Sunday, August 06, 2006
(7:50 AM) | John Emerson:
"On Eagle's Wings"
Recently at a family funeral in darkest suburbia I heard a song whose refrain I found catchy but a bit unsettling:
And He will raise you up on eagle's wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
Make you to shine like the sun,
And hold you in the palm of His Hand.
There's always been an element of wish-fulfillment in Christianity, but somehow this seemed too easy, with a vague fantasy-comic flavor. As an unbeliever I really shouldn't care about the specifics -- maybe I'm imposing the stricter standards of the religion of my youth to the present day -- but the comfort here seemed a bit infantilizing.
So I Googled "On Eagle's Wings" and found the author, Michael Joncas. Joncas is often grouped with David Haas and Marty Haugen in a Catholic / Lutheran "Minnesota school" of relatively liberal mainline Christian liturgical music. (The funeral was in Minnesota). And lo, the Minnesota school has some pretty determined enemies in the Catholic community:
But other songs from the 1980s and 1990s--by composers like David Haas, Michael Joncas, and Marty Haugen--are more frightening. Not only is the music poorly crafted; not only are the words trite; not only are the melodies shamelessly dramatic and emotional; but many of these contemporary composers proudly identify themselves as theological liberals, and the teachings that they subtly espouse through their music can be dangerous.As it happens, the Catholic conservatives have an publication, The Wanderer (also in Minnesota) which has been fighting against the Americanization of Catholicism for 139 years. It was published in German during its first several decades, and it is hard not to suspect that its Catholicism was specifically German, and that the newspaper's name owed something either to Caspar David Friedrich's painting or to Schubert's song, or both.
The conservative lay Catholics of The Wanderer are not always on good terms with the actual Catholic Church. The Wanderer did accept Vatican II, but some of The Wanderer's staff did not, and these formed a new, even-more-conservative newspaper, The Remnant. (The Wanderer is essentially a family business, and is now run by the third generation of the Matt family. The Remnant is edited by a different branch of the Matt family).
I was highly disappointed when the Lutheran Church of my birth switched from the old Bach chorales and Gregorian liturgy to something more contemporary, and I was also disappointed awhile back when I found out that a fair-sized Catholic bookstore carried nothing at all on Gregorian chant. But I doubt that the traditionalists in either church would would take much comfort in the support of an unbeliever whose motives are entirely musical.
(Disambiguation: Let the Eagle Soar; Fly Like an Eagle.)
On my own site I started with the Google part, since few of my own readers are involved in Christianity, whereas all are involved in Google. I switched the parts to a more normal order here. The style of music I'm talking about is mainline modernist, distinguishable both from traditional hymns and from Pentacostal-ish church music with electric guitars and shit. The church I attended was non-denominational with a vague Congregationalist orientation. The Congegationalists are the original non-denominational denomination -- even though their heritage is ultimately strict Puritanism, they have no central authority and give congregations almost total autonomy (hence their name). Both my parents were raised Congregationalists in Iowa, but there were no Congregationalists in Minnesota so I was raised Lutheran. ("On Eagle's Wings" is by a Catholic).
Starting with nothing but the title of a liturgical song, with fifteen minutes or so of Googling I was able to come up with the name of the composer, the school of liturgical music to which he belonged, some writings by the religious and musical adversaries of that music school, and the history of the religious adversaries. I do not believe that there is any pre-Google research method which could have done anywhere near as well anywhere near as quickly. The only alternative that I can think of would be a phone call to the research librarian of a Christian music school. (The topic I was researching was one in which I had had no prior interest).
We hear a lot about the deficiencies of internet research, but let's not ignore its strengths. Someone with reasonable internet skills, sitting at home, has research resources available which only libraries had twenty years ago.
This is not at all to minimize the value of archives and libraries. That's where the primary and fundamental research still has to be done. But at the level of general information, everyone's much, much better off now than they were even very recently.
There are still enormous gaps in what you can find, but the more information is put online, the more powerful this research tool will become. And Google, specifically, is really what makes possible the fruitful search of the enormous mass of available information.
