Praising and/or Cursing God Through Music

As noted by musician and theologian Pierre Charru (2012, 311), the convergences between music and theology represent a little-explored area of research. And yet, much like the tools of theology, music and the singing that accompanies it have often been used to praise God’s name. In fact, music has been an integral part of the world’s religions for millennia. Through hymns, canticles and other forms, human beings have long used music in their attempts to express and define this relationship between themselves and the divine. We can thus conclude that for as far as religion and music have co-existed, people have engaged in theology through music. Clearly, music can have a « theological resonance », to use François Vouga’s (1983) phrase, and can be used to communicate the grandeur, omnipotence and splendour of God, as did many of the great baroque and classical composers like Bach, Verdi, Mozart and Beethoven, and as gospel and Christian rock artists still do to this day. But music is supple and malleable. It can also be used to criticize God. To curse God’s name. This has been especially true since the first half of the xx^th century, when artists started using music to present a different way of talking about God. This was a new theology, one that still said God’s name, but in a different way : to challenge Him, denounce Him, or even disavow Him. To express a relationship between human beings and God which had changed and transformed. Silence, powerlessness, indifference… God has frequently been accused of all of these things in contemporary music. Yet challenging and questioning God in this way is nothing new. In certain psalms in the Hebrew Bible, music and song are often used to admonish God for His failure to act, His insensitivity, His condescension or His unjustified anger. But the Biblical authors did not reject God, unlike some contemporary musicians and their « followers ». In this volume of Théologiques, we present a series of articles that address music’s ambivalent and somewhat schizophrenic role : sometimes used to praise God’s name, but also to revile it, music wavers between promoting and denouncing God and religion in general. The eleven articles presented here, on topics as varied as classical music, national anthems and horror film soundtracks, as well as Christian rock, extreme metal music and war propaganda, from yesterday to today, show that music shapes and transforms the relationship between human beings and God. This is to say that the acts across the continuum of professing and dispossessing our various Gods have taken their significations from the field of music, whether in its lyrical characterisations, and the lilting singing of praise or its oppositions in the possessed demonic growls, to the sheer enchantment of the blessed nature of religious music and its counterpoints in the cacaphonic embrace of the underground cultural scenes that summon the netherworld as an alternate to the heavens. For as one praises a Creator and gives thanks to the bountiful nature of His many sacrifices, so must one acknowledge the curses that are spat out at the nonchalance that organized religion is accused so often of embodying. This special issue attempts to bring together scholars and thinkers from a multitude of disciplines ranging from sociology, humanities, consumer culture, sound studies, visual art and, of course, theology, to help break some of the paradigmatic silos that echo hollow praise in favour a pluralistic dialogue along thematic lines that stretch in time, space, and, decidedly, musical genres. This desire to praise or curse God’s name is typically influenced by the …