Worship Capital: On the Political Economy of Evangelical Worship Music

At an average Sunday evening worship service at the Anchor Fellowship in Nashville, Tennessee, the worship music is as loud as a rock concert. Even standing in the rear of the sanctuary, near the professional live sound mixing console, I can feel the speakers push the air from the front of the room.¹ On September 12, 2010, associate pastor David Lim leads worship from the side of the stage, and for the first forty-five minutes we are united as a singing congregation, despite barely being able to hear each other. Lead pastor Joshua Stump's sermon this evening starts with a passage about Jesus healing the apostle Peter's mother-in-law and others in her village, from the Gospel according to Mark (1:29–34), but he takes an apparent left turn to criticize "hipster Christians," caricaturized by writer Brett McCracken.² After reading McCracken's article in Christianity Today, Stump is uncomfortable with the idea that some churchgoers wear the Christian lifestyle like so many other disposable fashions without knowing Christ and God intimately. His discomfort is complicated by the Anchor's reputation within Nashville's evangelical community as a "hipster church": a place where young fashionable white people gather on Sunday mornings. He wonders aloud: Is faith itself merely another aspect of style? Stump appears to think that this is likely true for many of his congregants. He then returns to the scripture: this passage from Mark, he argues, shows us what miracles can emerge when we have an "authentic faith" in Jesus—a sincere belief structure reflected in actions that are more intentional than they are routine.

As Stump ends the sermon, he calls for the lay ministry team and the worship musicians to come forward. He continues speaking while Lim and the band play in the background, crescendoing and decrescendoing as the energy in the sanctuary ebbs and flows. The ministry team spreads throughout the congregation to pray for individuals—they do not just wait down front for congregants to come to them, but, as I learn later, they often feel called to pray for someone in the congregation. I hear people crying and praying, and it is difficult to know which component of the service has been more affecting: Stump's difficult message or the powerful music. I see emotion on many faces, and I feel the sanctuary dissolve as congregants are confronted with what it means to live a Christian lifestyle. In this moment, we are all individuals with separate struggles; but in the next, we are a single congregation united in song as we encircle the sanctuary, hold hands, and close with an a cappella rendition of the Doxology (or "Old Hundred").

As I experienced during this service and learned throughout my fieldwork among evangelical Christians in the United States, Stump's condescension for hipster Christians and hipster churches (in which "hipster" means "fashionable" in a derogatory manner) is borne out by the actual organization and practice of worship at the Anchor. By advocating what Stump and other Anchor pastors call "authentic faith," the church's leaders articulate and enable a worship environment that attendees experience as incredibly affecting. Yet since the church's beginning, the Anchor's leadership team has sought to create a place where young fashionable Christians feel comfortable, valued, and validated. Stump, Lim, and others are responsible for mentoring, teaching, and pastoring these churchgoers toward a meaningful life of faith. It is a welcome spiritual challenge for which they are prepared, but it is a spiritual challenge that has emerged as a result of the outreach, ministries, worship music, and other aspects of congregational life in which they have invested. In other words, the Anchor's particular approach to accumulating and spending capital is inseparable from its theological and spiritual priorities. Music plays no small role here: Lim is actively involved in recruiting, training, rehearsing, and pastoring worship musicians and leaders, and in the vignette above, musical affect and the phenomenology of worship are tightly intertwined.

How do forms of capital contribute to the efficacy of music in evangelical Christian...