I have read more rants than I care to remember against modern worship songs, guitars in worship services, and the like, and this is certainly one of the better ones. Fortunately, it is much more than that. The author writes as a media ecologist, and the book is at its strongest and most useful when asking pertinent and insightful questions about how we ‘do’ church worship from the cultural anthropologist's perspective, beyond the musical polemics. The author deploys many arguments against contemporary songs and in favour of older hymns (from centuries earlier than the 19th) in a witty and readable style, moving effortlessly between wild rhetorical flourishes and relatively lucid balanced argument. Whilst coming across as something of an extremist, his more balanced passages act as a counterpoint to the wilder parts: any reader who holds that the works of great hymn writers of the past have no place in our worship would find much to challenge them. A few good musical points are made as well, but by and large the musical arguments do not stand up to close inspection, threatening to undermine the conservative and Reformed Protestantism so dear to the author's heart. In spite of that, it's well worth a read: some thought-provoking and challenging ideas mixed in with some entertaining hyperbolae.

I have read more rants than I care to remember against modern worship songs, guitars in worship services, and the like, and this is certainly one of the better ones. Fortunately, it is much more than that. The author writes as a media ecologist, and the book is at its strongest and most useful when asking pertinent and insightful questions about how we ‘do’ church worship from the cultural anthropologist's perspective, beyond the musical polemics. The author deploys many arguments against contemporary songs and in favour of older hymns (from centuries earlier than the 19th) in a witty and readable style, moving effortlessly between wild rhetorical flourishes and relatively lucid balanced argument. Whilst coming across as something of an extremist, his more balanced passages act as a counterpoint to the wilder parts: any reader who holds that the works of great hymn writers of the past have no place in our worship would find much to challenge them. A few good musical points are made as well, but by and large the musical arguments do not stand up to close inspection, threatening to undermine the conservative and Reformed Protestantism so dear to the author's heart. In spite of that, it's well worth a read: some thought-provoking and challenging ideas mixed in with some entertaining hyperbolae.

I have read more rants than I care to remember against modern worship songs, guitars in worship services, and the like, and this is certainly one of the better ones. Fortunately, it is much more than that. The author writes as a media ecologist, and the book is at its strongest and most useful when asking pertinent and insightful questions about how we ‘do’ church worship from the cultural anthropologist's perspective, beyond the musical polemics. The author deploys many arguments against contemporary songs and in favour of older hymns (from centuries earlier than the 19th) in a witty and readable style, moving effortlessly between wild rhetorical flourishes and relatively lucid balanced argument. Whilst coming across as something of an extremist, his more balanced passages act as a counterpoint to the wilder parts: any reader who holds that the works of great hymn writers of the past have no place in our worship would find much to challenge them. A few good musical points are made as well, but by and large the musical arguments do not stand up to close inspection, threatening to undermine the conservative and Reformed Protestantism so dear to the author's heart. In spite of that, it's well worth a read: some thought-provoking and challenging ideas mixed in with some entertaining hyperbolae.