Morehouse Glee Club: “Lazarus rise up, the Lord is calling you. Oh, come forth, Larazus, the Lord is calling you.”

BOB FAW, correspondent: The voices of the Morehouse College Glee Club blend perfectly. The timing, the intonation are masterful.

Morehouse Glee Club: “Jesus is calling you. No need to be afraid.”

FAW: But listen to the lyrics, and you’ll find there is more here than just music.

Morehouse Glee Club: “When you hear me shouting, I am building me a home.”

FAW: Spirituals like this one, performed at a Washington, DC library.

Morehouse Glee Club: “And my soul got to have, Lord, somewhere to stay.”

FAW: Or spirituals with repeated rhythms of the culture.

Boyd Baptist Church Choir: “I heard a voice, I couldn’t stay away. I heard….”

FAW: This one performed by the Boyd Baptist Church Choir in Rock Hill, South Carolina. These spirituals are melodies and words from a dark chapter of America’s past.

UZEE BROWN, JR: What it was part of what I call the survival tools for the African slave. There were many cultures that were virtually wiped out as a result of similar kinds of oppression. But what happens here is that the spiritual is a part of that survival, because they found their way of singing through many of their problems. They found their way of communicating.

FAW: Slaves in the plantation South drew on native rhythms and their African heritage. For them, spirituals were religious folks songs, often rooted in biblical stories, woven together, sung, and passed along from one slave generation to another.

DAVID MORROW (Director, Morehouse Glee Club): And they pulled out stories that worked: Daniel in the lion’s den, you know. The story of Moses, “Let my people go,” you know. All of those things were things that worked out in terms of what they were going through, how they were coping with it.

FAW: Listen, for example, to the spiritual “Ain’t A That Good News,” which Dr. Brown sings with his accompanist, Ella Lewis.

BROWN: “I got news to tell you, I got good news.”

FAW: It’s a spiritual which makes the present bearable.

BROWN: “I got a crown up in that kingdom, ain’t a that good news.”

BROWN: A spiritual that says beyond this world there is victory. I’m going to get my crown. I’m going to be regal.

MORROW: “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” or “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child,” but then there was always that message of hope in them that would allow you okay, this is what my circumstance is, but this is what I can look forward to as well.

FAW: Spirituals, which arose at plantations like this one in Roswell, Georgia, were really a double-edged sword. While the melodies might suggest to masters that slaves were happy with their lot in life, if you listen closely you will find the message of some spirituals was clearly defiant, indeed rebellious.

MORROW: The stereotype was that as long as the slaves were singing and dancing, they were happy, and we said we’re good. Well, we can also communicate, you know, “Steal away, steal away to Jesus, steal away home, I ain’t got long to stay here.” There is a lot of message in there, of course, about going to heaven, but also I’m telling you that steal away home meaning I’m going to escape. I’m letting you know it’s going to be soon. You know, we couldn’t very well flat out say it, but we could certainly sing those songs.

BROWN: “Keep your lamps trimmed and burning, the time is drawing nigh.”

FAW: This spiritual is both biblical and subversive.

BROWN: It speaks of lamps trimmed and burning, as in the reference to Matthew 25, but in the secondary meaning it is we are going to prepare to escape, and you must be ready.

“The time is drawing nigh.”

These people are communicating from one plantation to the other right under our noses, and in fact organizing in such a way that insurrections were had, and the slave master did not know. These people were not by any means dumb and unintelligent folk who did not understand how to communicate in an effective way through this vehicle since so many others were denied to them.

Morehouse Glee Club: “You better run.”

FAW: Spirituals helped to spread the Gospel.

Morehouse Glee Club: “…walking to Jerusalem just like John.”

FAW: Years later, they were adapted into the freedom songs of the civil rights movement.

Morehouse Glee Club: “If I got my ticket then I ride.”

MORROW (speaking at glee club rehearsal): Not bad, not bad at all. It is just a little brighty in all sections.

FAW: And today colleges and churches nationwide still perform them.

DARIAN CLOUNTS (Glee Club Member): “Lord, let me ride.”

FAW: For soloist Darian Clounts, singing spirituals does more than just rekindle the past.

CLOUNTS: What that music is is the music of my ancestors, my forefathers, everything, so that when I feel it, when I sing it, I do feel something deep down within.

Boyd Baptist Church Choir: “Oh, Lord, all day, all night, Lord.”

FAW: In Rock Hill, South Carolina, choir member Connie Hall knows what he means.

CONNIE HALL: It connects me with the older generation, because this song I used to hear my grandmother singing, and my mama singing, and it all comes back.

Morehouse Glee Club: “For to hear the trumpets sound…”

FAW: Spirituals live on today not just because they’re a link to the past, but because teachers like David Morrow feel a profound obligation.

MORROW: One of the reasons I think it’s important is because every time I teach it it becomes something that they, our students, attach themselves to and connect with.

FAW: They live on, too, because even though slavery has been abolished and times have changed, that message of hope, the promise of deliverance, still resonates.

BROWN: “Oh, I am a going to lay down of this world and shoulder up from my cross. I am going to take it home to my Jesus, ain’t a that good news. Good news. Shoulder up my cross and take it home to my Jesus. My burdens i will take it to the Lord and leave them there.” Ain’t that good news?

FAW: African-American spirituals alive and well, and from this country’s darkest past something glorious.

Morehouse Glee Club: “Lord, let me ride.”

FAW: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly this is Bob Faw in Washington, DC.

Morehouse Glee Club: “If I have my ticket, Lord, can i ride? Ride away to heaven, ride away to heaven, ride away to heaven in the morning. Ride.”

KIM LAWTON, correspondent:  It’s been a century of celebration.  For the past one hundred years, St. Olaf College, a small Lutheran school in Minnesota, has put on a Christmas concert that has become known—and loved—around the world. In a variety of ways, nearly a third of St. Olaf’s 3,000 students participate in the Christmas Festival, which combines more than 600 voices from five campus choirs, including the elite St. Olaf Choir. The repertoire showcases a variety of sacred music.  There are classic holiday standards, songs that hark back to the school’s Scandinavian heritage, and some from other cultures as well.  The program is designed to reflect the essential religious meaning of Christmas.  Anton Armstrong conducts the St. Olaf Choir.

ANTON ARMSTRONG, Conductor, St. Olaf Choir:  It’s just not the music, but that we are lifting up a message, a message of hope, a message of faith, a message of understanding, and most of all a message of love.

LAWTON:  The popularity of the Christmas Festival has gone global.  For decades, it has been broadcast on public radio and public television, and the Armed Forces Radio and TV Service as well.  This centennial concert was also simulcast in movie-theaters across the country.

ARMSTRONG:  It has been a model for spreading this message of faith at a time that people tend to forget why the season even exists.

LAWTON:  It all began 100 years ago, when F. Melius Christiansen, a Lutheran immigrant from Norway, established the St. Olaf music department and student choir.

ARMSTRONG:  What he found was that church music had fallen to a very lamentable state, that the popular music of the day seemed to be eradicating all the traditional music and that so many of the young immigrant Norwegian students who he was teaching at St. Olaf were forgetting the heritage of great hymns.  So he established the choir in many ways to revitalize choral singing in the church, congregational singing in the church.

LAWTON:  Christiansen insisted on artistic excellence, and the reputation of the St. Olaf choir continued to grow.  The choir went on tour and performed in some of the top venues in the nation.  According to many scholars, Christiansen’s work had a profound influence on America’s a capella choral tradition.

ARMSTRONG:  He really set a model for choral sound, he changed the whole concept of choral and really taking a program of sacred, unaccompanied choral music and doing it at such a level that it would be accepted in the finest concert halls.

LAWTON:  While the college now has several choirs, the St. Olaf Choir remains the most elite.  Armstrong is only its fourth conductor.  He was hired in 1990 and actually sang in the choir himself as a student in the 1970s.  He holds rigorous auditions.

ARMSTRONG:  I don’t want just a beautiful voice. Because sometimes as good as these kids are, I can get divas. I don’t have time for divas and this is not about me. The work we do in all of our groups, especially that choir, has to be about us, and service.

LAWTON:  On top of their academic school load, choir members practice an hour and a half a day, five days a week.  Laura Kyle is a junior English major and has been in the choir for two years.

LAURA KYLE, Choir Member:  I’m named after my great grandma who was in the choir and sang under F. Melius Christensen, and I was never able to meet her, but being in the choir has made me feel a connection on that level and that has made it extra special for me.

LAWTON:  The students develop close relationships with one another.

BENJAMIN SIMMONS, Choir Member: It’s been one of the most powerful experiences of my life to sing in such an amazing ensemble, to make music at such an incredibly high level of artistry, but at the same time, to have that camaraderie with my fellow choir members who are really like family.

LAWTON:  In a unique trait, St. Olaf Choir members always hold hands with each other during performances.

BRYAN WELLS, Choir Member:  It really helps us connect with the people around us, on a personal, as well as a musical level.

LAWTON:  Armstrong believes what takes place in the performances goes beyond the music.

ARMSTRONG: I’m constantly admonishing them not to just sing correct technique, correct words, I want the message.

KATHRYN BABER, Choir Member:  One of the most special things about the St. Olaf Choir is knowing that when you go out to perform, no matter where you are or what performance it may be, that there are people out there whose lives you can touch, and that also includes the people that you stand next to.

LAWTON:  The choir strives to be true to its Lutheran heritage, but Armstrong says it’s not about pushing a particular brand of Christianity.

ARMSTRONG:  We invite people into a conversation and for people to explore their thoughts, their feelings, without creating walls around them, but to look at, hopefully a God that is a God of love and God of hope. Religion, especially Christianity in this country, sometimes has been pulled in such a direction of condemnation we’ve lost I think the gospel of grace.

LAWTON:  Armstrong says the connection between music and spirituality has been powerful in his own life.

ARMSTRONG:  I’m a regular churchgoer, but I have to honestly say, sometimes my closest experiences to God have been either singing in the ST. Olaf Choir or conducting that choir.

LAWTON:  He recalls visiting his mother shortly before she died.  She was unresponsive, until he started playing and singing hymns.

ARMSTRONG:  Her favorite gospel hymn would be his eye is on the sparrow and I started to sing:  And I sing because I‘m happy. I sing because I’m free. His eye is on the sparrow. And I know He watches me. She sang with me. And when that was done, she looks up at me and she goes, “Baby! When’d you get here?”  When science and medicine couldn’t bring my mother back to me, these hymns, these songs of faith that she shared with me, were the things that we shared together.

LAWTON:  According to Armstrong, the choir sings to bring glory to God.  And perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in their signature song, Beautiful Savior, an arrangement done by Christiansen.

ARMSTRONG:  That I think has been a song that can epitomize and has been a model for us throughout the years, why do we do this? We sing praise to God.  Glory and honor, praise, adoration, now and forevermore be thine. That is the focus of our work.

LAWTON:  When everything falls into place, Armstrong says it’s a spiritual experience.

ARMSTRONG:  Some people go to prayer and do that, but you know, still small voices and burning bushes don’t seem to work with me. You know? But in the minute when that chord locks and we’ve been struggling with it and it finally works, it’s as if, yea, God is there.

LAWTON:  It’s an experience he hopes gets transmitted to the audience as well.

ARMSTRONG: When people, when they leave, they have been transformed. They don’t know why, but perhaps at 90 minutes of experiencing the utmost in beautiful music, in powerful and profound text, will somehow seep into the bodies of those performing and certainly those who are hearing.

LAWTON:  I’m Kim Lawton in Northfield, Minnesota.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: At this weekend’s 53rd annual Grammy awards, the Recording Academy honors the best in the music industry. Among this year’s recipients is legendary gospel singer George Beverly Shea, who is receiving a lifetime achievement award. Beginning in 1947, Shea was the featured soloist at Billy Graham crusades. Last week, he turned 102. Kim Lawton spoke with him.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At 102, George Beverly Shea still sings as often as he can. He says singing is an important part of his spiritual practice.

GEORGE BEVERLY SHEA: You know, you keep tuned up with the Lord when you love the songs that are written about Him.

LAWTON: Shea and his wife, Karlene, live in Montreat, North Carolina, near their longtime friend, Billy Graham. A Canadian pastor’s son, Shea says music was always part of his life. He was working at a Christian radio station in Chicago in the 1940s when his baritone voice caught Graham’s attention.

SHEA: Mr. Graham phoned me and then wrote me and asked me in 1947 to become a part of his team: “Sing a little quiet song before I speak.”

LAWTON: That began a relationship that has lasted more than 60 years. Shea sang at almost every Graham crusade. Shea says it was a privilege to be on the Graham team. He says his favorite part of the crusades was watching all the people stream forward after Graham gave the altar call.

SHEA: Your head is supposed to be bowed in prayer, but I like to say I peeked a little bit, and I saw those thousands of people all during those 63 years coming forward.

LAWTON: According to Guinness World Records, Shea has sung before more people than anyone else—an estimated combined live audience of 220 million people.

SHEA: They didn’t come to hear me. They came to hear Billy Graham.

LAWTON: During his 80-year career, Shea recorded more than 70 albums and wrote several popular worship songs. He was nominated 10 times for a Grammy and won in 1965. He’ll accept the Lifetime Achievement Award along with several other music greats, including Julie Andrews, Dolly Parton, and the Ramones.

SHEA: Someone said, “Why have you been doing this all these years?” I put my thumb up to the air toward heaven, and I said I’ve been doing it for Him.

LAWTON: Shea says his faith keeps him going, and he sees every day as a gift.

SHEA: I don’t know when heaven will loom up for me, but we have to look forward to it. I hope there will be an organ up there to play. Oh, boy, I love organ music.

I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

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Click here to view the original April 10, 2009 story and additional Wintley Phipps videos.

Pastor WINTLEY PHIPPS (singing at National Prayer Service, Washington National Cathedral):  “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound . . .”

KIM LAWTON:  Grammy-nominated Gospel singer Wintley Phipps is a familiar voice at big national events. At President Barack Obama’s National Prayer Service following his Inauguration, Phipps’s rendition of “Amazing Grace” brought the entire National Cathedral audience, including the new president and first lady, to their feet. But he says it’s just as meaningful to him when he sings in places like prisons.

Pastor  PHIPPS: There is a sense that you’re giving hope to people who really need it.

LAWTON:  For Phipps, who is also a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, music is a ministry and, he says, one of the deepest expressions of his Christian faith.

Pastor PHIPPS: Music is almost to me an echo of the sounds of the divine world, and when you hear these sounds, it stirs something deeply spiritual within you.  Music also is the most powerful way of impressing the human mind with hope.

LAWTON: Hope has been a hallmark not only of Phipps’s musical career, but in his charitable efforts as well.  In 1998, Phipps founded the Dream Academy, a national nonprofit for at-risk kids. Born in Trinidad, he says hope was crucial in overcoming his own at-risk childhood.

Pastor PHIPPS: I was born to a troubled home, and I used to get away from my parents’ troubles — I had a little red tricycle, and I’d go in the back yard of my house, and I would turn the tricycle on its side and use one of the backside wheels as a steering wheel, and I would sit there for hours, and I would dream that I was flying to faraway places in the world and meeting important people when I was six, seven years old, and then I wanted to be like Tom Jones.  I’d go around the house singing, “It’s not unusual to be loved.”  I just wanted to be Tom. But something was missing to me.

LAWTON: Despite a difficult family life, Phipps says his mother always prayed for him and told him that God had a special plan for his life.  As a teenager, Phipps embraced her faith as his own.

Pastor PHIPPS:  At the age of 16, God walked into my life and said, “I’ve seen your dreams. Give me your dreams, and I’ll let you see what I’ve been dreaming for you.”

Singing at National Prayer Service

LAWTON:  He attended an historically black Seventh-day Adventist college in Alabama, where he met Linda, now his wife of 32 years.  Then, Phipps says, God began providing opportunities for him to sing in national venues such as a 1984 appearance on “Saturday Night Live” with Jesse Jackson.  He came to the attention of Billy Graham’s team and became a frequent performer at the evangelist’s crusades.

Pastor PHIPPS (singing in Washington): “Talk about a child that do love Jesus.”

LAWTON: Phipps also became a favorite in Washington. He’s sung for every president since Ronald Reagan.

Pastor PHIPPS: I’ve never had a manager or never had an agent, and yet some of the most wonderful moments that a singer could ever dream of have happened to me, and I believe it’s providential.

LAWTON: The idea for the Dream Academy came after he got involved with a prison ministry.

Pastor PHIPPS: I did not know that so many young men in prison looked like my sons, and when I saw it I was shaken. One of every three young black men in America between the ages of 18 and 30 are in prison today or supervised by the court system either on probation or parole.

LAWTON: Phipps then learned that 60 percent of the young people who end up in prison are the children of prisoners. He wanted to break the cycle of intergenerational incarceration. The Dream Academy offers after-school mentoring and interactive academic tutoring to children of prisoners and kids falling behind at school.

Pastor PHIPPS: One of the most exciting things that can ever happen in a child’s life is to know that , “You mean God thinks about me?  Or God dreams about me?”  And he’s got a dream for my life?”  And when you catch a little glimpse of what that dream is, wow, it changes everything.

LAWTON:  Phipps has enlisted the support of some of his famous connections for the project.  One of his biggest benefactors is his longtime friend Oprah Winfrey.  The lesson of faith, he says, is that things aren’t always as they seem and that hardship can be overcome.  In these uncertain economic times, he’s released a new music DVD called “No Need to Fear.”

LAWTON:  It’s a theme he finds throughout the old spirituals that he often performs.

Pastor PHIPPS (singing): “Swing low sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home . . .”

The Negro spiritual teaches us that you’re going come up rough sides of mountains, and you’re going to have difficulties.  But faith gives you that ability to weather any storm.

(singing): “I looked over Jordan and what did I see?”

LAWTON:  It’s the core theme as well for the song that has become his signature, “Amazing Grace.”  He finds great spiritual lessons in the history of the song.

Pastor PHIPPS:  A lot of people don’t realize that just about all Negro spirituals are written on the black notes of the piano, and they just keep recurring.  Probably the most famous white spiritual that’s built on this slave scale was written by a man by the name of John Newton who, before he became a Christian, used to be the captain of a slave ship and many believe heard this melody that sounds very much like a West African sorrow chant (hums “Amazing Grace”).  And it has a haunting, haunting, plaintive quality to it that reaches past your arrogance, past your pride, and it speaks to that part of you that’s in bondage, and we feel it. We feel it. It’s just one of the most amazing melodies in all of human history.

(performing “Amazing Grace” on stage): “To sing God’s praise than when we’ve  first begun. Hallelujah, hallelujah. Amen.”

LAWTON: Another lesson, he says, on how hope always triumphs. I’m Kim Lawton in Vero Beach, Florida.

PHIL JONES, correspondent: In the 1950s, Bill Gaither used to turn on his radio and listen to all the gospel music stars. He was a farm boy with a field of dreams.

BILL GAITHER: I kept dreaming of the day that maybe, just maybe, I could write a song that would catch the attention of somebody or sing a song that would catch the attention of somebody. Am I blessed guy? I mean, I’m blessed. What can I say?

JONES: In 1963, his dream came true. He wrote a hit. Elvis Presley recorded it and won a Grammy, but the lyrics belonged to Bill Gaither.

Bill Gaither singing at piano: “He touched me, oh, he touched me” — Jimmy Durante sang this and he’d go “He touched me” — “and all the joy that floods my soul…”

JONES: Since then, Bill and his wife, Gloria, former English and French teachers, have written more than 700 gospel songs. Many of them are in today’s church hymnals.

ROBERT SILVERS (Former Religion Editor, Saturday Evening Post): What would the Christian world, the gospel music world, have been like if we hadn’t had Bill and Gloria Gaither? And I just felt like it would leave a lot of empty pages in those song books.

JONES: The Gaithers have won six Grammys and more than two dozen Dove Awards for outstanding Christian music, plus they’ve sold more than 20 million videos, and they still are packing the house all over the world…

Gaither DVD:  “…our Homecoming celebration in New York’s Carnegie Hall was a unique…”

JONES: …performing homecoming events with their friends, stars of gospel music past and present. When they were named gospel song writers of the century in 2000, it was said the Gaithers are to Christian music what the Beatles were to pop music. They were among the first to introduce contemporary religious music.

BILL GAITHER: In fact, we had a pretty well-known college that banned their kids in ’68 from coming to see the Bill Gaither Trio because they said it’s worldly music.

Concert Singing: “…swing down chariot, stop and let me ride, swing down chariot, stop and let me ride. Rock me, Lord…”

JONES: Where would you say that you fit into the evangelical world?

BILL GAITHER: I’m not sure we really do. I think we’ve been mavericks from the beginning.

Concert Singing: “…stop and let me ride, swing down chariot, stop and let me ride…”

BILL GAITHER: Are we contemporary? Are we traditional? Are we country? Are we progressive? Labels are so dangerous. I’m a follower of Christ. I believe in the message. I believe in redemption, and if I didn’t, Gloria and I would stop today and go to the mountains and retire and rock on a rocking chair.

JONES: Bill and Gloria Gaither have earned enough fame and money to live any place they choose. They have chosen to stay right here in Alexandria, Indiana, population about 6,000. It was picked by the federal government during World War II to use in the propaganda theme throughout Europe depicting small town USA.

GLORIA GAITHER: An awful lot of our lyrics and a lot of our philosophy comes out of being rooted in a small town with real people and real life.

JONES: There was a time back in the mid-’80s that Bill Gaither felt his trio had peaked, but he wasn’t ready to hang it up. He wanted one more shot to make a gospel hit. So he reached out.

BILL GAITHER: You know, and I called a bunch of the old timers and I said, ah, we’re gonna come in and have fun. We’re gonna have the radio days.

JONES: And they came to join Bill and his Gaither Vocal Band—big stars from all over the country. Little did they know that this reunion with the Gaithers would turn into a concert series around the world called Homecoming. The themes—patriotism and religion.

Gaither DVD: I invite you to travel with us as we return to the origins of our faith…

JONES: What the people see on stage reflects the spiritual tone set off stage. Before each night’s show there is a private prayer with the singers.

GLORIA GAITHER: Lord, we love you, and we are always in awe when people come. We pray that we can be the channel that you can use to speak to somebody who is hurting or discouraged or just plain tired.

JONES: Among Bill Gaither’s fans are some who tell him they are not religious.

BILL GAITHER: I think it’s the music. I think it’s a positive message. I think it’s community.  I think it’s them seeing people care about other people.

VERNA FISHER: I’m here because I love the spirit of worship. I love to watch how they—they’re not there to perform. They’re there to honor God.

JONES: For the old timers, hanging out with Bill and Gloria has kept them from fading into oblivion. For some of the younger folks, Bill Gaither has catapulted their careers. Ask the Booth Brothers.

RONNIE BOOTH: I mean, it just rapidly got bigger for us, bigger in that we were reaching audiences that we would have never reached before, all because of his platform.

MICHAEL BOOTH: Let’s encourage each other, let’s love each other, support each other, and that is a summed-up way of the Bible expressing how the family of God is supposed to work, and so it’s a little picture of the way the family is supposed to work is how this Gaither thing expresses itself night after night, on stage and off.

LYNDA RANDLE: What I love that Bill says it’s not–we do a little entertaining because it’s fun and people love to laugh, but then there’s the ministry aspect of it.

Gaither DVD: …from the Wesleyan Campground in Fairmount, Indiana, Bill Gaither and friends welcome you to Down by the Tabernacle…

JONES: Gloria and Bill still live in the house they bought back when they got married.

GLORIA GAITHER: We had a marriage interview one time for a magazine, and they said do you ever fight? To which we said, oh, you could sell tickets.

JONES: Their business world has changed dramatically in the past few years. They have built the Gaither Music Company located along the highway leading through the middle of their home town. They travel like rock stars—huge touring buses, sometimes a private jet.

Gloria Gaither with visitors: We’re so glad to have you, and if any of your want to do a studio tour…

JONES: And they’ve added a gift store-restaurant-reception facility for tourists and fans.

ROBERT SILVERS: I’d say if there’s ever been a legend in gospel music, it has to be the Gaithers.

JONES: Are you a minister or a musician?

BILL GAITHER: Yes. Yes. Next question?  My old mentor-buddy used to say that Jesus must have been a pretty good entertainer to hold the attention of 5,000 people on a hillside at the Sea of Galilee without a microphone.

JONES: In these times when the music world is in constant change, it is a near miracle that Bill, now 73, and Gloria Gaither are still doing what they started doing decades ago. To paraphrase those early Bill Gaither lyrics, the Gaithers have been “touched.”

Bill Gaither singing: “He touched me. Oh, he touched me, and all the joy that floods my soul…”

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Phil Jones in Alexandria, Indiana.

Bill Gaither singing: “He touched me and made me whole.”

Q: How important is Easter on the Christian calendar?

A: Easter is the pivotal feast day. It is the most important day of the year for a Christian. The awesome thing about Easter is the way in which it takes what would have been a tremendous tragedy, the death of Jesus on Good Friday, and turns it into the great triumph of God over death, and that changes everything for us. We wouldn’t be Christian if it wasn’t for that … It was what turned the disciples into Christians, when they realized that Jesus was raised from the dead, that he really was the Messiah that they were waiting for and that somehow the world changed in that magnificent sacrifice. That was what gave them the energy, the joy to go out and to preach the Gospel to all people, and many of them were martyred because of it. So that deep, profound faith in themselves and the deepness of who they were was what sustained them in times of their struggles and their trials. A theology or a philosophy that doesn’t deal with death is not going to be helpful to you when you’re in times of suffering and trial. I often find that people talk very nonchalantly about God and religion, and I sometimes think to myself, well, wait until you have difficulties. What will sustain you? The power of the crucifixion is the fact that it was a horrible way to die. That Jesus allowed himself to be killed that way — he could have avoided it if he wanted to. There are other times in the Bible where it talks about the leaders and authorities and people trying to stone him, but he went back to Jerusalem knowing that he had so stirred up the people and the authorities that they were so angry at him that they wanted to crucify him, and he knew that was what he needed to do, so he did it out of his own free will. The pain of that, the sorrow, the struggle, the conflict of that horrible day all turn into joy with the knowledge that he was resurrected from the dead. So suddenly what had been a great failure — the greatest tragedy, the worst thing that could have happened — became the greatest joy, the most wondrous thing, the great triumph of God over death.

Q: How important is music to this season?

A: We know that Jesus, when he met with his disciples on what we call Maundy Thursday — it comes from the Latin mandatum, a mandate, and the mandate actually was to wash each other’s feet. The mandate was to serve each other, to love each other as Christ loves us. At this Passover meal that Jesus was sharing with his disciples, he picked up the bread that he had and broke it and gave it to them and said, “This is my body,” and he picked up the cup of wine and thanked God and said, “This is my blood,” and passed it around. Little did they know that this was going to be the last meal with him. What they knew was that he was very emotional and that he seemed to be telling them things that they knew they needed to remember. One of the last things they did in this celebration of the Passover meal was to sing a hymn. We don’t know what hymn it was, but it would have been a Hebrew chant that would have been sung at the Passover table, and knowing that Jesus was a singer and that he sang with his disciples makes you realize how ancient this form is and how deeply it is engrained in the soul.

Hymns are one of the oldest things we human beings do together communally. What’s wonderful about singing is that you actually breathe together. You say it in the same tempo. It’s the difference between saying a creed together in church, where ir might not be exactly the same tempo, or actually singing it, where everyone has the same tempo. You’re breathing at the end of the phrase together. It is a wonderful moment where we become one. In Christianity we talk about being one body in Christ, and to be able to breathe together and sing together as one is one of the most profound ways to experience that.

The wonderful thing about hymns is that they are encoded with different memories of singing them in different places. I imagine that the disciples remembered that hymn hauntingly the next two days, that they remembered him singing with them, and it probably made them cry as they remembered. And then, when Jesus was resurrected from the dead, then that singing with him became something else. Probably for the rest of their lives they could always see him and hear him singing with them whenever they sang that hymn. That’s the power of music.

The other thing that happened at this Passover meal is that Jesus surprised them by getting down on his knees in front of them, by taking a towel and actually washing their feet. Peter, one of the disciples, immediately said, “No, No, you shouldn’t be washing my feet.” And Jesus said, “If I don’t wash you then you are not part of this whole thing,” and then he said, of course, “Well, then wash everything.” And Jesus said, “No, only the feet.” But this simple, very powerful act of not being the kind of leader one would expect, not being the kind of person who would lord it over them — “Yes, I am God” — Jesus never did that, and that was the most amazing thing, that he of his own free will gave up his life, knowing that was the only way to break the power of death, to be the one who did not deserve to die, but who died in our stead.

Q: What does knowing that Jesus sang with the disciples do for you, and how does that make the importance of music central to this season in the church year?

A: Knowing that Jesus sang meant that he was like me, that I sing, he sang, that he was a fully human being, and that he enjoyed being with people and singing together. One of the greatest things about singing is the way in which it immediately creates community. If you’re breathing together with each other, if you’re singing the same words, you’re experiencing the same feeling. There’s a way in which different hymns give us a different sense of emotion. So, for example, with “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” it is a very personal piety: “Sometimes it causes me to tremble.” Well, if you’ve been in profound grief, you know what that is. That hymn may sound silly to you when you’re in a good mood, and everything’s going fine. But when someone close to you dies suddenly, lingering on the words “Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble” will be exactly where you are. So the hymn picks up an emotion and carries it to a place where we can share it with others in a way we don’t do otherwise. Some of the great moments of hymn singing have been at the funeral of some great, tragic figure. When we sing together “O God Our Help in Ages Past,” there’s something comforting about singing a hymn that has gone through many, many, many different tragedies and carries us together at that moment … We seek to be in community with each other, and singing is one of the greatest ways to allow us to do that, where we can feel the same emotion, and we can say the same words at the same time, and we can truly be one body.

Q: There is special music for this season that most Christians don’t usually sing at other times of the year.

A: One of the great hymns, “Jesus Christ is Risen Today,” was actually a Latin hymn. I believe it dates back to the 14th century. It started in Bohemia. It became very popular, and there’s version of it that came in 1708 in English translation, and we’re still using that hymn and that melody. It is ecstatic in the way that you have “Alleluia,” which is “praise to God,” and that alleluia repeats after every phrase, so it gets the sense of total joy. If you’ve ever been with somebody you thought was dying, and then they make it through the night, and the doctors refer to it as a miracle, that’s the kind of joy which was, “We thought he was dead, but now he is alive. Hallelujah!”

Q: Much Easter music uses alleluia or hallelujah. Why is that?

A: “Alleluia” is the Latin form of “praise to God.” “Hallelujah” is the Hebrew form of “praise to God.” They’re both ecstatic, and I think the sound of it is why we haven’t translated them, because “Alleluia,” the way it falls off the ear, and “Hallelujah” — just that sense of almost moving into the non-verbal, not a translation of “praise to God” but “Hallelujah,” that sheer joy, sheer ecstasy.

Q: And why are those words used especially at Easter?

A: Not only do we use them especially at Easter, but we don’t say them in the Christian Church during Lent. We bury the alleluias and return them on Easter Sunday because we are walking with Jesus through this Lenten period. One of the earliest services in the Christian Church is the Easter Vigil, waiting through the night, being reminded of the great story and waiting for dawn to come, waiting for that moment when Christ is risen. And the early church then began to precede that with two fast days, so you’re having a Paschal fast before the Paschal feast, and eventually, within a number of centuries it became a whole week, what we now term Holy Week … During Lent we work on our relationship with God and prepare ourselves to get to the point each year so that we can walk with Jesus during these final three days. The gift of the Triduum Sacrum, these three holy days, is that we walk in real time with Jesus, and we meditate on everything that happened to him during those times.

Q: How does the music of the season reflect that journey, those moods?

A: The songs and the hymns, especially for Good Friday, reflect the pain, the conflict, the torture, the incredible sadness and mourning around the death of someone you love. Any of us who have had that kind of experience know that it’s like having the rug pulled out from underneath you. You can’t imagine the world without this person. You can’t imagine going on. Your life has totally changed.

In “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” we have a wonderful hymn. It started as a Latin hymn. It got translated into German and then into English. One of the early English translations was “O head so full of bruises,” which I don’t think we’d still be singing today. But the translation, the music, the harmonization — what’s so wonderful about it is the way it holds complex theological issues together. There are moments in major keys, moments in minor keys, there are dissonances and consonances, there is tension that gets resolved. It takes you on a journey, takes you on a long journey through the text. It’s a meditation on Christ and on his body, specifically his head and on the gift of his sacrifice, so encoded in the music, in the sonorities, in the choice of chords, in the way in which the melody moves, in the way in which the harmony flows. We hear the anguish and that suffering, and we linger with it. “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” if you sing all the verses, takes a long time, and in general the songs we sing on Good Friday are longer. They are slow, they may be in a minor key, they have a sense of suffering, of sorrow, of mourning, and that is a great gift. To be able to stand together in that emotion and do it together as a body is the gift to us. If you’ve been to a funeral, where suddenly everyone is singing together, there’s something very comforting about that, that you’re not alone. Death happens to all of us. That is one of the great tragedies of being human.

Q: And then there is a big contrast from the emotion of Good Friday to Easter.

A: I don’t think anyone can tell you that you must believe Jesus rose from the dead. I think that we all struggle with that in our own time … I’ve been through all the doubt, so I understand why people can’t just say, “Yes, this is for me.” But I also know in my heart that my Redeemer lives, that I’ve seen miracles surrounding the deaths of good friends of mine, and I know that there’s something more than what we see. I know somehow that the invisible is louder than the visible, that there are saints and angels that sing their praises. So on the Sunday morning of Easter, the cathedral is totally changed from Good Friday. On Good Friday, it’s been stark. We’ve cleared off the altar; there is little there. We have the cross, the starkness of the cross, and the sadness — no flowers, no incense. And then on Easter Sunday the church is filled with lilies and spring flowers. The smells are overwhelming, the incense comes back, the lights are up high and bright, the music is loud and joyous and fast and fills us with such happiness to know that our God lives, that love has triumphed over evil.

Q: How does the music convey the Easter message?

A: The theology of Easter is one of joy, triumph, resurrection, rebirth, surprise. The joy of Easter is in the triumph of the resurrection. It’s an incredible and profound joy knowing that God has broken through and that love has triumphed, and so the music tends to be more straightforward, less lingering on harmonies and dissonance, very straightforward, a joyous, faster tempo … One of the things people love about Easter hymns is the incredible joy and happiness of singing them. The tempi are faster. The organ plays loud. We can let ourselves sing at the top of our lungs, and no one is going to yell at us for singing loudly. We have ecstatic moments and hallelujahs. We have just the sheer joy of knowing that love has triumphed. The message of Easter is encoded in the music. We hear the joy, we hear the triumph. We sing fast music, we sing it joyously, it’s in a major key, and it helps us to feel that this is the day the Lord has made.

Q: How is the message expressed differently in different cultural and theological traditions?

A: Every hymn is the result of someone’s spirituality. What’s so interesting about hymn writing and hymn composing is that we take together a text, sometimes it’s a Latin text from the 12th, 13th century, it’s connected with a translation, it might be translated into German and then into English. We have the piety of all those people who are working on that. We have a tune. We have someone else who might harmonize it. All of these pieces fall into place. It is always a miracle as to which hymn people decide is the one they want to sing. “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today” was a hit tune the moment it appeared in 1708 in its current form, and we have been singing it every Easter since. This wonderful hymn “Because He Lives I Can Face Tomorrow”: Being able to have that as your core theology, singing it so that you remember it, so that it’s in your mind the rest of the week, waiting to sing it until Easter Sunday, and that is a profound theology. That’s absolutely helpful to you, and so as you have that tune going through your head the rest of the week, you’re thinking about the Easter message, the core message, which is Jesus lives, Jesus was resurrected, therefore my life has a new meaning. Death is not the end of me.

Q: At Easter time, there are traditional hymns that are sung pretty universally, but there are lots of new songs as well, much more so than Christmas. What does this say theologically?

A: It actually is terribly theologically important that we keep composing and writing new music. If we stick with all the old music, then somehow there lingers this idea that God is dead. The Holy Spirit in my theology is still moving in the world and is still encouraging us to write new songs, to write new texts, to write new poetry, and the gift of a living faith is rediscovering again what that means for you … What we love about something new is that we see an old idea or an old truth with new eyes, and that’s a great gift to the world. So we absolutely need new Easter hymns, new Easter songs, and it’s lovely that these different traditions all have their own hymns that pop up.

Q: So many of the Easter songs have the image of Jesus as a lamb.

A: Jesus and his disciples had that Passover meal, and at that they would have had lamb. The sacrificial lamb is deep in Jewish theology — the idea of one sacrifice representing the sins of all. And so that was an obvious thing for the early church to come to, the idea of Jesus being the paschal lamb, being the lamb of Pesach, of Passover, and because of him our sins are passed over. In the early church, the idea of crucifixion was so horrendous; it was such a horrible way to die that they couldn’t imagine using that as a symbol. Constantine saw a vision of the cross in the sky before he overcame his enemies, and two years after that he decided crucifixions should be banned. There is no symbolism of crucifixions or crosses in the fourth century or the fifth, and it’s only later that people began to portray that, when it’s not a form of death, a form of execution that’s being used all the time.

Q: And the Hallelujah Chorus. Why is that such a common staple of Easter music?

A: I think the Hallelujah Chorus, which comes from Handel’s Messiah, somehow represents the sheer ecstasy of the joy of knowing that our life has meaning, of knowing that love has triumphed, of knowing that God is and that there is more to life than just the dreariness of the day — that Christ has triumphed over death, that we can hope for greater things, that there is life after death. There are some hymns and songs that seem fine on paper, but when you sing them they don’t resonate, and then there are other hymns and songs that the first time they are sung, somehow everybody knows this speaks an eternal truth. “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” is one of those hymns.

Q: Many of the Good Friday and Easter songs emphasize blood.

A: The truth of the reality is that we are dealing with life and death issues. The idea of blood, which is so horrifying — when you bleed you are terrified that you are going to die — but to use that as a symbol, then, of new life is the gift of it as symbol. There is much poetry that is written that seems sort of gory, but the best of it transcends that and calls us to a different place. It reminds us that yes, we are human and that we die: Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. And yet it reminds us that there is another side to that, that the story doesn’t end there, that we end in resurrection.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now, as we mentioned earlier, Western Christians are celebrating Holy Week and Easter, their most sacred time of the year. In the many special services and observances that take place during Holy Week, music plays a crucial role in setting the mood of the worship and in helping to convey the Easter message. Kim Lawton has our report.

CHOIR #1 (singing): Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.

KIM LAWTON: Easter is the most important day on the church calendar, and for Christians, the music of the season is central to the celebration.

Canon VICTORIA SIROTA (Author, “Preaching to the Choir” and Pastor, The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, New York): The awesome thing about Easter is the way in which it takes what would have been a tremendous tragedy — the death of Jesus on Good Friday — and turns it into the great triumph of God over death.

CHOIR #1 (singing): And He shall reign forever and ever.

Canon SIROTA: The message is encoded in the music.

CHOIR #1 (singing): And He shall reign forever and ever.

THOMAS TYLER (Special Assistant to the Pastor for Worship, Shiloh Baptist Church): If there’s anything that’s going to connect to people across any line, any sector, it will be its music.

LAWTON: The importance of music stretches back to the first Holy Week, on Thursday, when Jesus celebrated Passover with his disciples at the Last Supper. According to the Gospel story, they sang a hymn together before they parted.

Canon SIROTA: We don’t know what hymn it was, but it would have been a Hebrew chant that would have been sung at the Passover table. Knowing that Jesus was a singer and that he sang with his disciples makes you realize how ancient this form is.

LAWTON: At Maundy Thursday services, music helps set the mood as Christians begin their annual time of mourning the arrest, prosecution and crucifixion of Jesus.

Thomas Tyler is in charge of worship and music at Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. He says it’s spiritually important to sing the songs of grief before celebrating Christ’s resurrection.

Mr. TYLER: We want to skip over the sorrow. We want to skip over the abandonment and go get our praise on. But, if you don’t remember what he went through, then I feel your appreciation for the significance of that resurrection is marginalized.

LAWTON: The most somber practices take place on Good Friday, and the music reflects this.

Canon SIROTA: In general, the songs that we sing on Good Friday are longer. They’re slow. They may be in a minor key. They have a sense of suffering, of sorrow, of mourning.

LAWTON: At the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, Canon Sirota works with organist Tim Brumfield. They say one of the most common Good Friday hymns, “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” holds complex theological truths.

Canon SIROTA: What’s amazing about it is the way the music goes between major and minor, uses dissonance notes, resolves them, there’s this underlying sense of conflict that still needs to be resolved. We Christians are thankful to God for the crucifixion. but on Good Friday we spend the time lamenting the fact that Jesus had to die on our behalf.

LAWTON: Another widely sung hymn is “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” — an old African-American spiritual.

FEMALE PERFORMER (on stage singing): Sometimes it causes me to tremble.

Canon SIROTA: It’s a very personal piety: “Sometimes it causes me to tremble.” Well, if you’ve been in profound grief, you know what that is.

LAWTON: Although some Easter season music has become universal among Christians, many traditions put the basic theological concepts into their own cultural settings as well.

Mr. TYLER: That culture helps to shape who you are and it’s reflected through how you do what you do, how you go through your — in this case — your spiritual practices.

LAWTON: Many of the crucifixion songs focus on the blood of Christ, which Christians believe atoned for the sins of the world.

Canon SIROTA: The truth of the reality that we are dealing with life and death issues; the idea of blood, which is so horrifying. And when you bleed you are terrified that you are going to die. But to use that as a symbol then of new life, it reminds us that the story doesn’t end there, that we end in resurrection.

LAWTON: And so comes the great transition to Easter Sunday, from mourning to resurrection.

Canon SIROTA: We hear the joy, we hear the triumph. We sing fast music. We sing it joyously. It’s in a major key and it helps us to feel that this is “the day the Lord has made.”

LAWTON: Many Easter songs incorporate the words, “Alleluia” or “Hallelujah.”

CHOIR #2 (singing): Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.

Canon SIROTA: Alleluia is the Latin form of “praise to God.” Hallelujah is the Hebrew form of “praise to God.” So they’re both ecstatic. And I think the sound of it is why we haven’t translated them. Hallelujah — just that sense of almost moving into the non-verbal. Not a translation of praise to God, but “Hallelujah” — that sheer joy, sheer ecstasy. Not only do we use them especially at Easter, but we don’t say them in the Christian Church during Lent. We bury the Alleluias and return them on Easter Sunday.

Mr. TYLER: Because it’s the highest praise. It’s the highest praise. And on this day, of all days, he deserves what: the highest praise.

LAWTON: There are Easter old standards that are sung with great meaning. One of them is, “Because He Lives.”

CHOIR #3 (singing): Because He lives I can face tomorrow.

Canon SIROTA: Because He lives, I can face tomorrow”. And that is a profound theology.

LAWTON: But there are often new Easter songs too.

YOUTH CHOIR (on stage singing): Our Redeemer lives…

Canon SIROTA: If we stick with all the old music, then somehow there lingers this idea that God is dead. The Holy Spirit in my theology is still moving in the world and is still encouraging us to write new songs.

LAWTON: Perhaps the single most popular Easter song across the Christian spectrum is “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” also called, “Jesus Christ is Risen Today.”

Canon SIROTA: “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” is one of the great Easter hymns. And one of the wonderful features of it is this Alleluia that comes as the refrain of every single line so it has this ecstatic quality of singing with great joy all these notes.

Mr. TYLER: We celebrate the “now”-ness of the event, even though the event happened over 2,000 years ago. Each time it occurs it’s a fresh experience — a fresh observation.

Canon SIROTA: The core message, which is: “Jesus lives. Jesus was resurrected. Therefore my life has a new meaning. Death is not the end of me.”

CHOIR #4 (singing): Alleluia. Alleluia.

LAWTON: And the music, they say, is key to conveying that message. I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: One of the problems of many churches — of all varieties — is finding and keeping really good music directors. For many of the best of them, it takes a sacrificial devotion to the church to pass up the riches offered by the popular music business. Bob Faw takes a look at the situation in some African-American churches.

Choir Singer #1 (Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church): No matter the storms in your life.

Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church Choir: Hallelujah!

BOB FAW: The music, the voices lifted to God are glorious.

Choir Singer #1: Hallelujah!

FAW: At the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, Tennessee that majestic sound does not come easily. It takes work.

LEO DAVIS, JR. (Minister of Music, Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church speaking to choir): Higher — and open your mouth.

FAW: From his choir, this minister of music, Leo Davis, seeks perfection.

FAW: Davis is demanding, because for this congregation, and traditionally for the black church, music, says the pastor here, Dr. Frank Thomas, does more than supplement the spoken word.

Dr. FRANK THOMAS (Pastor, Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church): Music comes as a softener of people. It allows me to gradually open myself to receive the word. And that’s why you have so much music in church, because people can’t just receive, generally receive, the raw word.

Choir Singer #2 (Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church): Yes, Lord, I will do what you want me to do.

FAW: Indeed, this congregation has witnessed how music performed well can both transcend and transform.

Mr. DAVIS: One lady in particular said, on that particular Sunday, “I had made up my mind to commit suicide.” She said, “I had made up my mind to commit suicide, but the song that you ministered that particular Sunday gave me hope to live on.”

FAW: The problem is that accomplished ministers of music like Leo Davis are a vanishing species. Increasingly, black churches throughout the country are finding it harder to hire skilled musicians like him.

Dr. THOMAS: It does worry me, very much so, because I think, you know, for example, if we lose the ability to do spirituals, that bothers me, ’cause it has an historical connection. So it bothers me that we may lose some very valuable pieces of music.

Dr. GARY SIMPSON (Pastor, Concord Baptist Church of Christ, Brooklyn, NY): It’s a difficult thing to try to find someone trained. I talked to one of my friends who told me it took him five years to find a musician finally that would be his minister of music.

FAW: Dr. Gary Simpson, pastor of the historic Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn, New York, knows the problem all too well. For nearly a year now, his church has been unable to hire a new director of music.

Dr. SIMPSON: We are not training musicians in the music of the church, which the black church did all along its tenure. That kind of commitment is gone, for the most part.

FAW: Music programs in public schools have been slashed, producing fewer musicians, Simpson adds. But the biggest handicap facing the churches is the world outside, where musicians can find greater fortune — and fame.

Mr. DAVIS: The big money is in producing. The big money is in rap. They’re looking at rappers with the million-dollar houses with gold ceilings, and why do I want to work in a church and make $30,000?

Concord Baptist Church of Christ Choir: Oh, glorious is his name.

FAW: For the last four months, Dr. Glen McMillan, who teaches music at a college nearby, has been auditioning to fill that vacancy at Concord Baptist. He knows he will be judged, in large part, on how well he performs.

Dr. GLEN MCMILLAN (Interim Music Director, Concord Baptist Church of Christ): We’re in this whole megachurch mentality, where the church, to me, has become so performance-based that everything is a quick fix. The church has been a place where you could express your gift and nurture your gift in the same process. Now it’s more quick-fixed.

FAW: And that is the other dilemma facing black churches. They are not just competing for musical directors.

Dr. THOMAS: There are a lot of things competing for people’s attention. So how do you get people to pay attention to you? So you have to be very good at what you do. Mediocrity will not get you a hearing in today’s world.

DONNIE MCCLURKIN (performing): Don’t give up! Don’t give up!

FAW: And that competition is fierce — congregants accustomed to dazzling “performances” on VH1, BET or their iPods. To reach them, some churches conclude, “We, too, must entertain.”

Mr. DAVIS: I see it all the time. When it’s not planned well and when it’s not open to the moving of the Holy Spirit, then it becomes entertainment.

FAW: Some, like Dr. Frank Thomas in Memphis, refer to it as “sunshine music.”

Dr. THOMAS: Some music has bad theology, right? Some music, you know, has stuff that the Bible does not say. It’s like giving people cotton candy. We can give people cheap answers to deep questions.

Dr. MCMILLAN: We have a group that is coming out that is a hip-hop crowd, and the church is saying, “This is great!” But where are those things that are so important — the tradition of music, the hymns, and especially, in terms of black people, the Negro spirituals?

FAW: With fewer accomplished musical directors and more so-called “sunshine music,” worship, many fear, will be diminished.

Dr. MCMILLAN: I don’t believe that if you did hip-hop 20 years ago that you’re going to remember a hip-hop line. But you will remember “Come thou fount of every blessing” if you learn it, or you will remember “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”

Mr. DAVIS: Those songs live on. They live on because they’re sustaining. You want the younger generations coming up to be part of that, and to embrace that, and to learn it and to pass it down.

Dr. MCMILLAN: Fifteen, 20 years from now I am trying to imagine what the music ministry of our churches is going to be. I am kind of concluding the fact that hymnal music is going to be obsolete.

FAW: Initially, Glen McMillan says he chose the wrong kind of music and got off to a rocky start here. But the audition is going well now, and it’s likely he’ll be named minister of music. After 17 years in Memphis, Leo Davis shows little sign of slowing down. Both agree the problems are serious and that finding someone musically gifted is not enough.

Dr. MCMILLAN: I would never tell anybody who played or worked with me it’s about the money. It’s about the commitment first. It’s about God. It’s his music. It’s a calling.

FAW: A calling?

Dr. MCMILLAN: Yeah, music ministry is a calling.

Mr. DAVIS: The calling comes with a passion. You have to have a passion to serve.

Choir Singer #3 (Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church): Oh, Lord, won’t you stand by me?

Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church Choir: While I run this race.

FAW: So the sounds go forth as churches wrestle not just with finding someone to carry the flame, but also with what kind of flame it will be.

Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church Choir: We bless your name…

FAW: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Bob Faw in Memphis, Tennessee.

Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church Choir: For your name is to be lifted up.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a story today about a woman who is both African American and an Orthodox Jew, a rare but real combination in this country. Her very name expresses her mixed identity — Yavilah McCoy — and she is devoting her talent and energy to using music — Gospel music — to try to overcome the prejudice she has experienced from other Jews. Menachem Daum reports.

YAVILAH MCCOY: I don’t think it’s a simple thing to try to navigate both Jewish and black identity simultaneously in the context of raising a family. It’s hard. It involves a lot of sacrifice. It involves a lot of joy.

MENACHEM DAUM: Yavilah McCoy is one of several thousand African-American Jews. To create a better future for her children, Yavilah wants it known that Jews come in a variety of shades and colors. For the past several years, Yavilah has led workshops that combine classical Jewish liturgy with her family’s rich Gospel tradition.

Ms. MCCOY (leading group of white Jews singing in Hebrew the Gospel version of “Modeh Ani Lifanecha”): And the kishkas are about this soul: “Thank God for this soul that’s in me, oh yeah.” He woke me up this morning and I’m glad, so glad, about it.

The spirit doesn’t have a color, and this whole thing I do now with song is just because I feel like music is a way in which people access spirit quite immediately.

Ms. MCCOY (singing): And I’m glad, so glad about it, you know, I ‘m glad down in my soul.

UNIDENTIFIED JEWISH WOMAN: I’m sure there are white Jews who may have taken Hebrew songs and put them to Gospel music, just because Gospel’s part of our vocabulary, our musical vocabulary. But if a white Jew would do it I’d say, like, you know, I would say that isn’t ours.

Ms. MCCOY: What you got to do is say, “I went to Limud in New York, and I met my sister of color, and when I met my sister of color she sang some songs to me that now are a part of our people, and I want to share them with you because this is what our people look like now.” Today “our people” is changing. Today “our people” is broad. Today “our people” come from those places I told you. Our people come from Sudan and Ethiopia, and our people come from America, and our people come from Brooklyn, and our people come from New Jersey, and our people come from Yemen and our people — and you get to claim every inch of your Jewish spiritual breath. You get to claim it.

Ms. MCCOY (joined by her grandmother Jeanette Tate and mother Adeena Fulcher, singing in Hebrew a Jewish Gospel song): Adon olam, asher malach.

DAUM: The road towards Judaism was begun by Yavilah’s grandparents. Her grandmother Jeanette studied the Old Testament and concluded that the biblical children of Israel were actually Jews of color. For this reason, Jeanette rejected Christianity and became a member of the group known as “Black Israelites.”

JEANETTE TATE (Grandmother of Yavilah McCoy): We were brought to this country and subjected. We were taken away from what we originally were, and we were taught how Christianity began and how it enslaved our people and how Christianity was imposed on us.

DAUM: As a Black Israelite, Yavilah’s grandmother was not recognized as a Jew by most Jewish denominations.

AHDENAH FULCHER (Mother of Yavilah McCoy, singing in Hebrew): Adon olam, asher malach.

DAUM: Yavilah’s mother, Adeena, wanted to be acknowledged as a Jew without any questions, so she converted to Orthodox Judaism. But when she started having a family she learned that acceptance was hard to get.

Ms. FULCHER: My children started in the yeshivas at a very early age; as soon as they basically were toddling they were in yeshiva. That was not, first of all — depending on where they were — that wasn’t always pleasant. My children paid a price.

Ms. MCCOY: I was in third grade, and they didn’t want to hold my hand. When they would say line up, you know, the kids were scared.

Ms. FULCHER: It traumatizes you. It does things to you, but it doesn’t change who I am. It doesn’t change the fact that we’re Jews. Like it, lump it, or indifferent, that’s who we are. We’re Jews.

Ms. MCCOY (leading group, singing in Hebrew): Ana Hashem ki ani avdecha.

Through music, you don’t have to work that hard. You don’t have to sit and have a conversation with me about what are the obstacles to welcoming difference. All you got to do is just open yourselves up to the music.

(Group dancing and clapping): Hallelujah! All right, Hallelujah!

GROUP OF YOUNG CHILDREN (lighting Hanukkah menorah and singing “Ma’oz Tzur”)

Ms. MCOY: More than anything, this is about the children. This is about the next generation having a chance to be Jews just because.

DAUM: For the sake of her children Yavilah has founded an organization called Ayecha. One of Ayecha’s main events is an annual concert designed to build a community of acceptance for Jews of color.

Ms. MCCOY (speaking to crowd): Whooo! Everybody, hello. Need some of your attention! Okay, you are at a Jewish soul celebration. Welcome. If you didn’t know it, you have arrived at a journey that we’re going to take this evening through the music of Jews from cultures that come from Jerusalem all the way to Africa.

Ms. FULCHER (speaking to crowd): My dad and my grandmother — they came up as Gospel singers in the early days. They came out of the churches, and they could sing. When I say they could sing, they could really sing. And, yeah, they could sing.

Ms. MCCOY (speaking to crowd): If everybody in here has the spirit say, “Amen.”

CROWD: Amen!

Ms. MCCOY (speaking to crowd): If everybody wants to see this again, say “Mazel Tov.”

CROWD: Mazel Tov!

Ms. MCCOY (speaking to crowd): If everybody in here wants to go, say “Oy Vey.”

CROWD: Oy Vey!

Ms. MCCOY (speaking to crowd): If everybody here loves the spiritual journey we’re on, say “Umm hmmmm.”

CROWD: “Umm hmmmm!”

JOSHUA NELSON AND THE KOSHER GOSPEL SINGERS (singing in Hebrew): Adon olam, asher malach.

Ms. MCCOY (dancing and singing, leading Jewish group): I want to sing, sing, sing. I want to shout, shout, shout.

At the end of the day, if all we get to be is white or black Jews, it creates a situation where people have to leave parts of their identity behind. So Ayecha is giving people around the country a taste of what they’re missing every single day. People get a taste of what’s to come. They get a taste of that Jewish community that doesn’t exist yet.

DAUM: Whether or not Yavilah’s song will create the better world she dreams of remains to be seen. But she is guided by the Talmud’s teaching: You’re not obligated to complete the task, but neither are you free to abandon it.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY this is Menachem Daum in New York.