Beer & Hymns
Ron Rienstra
This issue of Liturgy dealing with “Innovating Adapted Traditions,” guest-edited by Nicholas Zork, explores the many ways worship leaders are creatively addressing contemporary needs.
What follows is an excerpt from Ron Rienstra’s study of the new Beer & Hymns Movement. –– Melinda Quivik
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It might just be the beer. Turns out that people like beer. Not just the thin lagers of megacorp brewers—but real beer: ales, stouts, porters, bocks and sours, beer flavored with cherry or coriander or chocolate and coffee. Over the past few decades, the craft beer industry in the United States has blossomed like a mid-summer field of hops—from forty-four breweries in the United States in the late 1970s to over 8,000 in 2019, with the greatest growth in the past ten years.
In a parallel phenomenon, in recent decades many American congregations have returned to hymn-singing. This is fueled by a number of factors—among them the waning of the worship wars, the popularity of contemporary hymn-writers in conjunction with the “retuned” hymn movement, and a growing appreciation for the church’s hymnic heritage.
Some gospel communities are finding ways to synergize these two developments in a new event often called “Beer & Hymns.” Cute branding strategies, using alliterative phrases like “froth and faith” or “song and suds” or “pilsner and praise,” frequently help promote these events. Chances are a Google search will reveal a “Beer & Hymns” gathering within the next four weeks somewhere within ten miles of 80 percent of the U.S. population.
What is going on here? Who and what make up the communities participating in these events? Are they worship? Are they intended to be? Are they a mission effort, reaching out to the ever-increasing population of “nones”? Does it matter that they often meet in a bar? To what extent is nostalgia the primary motivation at work?
I asked these questions recently at a gathering of the North American Academy of Liturgy, inviting the study group on “Exploring Contemporary and Alternative Worship” to think with me through some of these issues. We put together a questionnaire to guide our firsthand observations (see Addendum) and commissioned ourselves to attend local “Beer & Hymns” events and report back. This essay is a result of our firsthand fieldwork, further supplemented by online research. My ambition here is relatively modest: I want to explore the phenomenon of Beer & Hymns by remarking on a few notable features of specific events, and by offering a preliminary theological evaluation.
In the nineteenth century, William Booth’s Salvation Army put Christian words to popular music and sang those songs in local taverns. The European monks of past centuries who were also brewmasters might object to the contention that “Beer & Hymns” officially began in the summer of 2006—but that’s the story told on the website BeerandHymns.org. . . . Today, there are more than 46,000 hits in a google search for “Beer & Hymns.” The events come in many different configurations—many different venues, target audiences, and purposes for doing it.
. . . So what are these events actually like?
Stay tuned for more about Beer & Hymns or find the full essay in Liturgy 34, no. 4, available online by personal subscription and through many libraries.
Ron Rienstra, “ Slightly Sloshed Spiritual Singing: The Beer & Hymns Movement in North America,” Liturgy 34, no. 4 (2019): 44-54.