland Rabaka illustrates the hybrid nature of hip-hop when he says:

“The Hip Hop Movement has often indiscriminately and quite cavalierly drawn from everything

and everything, whether deemed “good” or “bad,” from the past in its efforts to critique and give

voice to black ghetto youths’ (and their multiracial allies’) ongoing sufferings, social misery,

worldviews, and all-around angst.”23 The creators of hip-hop not only drew from elements of the

21 Baker, The History of Rap and Hip-Hop, 22. 22 Darby Wheeler, Hip Hop Evolution. 23 Reiland Rabaka, The Hip Hop Movement: From R&B and the Civil Rights Movement to

Rap and the Hip Hop Generation (Lexington Books, 2013; ProQuest Ebook Central; retrieved March 14 2021, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/merceru/detail.action?docID=1203909&pq- origsite=primo#), ch. 5.

hegemonic White culture but also from elements of their own existing subaltern culture that they

felt did not allow them to fully express their identity. Lester K. Spence articulates this hybrid

nature of hip-hop in creating a “third space” by drawing from two existing spaces: “Rap and hip-

hop are spaces in which blacks create new meanings of “blackness” and develop critiques that

offer alternatives to the status quo.”24 In the process of identity formation and negotiation, hip-

hop and rap allows Black people who find themselves stuck in between spaces and cultures,

feeling like they do not fully belong in either space, to change the dynamics of the territory

which encourages assimilation into one space or another, and create a new space of their own

volition. It is this agency to change existing structures and push something from the underground

to the mainstream that author and cultural critic Nelson George notices in various eras of African

American music: “It is the idea that this technology [turntable] is not just something to play the

record. That I can play the technology. To me, it’s in a tradition of great black music. The

saxophone is a classical instrument that is not central to the classical canon, but it was taken by

black musicians who make it into the central instrument of jazz.”25

The effects of hip-hop culture becoming mainstream did not occur in a vacuum. It was

not simply that rap music became widespread or that graffiti eventually became acceptable to the

public, but that this hip-hop revolution was a gateway for further societal transformation. The

movement of hip-hop into the mainstream culture also allowed other aspects of subaltern African

American culture to be introduced and accepted (by many, not all) in mainstream culture. For

24 Lester K. Spence, Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-hop and Black Politics

(University of Minnesota Press, 2011; ProQuest Ebook Central; retrieved 14 March 2021, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/merceru/detail.action?docID=740136).

25 Darby Wheeler, Hip Hop Evolution.

instance, the fashion that hip-hop artists donned became popular, like clothes, shoes, hairstyles,

accessories, and other physical forms of identity expression. Ebonics—American Black English

as a language in its own right rather than simply a dialect— has also become well-known and

integrated into “hegemonic” English, so to speak.26 The words “fo-shizzle” and “bling” are now

a part of the Oxford English Dictionary.27 Rapper Kurtis Blow was the first hip-hop artist to

represent a major commercial product through his appearance in a Sprite commercial in 1985.28

Hip-hop also provided a stage for burgeoning female rappers, like Niki Minaj and later Cardi B,

who have used their stage to hold a crucial public conversation about the expression of female

sexuality.29 Rabaka says of this watershed social movement spawned by hip-hop culture: “In the

most unprecedented manner imaginable, the Hip Hop movement . . . starts a new tradition where

black popular movements may in fact spring from the cultural crises, alienation, political

expressions, and social visions conveyed in Black popular music in particular and black popular

culture in general.”30 And that is the central point of musical hybridity for our purposes in this

paper. The purpose is not only to introduce various “outside” musical styles into homogenous

musical practices for its own sake but to do so in the hopes that it might lead to further rupturing

of homogenous cultures and therefore an instigation of the breaking down of hegemony and

social stratification. While the system of racism in America still runs rampant, one could argue

26 “Ebonics,” Lexico (retrieved 14 March 2021,

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/ebonics). 27 Rory PQ, “Hip Hop History: From the Streets to the Mainstream,” Icon Collective

(retrieved 14 March 2021, https://iconcollective.edu/hip-hop-history/). 28 Eric Reese, The History of Hip Hop (Scotts Valley, CA: Create Space, 2017; Audible ed.). 29 Baker, The History of Rap and Hip-Hop, 114.

30 Rabaka, The Hip Hop Movement, ch. 5.

that the movement of hip-hop into the mainstream culture continues to increase the platform that

Black Americans have in the political sphere. Think of the political influence of rapper Cardi B

when she publicly promoted Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders for the 2020 presidential

election and sat down with him for a twelve-minute video to discuss policy issues like police

brutality, economy, and health care, encouraging young, disenfranchised Americans to get

involved in politics and get out to the polls.31 Furthermore, allies of disenfranchised Americans

that listen to and support hip-hop music also became involved in the political discourse of 2020

because of hip-hip’s mainstream influence.

Despite working its way into mainstream culture, hip-hop, for the most part, has

maintained its unique identity. It has resisted becoming subsumed by the hegemonic culture. The

nature of hegemony is that it either destroys or absorbs what is on the boundaries. The

boundaries, in turn, either resist and choose to stay on the outside or learn to live within the

confines of hegemony all the while negotiating its structure and composition. It is a sort of

mutual negotiated assimilation. Hip-hop allowed itself to be absorbed into the dominant culture,

but it refused to fully assimilate. It continuously works from the inside out to realign the

structure of subordination of the hegemonic inch by inch. Hip-hop, by entering the mainstream,

created a fissure in the hegemonic culture, forcing its members to reconsider and reimagine their

understanding of what music, art, and dancing is. It forced realignment of the status quo.

This research would be remiss if it did not address an important and valid critique of

musical hybridity. This critique is that attempts at hybridity may not result in true hybridity but

31 Tara Golshan and Emily Stewart, “Cardi B and Bernie Sanders’s Video, and Her

Longstanding Interest in Politics, Explained,” Vox (retrieved 14 March 2021, https://www.vox.com/2019/8/15/20805989/cardi-b-bernie-sanders-watch-video-2020-nail- salon).

rather a form of mimicry of the colonizer’s voice and therefore a façade for further cultural

hegemony, where the subaltern’s voice and identity continues to be forgotten and lost. Rebecca

Romanow explains this in her article, “But... Can the Subaltern Sing?” where she explores the

way Western rock has been used as an oppressive tool to dominate the global commercial music

market. She draws on the work of postcolonial critic Homi Bhabha whose concept of the “Mimic

Man” proposes that the postcolonial musician who intertwines “native” music with Western

music “embodies a figure who replicates the behavior of the colonizer, yet remains “native.’”32

Furthermore, Romanow says, “Current narratives of successful Indian performers [rock

musicians] reveal an inclination toward hybridity and towards the inevitable Westernizing of

local and national music, where the subaltern’s voice is again silenced as it mingles and

reproduces the voices of the West.”33Therefore, colonizers emphasize musical hybridity, which

incorporate Westernness, over true expression of native identities.

Romanow’s critique is alongside other general critiques about the field of hybridity,

which are concerned about Western postcolonial theorizing overemphasizing hybridity at the

expense of more local struggles to overcome colonial power. It is a very valid critique. On the

part of the colonizer, it is indeed an oppressive act to encourage the postcolonial musician to

create hybrid music and then to categorize it generally as “world music,” or the music of the

Other. But this critique also delegitimizes the agency of the postcolonial musician and assumes

that she is ignorantly allowing herself to be duped by the colonizer. It also neglects to include the

experiences of mixed-race and mixed-heritage peoples, multilingual speakers, and others that

32 Rebecca Romanow, “But... Can the Subaltern Sing?” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature

and Culture, vol. 7, no. 2, Purdue University, 2005, 1-13, retrieved 14 March 2021, doi:10.7771/1481-4374.1263, 5.

33 Ibid., 4.

find their identities split between cultures. Furthermore, the aim of this paper is not to insist on

the subaltern use of hybridity but to explore how the subaltern voice can disrupt the homogeneity

of the hegemonic culture and therefore begin to break down its existing hierarchical structure.

Up to this point we have discussed the benefits of musical hybridity for the subaltern in

its efforts to subvert the hegemonic, but we have left out a crucial part of the equation. In order

for the subaltern to negotiate the existing social structure and ensure that its voice is heard and

recognized in the mainstream, there has to be some level of consent on the part of the

hegemonic. If the subaltern’s advances were met with total resistance, there would be no

negotiation to be had. So, our follow-up question is, what is in it for the hegemonic? What is the

incentive for the hegemonic to negotiate with the subaltern? To use an analogy, if we consider

the forces of hegemony and subaltern according to the laws of thermodynamics—of a system, its

boundary, and its surroundings—we can conclude that hegemony, as a system, can choose to be

open or closed; it necessarily must contend with those things beyond its boundary and decide

whether or not to allow the surroundings to pass through the boundary.34 In other words, the

hegemonic has to decide whether or not to recognize the voices of the subaltern, to let the voices

cross the boundary of the system. The hegemonic, of course, is not oblivious to the risk of

allowing the subaltern to be heard; they risk losing their power and sense of group identity that

they have built through tradition. But they also see the risk of completely resisting the subaltern

and realize that this alternative is more consequential than the former—they risk their very

existence dwindling into oblivion. They have to negotiate with the perimeter, or else the system

will perish. To use economic terms, it will not have enough capital, laborers, or consumers to

34 Lumen Learning, “The Three Laws of Thermodynamics,” Lumen Learning (retrieved 14

March 2021, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/introchem/chapter/the-three-laws-of- thermodynamics/).

sustain itself. Therefore, it is in the hegemonic’s ultimate interest to keep growing, to be an open

rather than a closed system. The system cannot be so open that it loses its identity, but it also

can’t be so closed, so resistant to growth to the point of total isolation, that it atrophies.

Churches are a kind of system. Furthermore, the Church at large can be understood as a

kind of system. Graham Walker refers to this type of systems theory as a “dance of

empowerment,” where continuation of the Church’s tradition is in a constant back and forth

negotiation with new voices of localized cultures entering the tapestry of the tradition.35 The

question from above can be rearticulated to ask, “what is in it for the Church?” What does the

Church gain from allowing outside voices to change its status quo? Dale T. Irvin suggests that in

an increasingly diversified Christian tapestry, the dominant Western Church tradition is “being

challenged in a number of ways to recognize difference, heterogeneity, and alterity in our social

contexts.”36 But the motivation for this tradition to re-create itself in light of this diversity is not

merely because change is being forced upon it. The Christian tradition can flourish from this

change and not merely consent to it begrudgingly, but to actually assent to it because the

possibility of breaking free from inertia is alluring and even hope-inducing. Irvin says, “The

concept of the new, the inherent drive towards expecting the unexpected, the ability to embrace

that which is unprecedented in history—in short, the ability to assent to change and

transformation—are all concepts and practices which are welcomed and nurtured to varying

35 Graham Walker, “Tradition and Context: The Dance of Empowerment,” Review and

Expositor 94, no. 3 (1997): 379–90, retrieved 14 March 2021, https://doi.org/10.1177/003463739709400305.

36 Dale T. Irvin, Christian Histories, Christian Traditioning (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,

1998), 9.

degrees by the variant strands of historical Christian faith.”37 Christianity throughout its

existence has been perpetuated by allowing itself to embrace the new and be transformed by it.

Therefore, within the Christian context, the subaltern provides an invitation, furthermore, a gift,

to the hegemonic—rather than a condemnation—“to live dangerously in order to open new

horizons, and ultimately to experience the holy in new and diverse ways.”38 It is with this

understanding of a church as an open or closed system that we now step into the context of

contemporary Christian worship amidst a growing diversity within global Christianity.

37 Irvin, Christian Histories, Christian Traditioning, 9. 38 Ibid., 141.

CHAPTER FOUR

HOW CAN MUSIC IN CONTEMPORARY WORSHIP ASSIST IN THE SUBVERSIVE INTENT OF THE EUCHARIST?

I have explored how the Christian ritual of the Eucharist, according to Paul, is intended to

be a subversive ritual for communal change, specifically towards liberation of the oppressed. I

have also explored how music has the potential to allow oppressed peoples to subvert hegemonic

culture through hybridity. I have undergone these explorations because I see a thread between

the two: Eucharist and music. This thread may seem obvious, since music and Eucharist more

often than not accompany each other in worship. But surprisingly little scholarship has been

conducted on the integration of the two elements as a unified whole. We understand the meaning

and purpose of music in worship, and we (roughly) understand the meaning and purpose of the

Eucharist (although this meaning and purpose can be quite different across various

communities). But do we understand how they work together in the same moment?

Subversive music and Eucharist in context

Though up to this point I have spoken in general terms of hegemonic and subaltern

cultures, I now want to zero in on a cultural context where I believe my model for musical

hybridity at the Eucharist is needed. While in this chapter I will focus on a single context, it is

my hope that my model can be applied in any context where hegemonic and subaltern voices and

cultures operate. It is my observation that contemporary White American Christian practice of

the Eucharist, as a whole, does not exercise its subversive intent. Just as Paul condemned the first

century Corinthian community for mis-practicing the Eucharist and turning it into an occasion

for a solidification of the present social stratification and subjugation of poorer church members,

so might Paul condemn 21st century White American Christians for promulgating a Eucharistic

practice that maintains the status quo rather than subverts it. From its onset, the Eucharist was

intended to constantly reframe contemporary social order at any point in time and make the

present church community look more like the egalitarian vision that Jesus had rather than merely

repeat the way things have been done in the past. I am proposing here that the societal status quo

is largely maintained rather than subverted in the worship practices of predominantly White

churches. This is why I hold that our practice of the Eucharist must be subversive—despite the

controversial nature that word implies—and that hybrid music can aid this effort. As a caveat to

this chapter, and as previously stated in the introduction to this research, I acknowledge that I, as

a White American Christian, am implicated in my own research, which is inherently biased, and

that I can be subject to the same criticisms that I impose on other White Christians. But I believe

that I can provide a necessary voice, as one from the “inside,” to encourage my own culture to

change. And while the “outside” (read subaltern) can prompt and push the “inside” (read

hegemonic) to change, the ultimate decision to change comes from the inside.

I am using the example of contemporary White American Christianity because it is a

particular hegemonic force that has historically fought to maintain the societal status quo and

prevent progress toward a more egalitarian society where all people are allowed their basic

human rights. It is statistically evident that White protestant evangelicals in the United States in

particular take a hostile posture against immigrants, refugees, Muslims, LGBTQ identifying

persons, people of color, and those of a low socioeconomic class.1 These are the Other in

society—those who differ from them or stray from what they deem to be the “norm”: White,

male, heterosexual, and cisgender.2 In her book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White

1 “Evangelical Protestants,” Pew Research Center (retrieved 14 March 2021,

https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/evangelical-protestant/). 2 Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith

and Fractured a Nation (New York, NY: Liveright, 2020), 13.

Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, Kristin Kobes Du Mez outlines some

striking statistics:

More than any other religious demographic in America, white evangelical Protestants support preemptive war, condone the use of torture, and favor the death penalty. They are more likely than members of other faith groups to own a gun . . . are more opposed to immigration reform and have more negative views of immigrants than any other religious demographic; two-thirds support Trump’s border wall. Sixty-eight percent of white evangelical Protestants—more than any other demographic—do not think that the United States has a responsibility to accept refugees. More than half of white evangelical Protestants think a majority nonwhite US population would be a negative development.3

This conglomeration of stances is the complete antithesis to the subversive intent of the Eucharist

toward liberation of the oppressed that Paul argues for. According to this assessment, White

evangelicals support the very marginalization and oppression of the “least of these” that Jesus

passionately fought against in his earthly ministry and by his death on the cross. That last fact,

that “more than half of white evangelical protestants think a majority nonwhite US population

would be a negative development,” is a blatant expression of racial hegemonic power that seeks

to silence subaltern voices, making this population a critical subject for my research. Akin to the

wealthy members of the Corinthian community who abused the celebration of the Eucharist as an

opportunity for self-indulgence, segregation, and preservation of strict social stratification, White

evangelicals abuse the gospel message and suppress the subversive intent of the Eucharist

through their hostility toward the Other and insistence on maintenance of the unequal status quo.

While I do not identify as an evangelical and was not outwardly raised in that tradition, I

have surely been influenced by White evangelical culture in America, as many other White

Christians have been. Therefore, I consider myself an insider, for all intents and purposes.

However, I am not limiting my example in this chapter to White evangelicals because all White

3 Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 10.

American Christians, as a hegemonic group, should consider what it means and looks like to

carry out the subversive intent of the Eucharist. Though White evangelicals are evidently the

most resistant religious group in America to the subversive intent of the Eucharist, the majority

of White Christian denominations in America are majorly homogenous in their racial

demographic makeup.4 A 2014 Pew Research Center national religious diversity report reveals

that with the exception of Hindu, Judaism, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the

National Baptist Convention, majority White Christian congregations take up the most space in

the list of the top ten least diverse religious denominations in America, some of which are

mainline protestant denominations like the United Methodist Church and the Episcopal church,

which are 94 percent White.5 Such homogeneity is not reflective of the Kingdom of God that the

Eucharist looks toward.

The suppression of the subversive Eucharistic intent in contemporary worship is

bolstered by our musical practices in worship, particularly during the Eucharistic rite, that are

largely homogenous in style and genre. In simpler words, worshipping communities largely

repeat the same songs and styles they have been singing and playing for generations, in keeping

with a continuous Christian identity. For instance, many congregations today still sing “A

Mighty Fortress is Our God,” which is one of the oldest hymns in the Protestant Christian

tradition, written by Martin Luther in 1529. As we have shown in the previous chapter, musical

repetition is a critical tool in fostering a sense of oneness and a shared, embodied experience in

worshipping communities. This repetition is the building block for community identity; when we

4 Michael Lipka, “The Most and Least Racially Diverse US Religious Groups,” Pew

Research Center (retrieved 14 March 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2015/07/27/the-most-and-least-racially-diverse-u-s-religious-groups/).

5 Ibid.

are able to memorize and internalize certain tunes and sing them over and over again together,

without hiding our faces in hymnals, we are better able to articulate and live out who we believe

we are as a community. Iain Morley articulates the function of music in religious ritual activity:

“The generation of a state of communitas is an important product (and often goal) of much of

both ritual and musical activity, and in the context of ritual frequently dependent on musical

activity to be achieved.”6 Music helps foster a sense of shared identity at the Eucharist. This

sense of identity has its place. But, as Paul has argued, worship—centered in the Eucharist—

must do more than create uniformity and unification. It must burst our cloistered worshipping

bubbles and let outside voices in. This will inevitably create some dissonance in a congregation,

to use a musical term, and we must learn from that dissonance and allow it to transform us. This

dissonance need not be cause for distress. For Paul, the opposite of uniformity is not disarray, but

diversity. Furthermore, the opposite of stability is not instability, but liberation. Sandra Maria

Van Opstal, in her book The Next Worship: Glorifying God in a Diverse World, explains that

tension in worship is inevitable if there is diversity in the community, with members bringing

their different cultural norms that collide and clash.7 But God actually calls forth this tension;

God desires that we worship together in unity in the midst of our differences, not despite them,

and not attempting to make the differences disappear. Tension is the driving force for

transformation. Unity is not synonymous with everyone “getting along”; that approach is based

on feelings and preference, whereas unity is an active choice to be present with one another in

6 Iain Morley, “Ritual and Music—Parallels and Practice, and the Paleolithic” in Becoming

Human: Innovation in Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Cultures, (ed. C. Renfrew and I. Morley; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 171.

7 Sandra Maria Van Opstal, The Next Worship: Glorifying God in a Diverse World,

(Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992, ProQuest Ebook Central, retrieved 14 March 2021, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/merceru/detail.action?docID=4388717), 23-27.

the midst of our differences. God calls for a unity more profound than the state of everyone

“getting along.” In a similar vein, Adam Hearlson boldly describes this tension in worship in

terms of politics. He says,

To be a worshipping people requires making political decisions, especially as they resist a world trying to make them anything but a worshipping people . . . Christian worship is not passive, it is deeply interested and because it is interested, it is political. Christian worship is the political act of initiating change. It is the act of saying NO to the current circumstance while also imagining and building a world that reflects God’s promises.8

This is not a “politics” in the sense of American government or partisanship. It is referring to the

decisions that communities have to make concerning authority and other power relations and

distribution and regulation of resources. In a worship setting, this means that worship leaders

must act as politicians who negotiate community dynamics and progress in the democratic

setting of a congregation, in a constant give and take to expand the boundaries of the community.

This idea can be connected back to Charles Taylor’s “politics of recognition.” The worship

leader’s job as a “politician” who seeks communal change means that she is negotiating a space

that is welcoming for the subaltern to speak and express their identity and for the hegemonic to

recognize and affirm its value within the Christian community. This can be connected to the way

Paul acts of a “ritual negotiator” of the Corinthian community, working to realign the seating

arrangement, so to speak, so that the poorer and wealthier members might be reconciled unto

each other in an egalitarian power arrangement.

As discussed in chapter two, Paul believed that the Lord’s Supper was not an opportunity

for comfort and self-satisfaction, but of tension and transformation, where those who have social

and political privileges and power practice giving up that power to make themselves equal with

8 Adam Hearlson, The Holy No: Worship as a Subversive Act (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.

Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), ch. 1.

those of lesser status. Music in worship, especially at the Lord’s Supper, should also foster this

transformation and self-emptying. Don and Emily Saliers note: “Hymns that sing of justice and

freedom ought to agitate and disturb many of us. Such songs can bring us face-to-face with truths

we might rather not know. However, when the church does not learn to sing these challenging

songs of faith, it may find that the impulse to justice and freedom is heard only outside its walls.”

Similarly, Brian Blount says, “Music, like the provocative Word of God to which it often

responds, is a double-edged sword. Some swear that it soothes. Others admit that it instigates,

incites, and ignites.”9 Because the Scriptures challenge us, as seen in our discussion of Paul and

the Corinthian community, so should our music not only comfort us but challenge us and make

us feel uncomfortable at times. It is through/in that discomfort that change can begin to occur.

If “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” is a metaphor for homogenous music in contemporary

Christian worship, I will elongate the metaphor by proposing that it is perfectly ok for “A Mighty

Fortress” to be part of a community’s repertoire. There is no need to ban the hymn. [There may

actually be, on further analysis, but I am only employing this song as a metaphor here]. But the

repertoire cannot only consist of “A Mighty Fortress” or other songs of the same genre and style.

Furthermore, I would suggest that “revamping” the hymn by speeding up the tempo or adding an

electric guitar as many communities have done does not count as disrupting homogeneity.

Perhaps I have carried this metaphor too far, but hopefully the reader will at this point have

caught my drift. The problem is not that a community’s traditional music is “bad” or outdated;

the problem is when congregants get so comfortable with their music that they are not open to

different music. This level of comfortability produces a trend of homogeneity which discourages

9 Brian K. Blount, Can I Get a Witness? Reading Revelation through African American

Culture (Louisville, KY: Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, 2005), 92.

differing voices, closing off the system of the church to the outside world. New people may join

the church, but they are subliminally forced to assimilate into the homogenous culture. To avoid

this, churches must craft their worship to be both grounded in a traditional community identity

and open to letting the tradition adapt to incorporate new voices. Worship leader Ryan Cook

explains this idea helpfully: “songs should reflect both the prevailing cultures and extend to the

world beyond that context.”10

The Eucharist and music go hand and hand. Eucharistic music is the central-most music

in the Christian church, across all denominations. Since the Eucharist today, in most settings, is

not practiced as a full meal in someone’s home but is instead a sacramental rite at the center of

the worship experience, the primary defining characteristic of the Eucharist is not the sustenance

of the meal itself but the symbols evinced in the meal—in the ritual act of receiving communion

as a unified body. For Roman Catholics, it is that the food is transubstantiated into the body and

blood of Christ. For Protestants, the food is a symbol or a sign of the sacrifice of Christ. Music

can also be a carrier of these symbols. What we sing and listen to while we take the Eucharist

matters. Furthermore, how we sing and listen at the Eucharist matters. We will return to this idea

later on. Therefore, I am proposing that music, as a crucial element of the ritual of the Eucharist,

can assist the Eucharist in becoming all that it was meant to be. This can be done through

musical hybridity.

Ways to incorporate musical hybridity at the Eucharist

I will now offer and discuss concrete ways for congregations to incorporate musical

hybridity at the participation of the Eucharist. These include options of models for/levels of

10 Van Opstal, The Next Worship, 101.

hybrid worship, shared and diverse leadership and collaboration, hybridity of genre, style, form,

time, and themes, and a loose successive process by which to incorporate these elements.

Van Opstal outlines four models of diverse worship that I think are helpful when

considering ways to incorporate musical hybridity in your specific context.11 There are pros and

cons to each model, and whichever one a congregation chooses will depend on its readiness to

embrace the subversive intent of the Eucharist. They are as follows: acknowledgment, blended,

collaborative rotation, and fusion. Acknowledgement operates by a dominant music style and

incorporates hints of other styles here and there. This model is used by churches that are not

quite ready for hybrid worship but are willing to explore the music of other cultures. The blended

model equally represents two or more cultures within worship. For instance, half of the songs in

a service might be from the Baptist Hymnal 1991 while the other half are from the Lift Every

Voice and Sing II hymnal. Collaborative rotation rotates worship leaders or teams based on

culture, so that each week or month focuses on a different culture. The leaders/teams would

necessarily be members of the culture they are representing. This gives participants the

opportunity to experience the breadth of a culture’s worship style.

All of the previous models incorporate music hybridity to some extent. But the fusion

model is the utmost example of hybridity that can be imagined and in fact embodies the very

definition of it. It is what it sounds like: mixing styles and genres or creating new music. It is the

clearest form of a “third option” or a “third space” that I discussed in chapter three. Van Opstal

actually refers to fusion worship as a “Third Culture” in some instances.12 When one or another

musical genre does not sufficiently express what you want to convey, a third option is to create a

11 Van Opstal, The Next Worship, 103. 12 Ibid., 124.

new genre. This is the intrinsic nature of music creation. New genres come into being by

building off existing genres and adding new qualities to it. Hearlson says, “These subversives

bend time and form to defy perceptions of what counts as a holy song, and, by extension, what

counts as a holy singer. The new musical stylings make room for the disenfranchised to become

part of God’s heavenly chorus.”13 Fusion gives the composers of this new music the opportunity

to tell their own story and pave the way for a new generation of Christians to find their own

voices within music.

Shared and diverse worship leadership is the ideal way to incorporate musical hybridity.

It exemplifies and centers us in the reason that we embark on a process of hybridization in the

first place: to recognize and affirm the dignity of the people behind the music. While there may

be an ultimate individual who oversees worship, a number of diverse voices should be involved

in the leadership process, both “from the pulpit” (or the choir loft) and behind the scenes in

preparation work—research, song selection and modification, instrumental and vocal

arrangements, recruiting congregation members to participate, etc. Shared leadership can include

collaboration and team-led worship every service or a rotation schedule where individual leaders

from different cultures are given full responsibility for an entire service. The former allows for

more of a musical fusion atmosphere while the latter gives congregants a more robust picture of

the music of a certain culture that may be unfamiliar to them. Rather than entrust all the decision-

making to one person, a church could elect a small, diverse worship team of part-time or

volunteer musicians and leaders. This means that a more racially homogenous church will have

to intentionally hire people from outside of their culture. This can move a congregation from

13 Hearlson, The Holy No, ch. 5.

simply appearing to be racially diverse in its leadership to actually giving subaltern people a

platform to be empowered in leadership.14

The most easily recognizable and widely used form of musical hybridity is genre and

style. For instance, White congregations who mostly use “traditional” Western hymns (like “A

Mighty Fortress is Our God”) can mix into their repertoire CCM (contemporary Christian

music), gospel music, Latino music, or other genres. In terms of style, they can of course add

other instrumentation besides a piano and organ, use unique arrangements of old/traditional

songs, vary the range of musical dynamics, or experiment with improvisation. Hybridization of

style can open up the genre of music to give a more expansive understanding of the culture

behind that style. Ethnomusicologist and ethnodoxologist Jean Ngoya Kidula says, “We

ethnomusicologists would like to expand people’s musical palates. People often respond by

trying to adapt the pieces into a Western ethos. That approach has its values. But retaining the

original expression’s integrity may give me more pleasure and expand a worldview.”15 By

modifying the style of music from other cultures to fit our own cultural lens, we miss out on a

crucial dimension of that culture’s theological and spiritual understanding and expression. To

interpret an saying of a seminary professor of mine, there is a difference between merely

reproducing the lyrics and melodies of the songs of other cultures and learning to sing those

songs in the metaphorical language, key, and tune of the people from those cultures.16 For

14 Van Opstal, The Next Worship, 114. 15 Jean Ngoya Kidula and Joan Huyser-Honig, “Jean Ngoya Kidula on Ethnomusicology and

Ethnodoxology,” Calvin Institute of Christian Worship (retrieved 14 March 2021, https://worship.calvin.edu/resources/resource-library/jean-ngoya-kidula-on-ethnomusicology- and-ethnodoxology/).

16 Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Class Lecture, “Race, Racisms and Reconciliation,” 2020.

instance, according to Van Opstal in research conducted with a diverse team of worship leaders,

improvisation and ad-libbing is very important in African American worship music. But this

quality is not readily explored in White/Western congregations. She says of White/Western

congregations, “Whether hymns and organ, rock band or mandolins, planning is important.

Songs are often done in a similar way every time . . . The leader sings the exact words and rarely

ad-libs.”17 Leaders of White congregations could reach outside their comfort zone of careful

planning to experiment with improvisation in worship music. They may have to guide their

congregation through this if they assess that it will elicit discomfort and, counter-intuitively,

explain to the congregation why improvisation is being experimented with. A worship leader

who displays confidence and a sense of freedom in improvisation will create a comfortable

atmosphere for congregants to consider the possibility of this freedom for themselves.

Beyond genre and style, there are other important—and, I believe, more interesting—

ways we can hybridize our music. These considerations tend to be forgotten in favor of

discussions of genre and style. In other words, the sound of the music is not the only way to

experiment with it. Form, time, and themes are some examples. These qualities set the context

that the music is performed in. Form can be as important as style or genre. It is about structure;

various cultures structure their liturgy in vastly different ways. For instance, some group all of

the worship songs together in one set, while others spread the songs throughout the service.

Some forms leave space for improvisation while others are more meticulously planned out.

Different traditions and cultures view worship as climaxing at different points in the service—

Eucharist, sermon, altar call—and this effects the placement and emphasis of the service music.

Van Opstal notes that though churches may use genres or music styles from other cultures, the

17 Van Opstal, The Next Worship, 206.

form, or the structure, of the service may still reflect the dominant culture. In other words, there

may be hybridity of style and genre but not of form, which can stifle a full experience of the

particular cultural worship music.

Time is related to form. Some cultures view time as fixed and stringent, while other

cultures view time as more flexible. For example, Van Opstal notes the differences between

Western and Navajo perceptions of time, as they relate to worship practice. Mark Charles, a

Navajo specialist for indigenous worship says this:

Many of the songs we sing in Navajo culture are longer than most Christian church services. The perception of time is different. So the first missionaries thought, These Navajos don’t love God; they are always late to church. The Navajos thought, These missionaries don’t love God; look how short their service is. two completely different ways to understand the world.18

I include this reflection not to suggest that White/Western congregations make all their services

last three hours long but to exemplify how cultural perceptions of time are related to the

experience of worship music. Worship songs from Najavo culture will not truly reflect Navajo

culture if they are shortened and squeezed into a sixty-minute service and made to conform to

Western perceptions of time. Hearlson says that the Western perspective views time with great

anxiety; it is concerned with expediency, viewing time as a commodity, rushing from one time

commitment to the next, and this is reflected in our worship practices, in the way that services

are prevented from going “over time.” But Hearlson offers that music can free us of this anxiety:

“Holy music is that which encourages the church to embrace time in all of its iterations as part of

life in the company of God. Music is an opportunity to reaffirm that time is not our enemy, but a

source of creative imagination.”19

18 Van Opstal, The Next Worship, 131. 19 Hearlson, The Holy No, ch. 5.

Van Opstal also discusses themes and theology that are present in the worship music of

various cultures. Different cultures focus on different aspects of God’s character. Kidula says:

Each personal or cultural group’s experience of God’s weight and worth is but one aspect of a facet of God’s magnificence in time and space. Therefore, when I accept and learn from another’s expression of praise to God, I embark on a journey towards another dimension of God’s glory. Studying other peoples’ and nations’ musics and arts can deepen our knowing in this glorious relationship with God.20

Cultures emphasize characteristics of God that are important to the lived experiences of that

culture. And to lean into a differing culture’s experience of God’s character is to be awakened to

the fullness of God’s being. For instance, Van Opstal notes that African American worship, due

to its legacy of chattel slavery, emphasizes the liberating aspect of God. Therefore, worship, and

especially worship music, provides an opportunity for the community to express this sense of

freedom and openly call for freedom of the oppressed in the here and now. Accordingly,

emotions in music may be expressed more outwardly and spontaneously, as opposed to privately

and conservatively.21 White congregations could explore this liberative aspect of God through

musical expression, moving beyond White conceptions of God’s liberation and exploring what

liberation means to nonwhite peoples.

Lastly, it is important to have a loose timeline or a step-by-step process, tailored to your

congregation, for how to implement hybrid music. I loosely use Van Opstal’s model for this

process.22 This is about finding the right balance between pushing the boundaries of your

community without pushing them too far that they become completely overwhelmed and

bombarded with changes. This is where the political nature of worship comes into play. Hearlson

20 Kidula and Huyser-Honig, “Jean Ngoya Kidula on Ethnomusicology and Ethnodoxology.” 21 Van Opstal, The Next Worship, 202. 22 Ibid., 136.

poignantly says, “The art of subversion requires the cunning imagination to bend a genre without

breaking it.”23 We want to push our congregations, not break them. Incremental movement,

rather than tossing a bunch of unfamiliar content and cultural elements at the community all at

once, will produce more permanent results. It will communicate to your congregation that music

hybridization is a long-term process rather than a temporary fad. This is why Graham Walker

calls systematic change within a community a “dance.” It is a persistent push and pull, gently

prodding your community. If a church is starting from scratch and wants to open the door to

music hybridization, it could begin with creating themed Sundays (MLK Sunday, Latino

Heritage Sunday, World Communion Sunday, etc.) and introducing music from the

corresponding cultures. The music on this special Sunday will most likely still reflect the form

and style of the dominant culture within the congregation, and that is ok for this beginning stage.

After that initial experience, the church could hire a guest from outside of the community to lead

worship in his/her culture’s style for one Sunday. This will open the door for other guests to

come in and lead worship as the church grows more comfortable with music outside their norm.

It communicates to the congregation that hybrid worship is not just for special Sundays. At this

point, the worship leader can begin to progressively incorporate hybrid music into weekly

worship, perhaps beginning with one new song every other week so that the church’s musical

repertoire is steadily expanded. A final step would be to hire someone from outside of the

community and dominant culture to be on the worship team or to be the primary worship leader

full-time. This fulfills the shared leadership ideal that Van Opstal mentions and roots the process

of hybridization in the ultimate reason for hybridization in the first place: that the voices of the

subaltern, and in the case of this chapter, non-White/Western voices, may be heard and

23 Hearlson, The Holy No, ch. 5.

recognized. Ultimate change in societal structures comes about when subaltern peoples are

allowed the agency of decision-making and on behalf of communities.

Challenges and guidance

The danger of hybridity for the subaltern that we mentioned in the previous chapter is

that subaltern voices can become subsumed into the hegemonic culture and have their distinct

identity overshadowed and, therefore, unheard.24 I am not at all suggesting that subaltern voices

restrict themselves to musical hybridity. I intend to promote the agency of the subaltern to

choose to retain their culture’s traditional musical styles in their purest form or to incorporate

other styles of music however and as much as they see fit. I am, however, suggesting that the

hegemonic, alternatively, be interrupted by the subaltern through hybridity. This is the other side

of the hybridity “coin,” so to speak. While subaltern groups have been asked repeatedly to

compromise their cultural music to make it fit to hegemonic standards and avoid being generally

labeled “world music” or “ethnic,” I hope to balance the scales by consequently asking the

hegemonic culture to compromise their music, that their music be subverted by the subaltern. In

the context of Christian worship, I suggest that this musical hybridity be used at the occasion of

the Lord’s Supper, both as a literal practice and a theoretical model to be embodied in the ritual

itself.

It must be mentioned that a critical danger of White congregations employing hybridity is

cultural appropriation. The line between cross-cultural engagement and appropriation is very

thin. Van Opstal notes this danger for congregations that employ what she calls the

24 Rebecca Romanow, “But… Can the Subaltern Sing?” CLCWeb : Comparative Literature

and Culture 7, no. 2 (2005): 6, retrieved 14 March 2021, https://doi.org/10.7771/1481- 4374.1263.

“acknowledgement” form of diverse worship, where there is a “dominant style with a hint of

other styles.”25 This can lead to misrepresentation and stereotyping of subaltern cultures, where

the people from those cultures are not allowed to speak for themselves or express their own

culture. Music in general is particularly susceptible to cultural appropriation because of the ease,

naturalness, and ambiguity of imitating, sampling, and adapting musical material from around

the world.26 But White congregations, as members of hegemonic culture, must be keenly aware

of how representation and power dynamics play a role in their use of musical hybridity. The best

way to avoid appropriation is through diverse shared leadership that I explained above, so that

people from the cultures we are trying to represent get to speak for themselves. However, I

acknowledge that this option is not readily accessible to many White congregations.

If you are incorporating other cultures’ styles of music into your worship with the

purpose of adopting it as your own music or using it as you see fit, then it is appropriation. When

there is a distinct population of people capable of contributing their voices, but someone from

outside that population does it for them, acting as a surrogate, then it is appropriation. For

instance, in a church that I once interned at, a predominately White mainline protestant

congregation with a handful of Latino families and one Black family, in one Sunday worship

service the worship director orchestrated a quartet of White women who sang an arrangement of

Lift Every Voice and Sing, of which I was unfortunately a part of. I did not realize at the time

that it was an instance of cultural appropriation. We sang that song, giving no context or

explanation to the congregation for why we were singing it, giving no acknowledgment to the

25 Van Opstal, The Next Worship, 103. 26 Helen Fang, “Examining Cultural Appropriation Through Music” (retrieved 14 March

2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wY5S3pfPis&t=1s).

African American community that birthed the song, and making no reference to the legacy of

slavery and racism in which the song has its context. In essence, we sole the song and adopted it

as if it were our own. I can only imagine how it made the single Black family feel when they

heard it. We cannot forget that there are people behind the music; people are the reason we

embark on this subversive, hybrid music journey in the first place. An acceptance and embrace

of certain cultural elements must be rooted in an acceptance and embrace of the human beings

that make up that culture, or else we will have missed the foremost and ultimate purpose of

hybridity. It must be undergirded by respect, empathy and awareness of cultural power

dynamics, and must produce intentional dialogue with the people that created that culture.27

Worship leaders in majority White contexts must keep in mind that any attempt at

musical hybridity will run the risk of cultural appropriation or assimilation of subaltern culture

into hegemonic culture. But it is a risk we must take. The alternative is that subaltern voices are

not even given a chance to be heard at all, and that the culture of the hegemonic is allowed to

continue unchecked. The risk of hybridity going wrong makes it ever more necessary to be

meticulous and intentional about it. It cannot be a half-hearted, thrown together at the last-minute

attempt.

Another related danger of hybrid music is tokenism. This can be especially prevalent

when churches invite musicians from other cultures to lead worship, teach music, or perform. In

these instances, be careful to not make generalizations about entire cultures from one experience

with a guest leader. Tokenism can also occur when hybrid music is relegated to special Sundays

only—like MLK Sunday, World Communion Sunday, etc. It sends the message to your

27 Fang, “Examining Cultural Appropriation Through Music.”

congregation and those who would consider joining that “diverse” music is not the norm and

therefore must be relegated to the periphery. Moreover, when music from other cultures is

approached mainly as something fun, entertaining, or a means of indulging one’s cultural

curiosity rather than a formative, necessary experience to understanding the Kingdom of God,

then it is tokenism. When this occurs Kidula calls this a “show-and-tell item.”28 It sends the

message that you are just trying to check off a “diversity” box. When worship leaders from other

cultures come into your church and teach you and lead you in their music, they are, in essence,

gifting their culture to you, entrusting you with their very identity in an act of grace, not so that

you can exploit their gift and strip it of its dignity, but that you can learn from it and allow it to

transform you and, therefore, transform the world.

It must also be acknowledged that hybrid music at the Eucharist cannot be an end in and

of itself. As discussed in the previous chapter on music’s subversive capabilities, the changes

that rap and hip-hop brought did not occur in a vacuum. They brought further societal

transformation. If our eucharistic music does not bring about discernable change in the

community, then it is empty music. In other words, we cannot diversify our music and then call it

quits, patting ourselves on the back for thinking we have done our part. Van Opstal explains that

diverse music and worship is only “a step toward deeper solidarity and mutuality.”29 This move

toward solidarity can be exemplified when hybrid music leads to hiring subaltern peoples on

church staff, as mentioned above.

Lastly, it must be noted that there is no one-size-fits all approach to musical hybridity.

What works in one church context might not work in another. Every congregation is different,

28 Kidula and Huyser-Honig, “Jean Ngoya Kidula on Ethnomusicology and Ethnodoxology.” 29 Van Opstal, The Next Worship, 105.

and there are varying levels of readiness and capacity to implement hybrid music. I am calling

this factor subversive maturity. This fact would seem obvious, but it is more difficult than one

might think to gauge what a congregation is ready for. Sometimes a worship leader or team does

not discover how subversive-mature their congregation is until an experiment in worship

completely flops. Therefore, there are no set of rules for hybrid eucharistic music, but rather a

general guideline for liturgical criticism—questions and ideas for reflection with which each

individual congregation must engage. As Van Opstal puts it, “there is indeed no recipe for

perfect multiethnic worship. There are only communities of people learning from trial and error

how to provide worship atmospheres of worship that communicate ‘We welcome you’; ‘We

stand with you’; ‘We need you.””30

The gift of recognition

If we return to our question from chapter three about systems theory—what’s in it for the

hegemonic?—how does it transfer to a church setting? If a church operates like a system, then

the same rules apply. Very few congregations welcome change easily and most allow it

hesitantly and steadily. Communities resist change in order to maintain the status quo. This can

be a good thing; too much change will confuse the shared identity of the community and cause

the foundation to crumble. But total resistance comes with a cost. If the church does not allow

change, does not let outside voices in, it will be able to sustain itself. It will become obsolete.

Christianity was allowed to spread in the first century because it opened its boundaries to outside

voices.31 If it had resisted growth it would have died out as a fringe movement within Judaism.

30 Van Opstal, The Next Worship, 117. 31 Graham Walker, “Tradition and Context: The Dance of Empowerment,” Review and

Expositor 94, no. 3 (1997): 379–90, retrieved 14 March 2021, https://doi.org/10.1177/003463739709400305.

Graham Walker says, “The Christian tradition continues because it is constantly produced and

reproduced and the [canonical] elements of the past are softened to absorb revitalizing

[indexical] elements of the present; as a result, the dance continues.”32 For our context here,

canonical can be read as hegemonic while indexical can be read as subaltern. Churches will

ultimately accept subaltern voices when they realize that these voices are an enriching gift to

them. Recognition of the identity of the subaltern is, paradoxically, a gift to the hegemonic

congregation, allowing it to not only survive but thrive into the future and renew its tradition,

opening it up “to the seemingly endless multi-cultural expressions of the Jesus story.”33 Paul was

frustrated with the Corinthian church because the rich members wanted to keep the community

closed off from difference; they wanted to maintain their cloistered social club. But Paul

understood that such exclusionism defeats the entire purpose of this newfound faith in Jesus

Christ and knew that the church could not flourish, much less survive, if it did not open itself up

to multiple cultures and voices.

To conclude, I bring together these two elements of Christian ritual—Eucharist and

music—because I believe that the ritual is more than symbolic. It is more than a remembrance of

a past event. It has transformative power. It is Tom Driver’s idea that the “sacramental

experience of communion with the living God will increase the pain they feel in passing from the

ecstasy of sacrament to the misery of the world’s poor.”34 It is the idea that when one

experiences a communion that embodies the equality of the Kingdom of God, she cannot help

but to ache when seeing that the world outside the walls of the church is so unlike this

32 Walker, “Tradition and Context,” 389. 33 Ibid., 389. 34 Tom Driver, Liberating Rites (Charleston: BookSurge, 2006), 222.

communion. It is a transformation born of tension, of subversion of the status quo. It is the idea

that if you realign power structures at the table of the Lord’s Supper, you can realign power

structures beyond the walls of the church. It is living the eschatological in the present. Van

Opstal, referring to Revelation 21:22-24, puts it this way:

In the end, the beloved community, which consists of people from every nation, tribe, people, and language, worships God. This breathtaking family will be present in all of its beauty . . . There will be sounds, smells, movement, and colors that point to the creative nature of God and his people. There won’t be a corner of heaven for the quiet worshipers and another for the dancers. Since we on this side of history have seen the season finale, our call is to live as a foretaste of that reality.35

The foretaste of that heavenly reality is meant to be embodied in the Eucharist, as the symbol and

sacrament of Jesus’ egalitarian sacrifice for all. Paul emphasized this when he said to the

Corinthians: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death

until he comes.”36 Music is essential to this heavenly worship in the way that it both forms us

into tight-knit communities and challenges us to look beyond the borders of this same

community and let outside voices in. Music is therefore a gift to the subversive, liberative intent

Eucharist.

According to the Book of Common Prayer, at the Eucharistic Rite, following the words

of institution and the breaking of the bread, the Celebrant says, “The gifts of God for the people

of God.”37 This is the invitation for the people to come forward and receive the gift. What is this

gift? It is, of course, Christ’s own self, who gave himself up on a cross for the marginalized. God

became human and suffered with the suffering, etching into earthly history a sign that God

35 Van Opstal, The Next Worship, 31-32. 36 1 Cor 11:26 (NRSV). 37 The Online Book of Common Prayer (retrieved 14 March 2021,

https://www.bcponline.org/).

recognizes those unrecognized by society.38 By becoming one who was unrecognized or, as

Charles Taylor would say, misrecognized, by society, God gifts the marginalized—the

subaltern—with recognition of their very being. Christ’s giving of himself restores a dignified

identity to those “who are as humiliated and emptied of their identity as Christ was.”39 Therefore,

it is that recognition of the subaltern that is at the center of the Eucharist. Similar to recognition,

Tom Driver says the gift is radical presence—of God with us and of us with each other:

“Liturgically, sacrifices are gifts: They unite human donors with divine recipients in a single act.

Sacraments, like sacrifices, are acts that generate intense presence: worshippers make themselves

present to each other and to God, receiving in return the shock of God’s presence among

them.”40 This presence is radical because it defies the earthly system of subordination and turns it

into a radical system at the table of Christ. Inasmuch as God is present with each of us equally,

so are we present with our neighbors, breaking the barriers of our social condition, in the gifts

that we give each other in mutual recognition of the identity of the other. At the Eucharist, we are

all invited to receive this gift of recognition and presence as the “people of God.” But it is a

recognition and presence that has its foundation in the marginalized of society—the subaltern. In

receiving the gift, we commit to recognizing the subaltern the way Jesus did, to not only hear

their voices but recognize and affirm them as essential to the wholeness of God’s egalitarian

community

38 Jurgen Moltmann, “The Crucified God: Yesterday and Today: 1972-2002,” in Cross

Examinations: Readings on the Meaning of the Cross Today (ed. M Trelstad; Minneapolis MN: Fortress Press, 2006), 131.

39 Ibid. 40 Tom Driver, Liberating Rites, 211.

CHAPTER FIVE

CONCLUSION

Summary

Throughout this thesis I explored both Eucharist and music as ritual practice. I turned to

the earliest biblical account of what can be considered the Lord’s Supper, which is Paul’s

account in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. I argued that he perceives the Eucharist to be a subversive,

rather than a solidifying, ritual for communal change, with liberation of the oppressed as its

transformative movement. For Paul, the Eucharist is intended to subvert the status quo of social

hierarchy and turn it into an egalitarian system that resembles the Kingdom of God that Jesus

inaugurated by his life, death, and resurrection. I then turned to music and explored how music,

like the Eucharist, can both solidify and strengthen communities as well as subvert their existing

structures. I argued how subaltern peoples can subvert hegemonic culture through music,

particularly through musical hybridity that disrupts homogeneity, to make their voices heard and

recognized. I used the birth and expansion of hip-hop as a prime example. Finally, I pulled

together the lessons learned from the first two subquestions and explored how music and

Eucharist operate as a unified whole in contemporary Christian worship. I offered a particular

contextual example of where the subversive intent of the Eucharist needs to be more fully

exercised and where my model of hybrid music can be used.

Areas for further study

There is much that my research could not address, due to the length and nature of this

thesis format. While I used race, and specifically race in the context of the United States, as an

example, it is my hope that my work can be expounded upon to explore how hybrid music can

allow other subaltern groups around the globe to speak and be heard in Christian worship.

Wherever the dynamics of hegemony and subalternity are at play, so can my model be applied.

One could explore my model in terms of gender, class, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. In terms

of gender, much work on subversive worship has already been done and continues to be done by

feminist and womanist liturgists. But hybrid music could add an effective new dimension to

subversive womanist/feminist liturgical practices as it seeks to disrupt the homogeneity of

androcentric themes and language in worship.

Relatedly, my model for hybrid music at the eucharist more so connected the ideological

premises of hybrid music and the Eucharist in its subversive intent and did not explore practical

creative and unique ways to integrate hybrid music into the actual moment of the Eucharist. My

research focused on the Eucharist as the symbol and archetype of subversion of the status quo in

Christian worship—and how hybrid music can contribute to this subversiveness—and did not

offer particular ways to use hybrid music during the institution of the Eucharist. Furthermore, I

focused on participatory music and did not explore the effects of listening to or being an

audience to hybrid music. I focused on the general concept of hybrid music making, including

genre and style, and did not take into account song texts and their potential for subversive power.

These could be areas for further exploration and application.

My research also does not take into account churches and traditions that do not practice

the Lord’s Supper every Sunday, or every time they regularly meet. I, myself, come from one of

those traditions, where the Lord’s Supper is practiced roughly once a month. One might ask, how

does this model apply to churches who do not see the Lord’s Supper as the centerpiece of

worship? What if the centerpiece of worship is the sermon? What then? It is not my purpose here

to justify whether or not churches should take communion every week. However, my model does

assume and seem to require that churches give a primacy to the Lord’s Supper.

I of course acknowledge that musical hybridity at the Eucharist will not singlehandedly

subvert the status quo of social stratification. But I believe, as I hope I have shown, that by

hegemonic Christian communities incorporating hybrid music into their worship, done

intentionally and respectfully, subaltern voices can begin to break the mold of homogeneity and

puncture the boundaries of those hegemonic communities. It can be a stepping-stone to a greater

and fracturing of the status quo.

To conclude my work, I want to emphasize the life-giving nature of this effort for me. I

began my vocational journey as a singer and musician. I then immersed myself in the world of

theology. My worlds have collided as I have come to discover the immense transformative, ritual

power for communities of both music-making and the Eucharist. Music is universal and natural

to human embodiment. It points to something beyond ourselves—something divine. It has been

forming communities and shaping their identities since the inception of humanity. The Eucharist

is the unique Christian act established by Jesus Christ through his life, death, and resurrection

that roots us in the past, present, and future. It is meant to connect human beings from diverse

backgrounds and join us together in a new power arrangement that embodies the Kingdom of

heaven, forever called to fight against the inequality of the present age. The Eucharist is meant

not to maintain the status quo but to constantly break it down, to turn a subordinating system into

an egalitarian one. In the words of Adam Hearlson, God commanded a holy no against injustice

and inequality when God entered humanity in Jesus Christ, one who died as a forsaken,

marginalized, unrecognized human being.1 By his death and resurrection the God-Jesus provided

the ultimate gift of recognition to the marginalized, declaring to them that they will go

1 Adam Hearlson, The Holy No: Worship as a Subversive Act (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.

Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), ch. 1.

unrecognized no more. The Eucharist is, therefore, the very enactment of this gift of recognition

to the marginalized, the subaltern. And what does our God-given ability to make music have to

offer to our responsibility to enact the eschatological recognition of the subaltern in the practice

of the Eucharist? Through musical hybridity, which punctures the mold of homogeneity, the

voices of the subaltern are allowed to break through, singing a new song—to make themselves

recognized. But this recognition is not just a gift to the subaltern. It is a gift to the entirety of the

people of God, because only by recognition of the “least of these,” those that Christ died for and

died as, are we, too recognized as a part of this grand heavenly chorus, where the face of Jesus is

revealed to us in ever new ways, entering into the fullness of creation as we see Jesus through the

eyes of our brothers and sisters. This is the freedom to sing to the Lord a new song, forevermore.

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