Music and Religion/Philosophy

My music and religion background are mainly Christian. When I was younger, I attended Mount Lebanon Baptist church. This church was very small, a congregation of about 75 adults. When I attended this church, the music was all done from hymnals, no band or choir. The music just came from the pastor, pianist, and the congregation. Simple, but very beautiful when all the voices came together from the crowd. When my mother met my now stepfather, we moved churches and joined his church family: Praise Cathedral Church of God. This church is Pentecostal, so it was a huge change from my quiet little Baptist church. This church now has about 2,000+ persons in a service. However, this church believes heavily in the power of worship. For music, we have a large choir of 100+ including an orchestra. The worship is my favorite part. At Praise, the style of music changes throughout the sermon and varies Sunday to Sunday. Some days the choir will sing older hymnal songs, other days the men/women quartet will sing, and then the whole choir will sing various types of songs.

To discuss Praise Cathedral a little more, I believe the use of music is to purely worship and spread the gospel. When witnessing the choir sing and lift their hands (common practice in a Pentecostal church), it is very moving and consumes you while you also worship. To explain the aesthetics of our music/worship style, we must first discover what Pentecostalism is. Pentecostalism emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit and the direct experience of the presence of God by the believer. We believe that faith must be powerfully experiential and energetic, meaning through worship and the power of the Holy Spirit. Side note: No this does not mean we are the type that handle snakes, we do not like snakes at our church! However, some Pentecostals do still practice this exercise in their church. So, back to aesthetics. At Praise, we enjoy music that simply is moving and involves the Holy Spirit. Whether that is just by the pastor singing a hymn by himself before the sermon, the entire choir and orchestra singing, or everyone in the building singing. Whatever invites the Spirit, we find to be pleasing to us and to God.

Attached below is a video from Praise Cathedral in 2016 at our annual Christmas Program. This is Amanda Smith singing “The Blood” along with the choir. The video is almost 7 minutes long, but it shows the choir, orchestra, and soloist. She is one of my favorite singers at the church and this is one of my favorite songs!