Music Shapes Identity and Faith
The issue of Liturgy dealing with “Liturgy and Identity,” guest-edited by Matthew Lawrence Pierce, looks at how liturgical practices form the identities of individuals and communities. What follows is an excerpt from David Williams’ essay on how music nurtured the faith of Seventh-day Adventists differently for black and white members. –– Melinda Quivik
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In light of White racism and its culture of shame, Black worship necessarily looked different to speak to the needs of Black Adventists, sometimes as protests, sometimes as praise. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s instilled in Black Adventists a desire to do the very best and most artistic music, serving as a precursor of the Civil Rights Movement, and empowering them to embrace their African roots and uplift the race in the eyes of society. Charles Bradford shared in a private interview that Black Adventists sought to make a statement to the denomination and the greater White society. “We are just as good or better musicians. We are legitimate musicians. Our worship is legitimate, and we can do the very best.” For example, Black Adventists would protest White supremacy by performing major European works, such as Bach and Beethoven, Handel, Mendelssohn, Rossini, and Verdi. These compositions expressed and inspired “quite a lot of emotionality, but they weren’t sensual.”
Mylas Martin (1931–) gives a rich account of Black Adventist worship music practices. He remembers the first time he entered a (Black) Seventh-day Adventist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, on January 8, 1944. For the “song of the morning,” the choir sang Gioachino Rossini’s Inflammatus from the Stabat Mater, “just as though it were an everyday occurrence. I was stunned.”
I went back the next Sabbath and the next Sabbath to hear that choir. It was the senior choir, and they sang a great repertory of the old Advent hymns, the great Negro spirituals, the modern anthems, and the great classical master works. They sang Bach, Beethoven, Mozart ... and they sang it magnificently. It has been my privilege to travel greatly. I have been throughout Europe. I have never heard an ensemble that was more thrilling.
Worship meets needs differently. Though a denomination may be unified in a common spiritual identity centered in its doctrine, it manifests a diversity of spiritualities based upon the human experience. All Christians seek forgiveness at the cross. However, culture impacts how they experience salvation. Whites do not experience the racism that Blacks experience in America. Regardless of economic status, White Americans come to worship from a place of power and privilege, causing them to seek God differently than Blacks. Blacks come from a place of systemic oppression, seeking freedom in Christ that is spiritual, physical, and even political. Felt needs lead Blacks to worship with joy and belonging not afforded by society.
Blacks and Whites create music differently. In the early twentieth century, Black Adventists never sang hymns like, “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise,” and “The God of Abraham Praise.” These hymns were too “staid.” Notably, Black Adventists rarely sang, “A Mighty Fortress,” though it had been included in the popular songbook, Christ in Song, no. 681. The Lutheran chorales did not “lend [themselves] to the black style of singing.” These stately hymns were not part of the Black Adventist tradition, likely because the collective community thought these songs neither spoke to their Black experience, nor fulfilled the existential needs their own tradition had come to meet.
In the early twentieth century, Blacks and Whites worshiped similarly. By and large, they liked the same music, the same liturgy, and therefore shared very similar spiritual identities derived from their theology fostered through music.
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The full article and issue of Liturgy 35, no. 2 is available by personal subscription and through many libraries.
David A. Williams is an assistant professor of worship and sacred music and co-director of the International Center for Worship & Music at Andrews University in Michigan. His forthcoming publication is a “History of Seventh-day Adventist Worship.”
David A. Williams, “Unity in Diversity: How Music Helped Shape the Spiritual Identities of Black and White Seventh-Day Adventists, 1840–1944,” Liturgy 35, no. 2 (2020): 18-24.