“FAITH COMES BY HEARING”: A SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF CHRISTIAN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC AND AURAL PIETY __________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board __________________________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Courtney Sorrell Tepera August 2017 Examining Committee Members: Lucy Bregman, Advisory Chair, TU Department of Religion Terry Rey, TU Department of Religion David Harrington Watt, TU Department of History Dustin Kidd, External Member, TU Department of Sociology © Copyright 2017 by Courtney Suzanne Sorrell Tepera ____________________________ All rights reserved iii ABSTRACT Over the past fifty years, Christian contemporary music has joined hymnody and psalmody as a major form of evangelical liturgical and devotional song. While the production and content of this genre have been explored by scholars, few studies have attended to the devotional use of the genre and its role in shaping the religious lives of American evangelicals. This project draws from several sets of data to address this matter: analysis of church-created worship music albums, listener testimonials on Christian radio websites, and focus group interviews of laity and clergy at four South Carolina churches. The data revealed that music is significant to their religious lives outside of church as a means of encountering God, managing emotions, and displaying spiritual capital. Inside churches, the music is used to create a sense of corporate identity that reinforces social bonds within the community and attracts newcomers. Drawing on the methodological framework of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice and his work on social distinction, I argue that American evangelicals who listen to Christian contemporary music are engaged in aural piety, a set of practices, attitudes, and ideas invested in music that structure and evoke the experience of the sacred. iv To Keith: My cheerleader, co-conspirator, and chief distraction. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are not enough words to properly praise the people who have poured into this project, and, alas, I have failed to find someone else’s pithy quote to stand in for my own poor words. I must begin with my advisor, Lucy Bregman. Thank you for the interesting discussion we had about David Crowder*Band and Teresa of Avila so many years ago that started this project. Thank you for continuing to give me those three words that no graduate student wants to hear: “finish your dissertation.” I am indebted to you for fielding so many rambling emails and very rough drafts. My thanks also to Terry Rey and David Watt for being such gracious committee members. Thank you, Terry, for giving me the theoretical vocabulary to address this project, and for encouraging me to dust off my French and engage with Bourdieu in his own words. Thank you, David, for your keen analytical eye, and for pointing me towards excellent book after excellent book. This dissertation would be far shallower without the input I received from each of you, and without your example as scholars to live up to. I am also very appreciative of the scholarly community that has surrounded me in this work with both support and accountability. To those who I’ve encountered at the American Academy of Religion and Society for the Scientific Study of Religion over the past few years who have given feedback on vi portions of this work, I am grateful. Lester Ruth and Nelson Cowan: thank you for several excellent conversations and for introducing me to the Liturgy Fellowship and the Christian Congregational Music Conference. Thanks as well are due to Ant Greenham, Chip McDaniel, and Peter Beck, for their insightful conversations with a confused seminary student that shaped the direction of my academic career. An inestimable amount of credit for this project must go to my family and friends. To my parents, who told me in middle school to go out for every team and hobby with the words “It never hurts to try. What have you got to lose?” I am eternally grateful. Thank you for always encouraging me to think and for constant trips to the library. To my brothers, thank you for all the conversational sparring, twisted song lyrics, and emailed earworms over the years. Coley, thank you for being the sister I never had, and for your passionate love of N’Sync that challenged me to embrace the fun in mindless pop music. Thanks as well must go to my friends and colleagues at Temple University, who have been constant shoulders to cry on, patient walls off which to bounce ideas, and an unfailing source of fun: Amy Defibaugh, Mohammad Hassan, Yarehk Hernandez, Nicole Melara, Vinnie Moulton, and Scott Singer. Most emphatic thanks go to Trish Kolbe and Adam Valerio for the weekly writing meetings that have kept me sane and pointed in the right direction over the past two years. Special thanks as well to vii the wonderful worship family of Restoration Community Church for their love and prayers as I have worked on “my paper.” Most of all, my thanks goes to my amazing husband, Keith Tepera. I would never have dreamed of actually doing this graduate school thing if not for your encouragement, and certainly wouldn’t have made it this far without your patient reassurance that this is indeed worth doing. What can I say? You were right. And yes, I actually put that in writing for once. You deserve it. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................. VI LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................... XIV LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... XV CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................1 Beginnings .................................................................................................................... 1 Structure ........................................................................................................................ 4 Contributions to the Field ............................................................................................. 7 2. AURAL PIETY: A BOURDIEUSIAN APPROACH TO RELIGION AND MUSIC ...............................................................................................................................10 Theoretical Rationale .................................................................................................. 11 The Theory of Practice................................................................................................ 13 The Religious Field ..................................................................................................... 18 The Religious Field and Spiritual Capital ................................................................... 21 Distinction, Art, and Cultural Capital in Bourdieu ..................................................... 25 Pop Culture, Distinction, and Religion ....................................................................... 30 Fields Collide: Bourdieu on Religious Art ................................................................. 33 Sound, Religion and Music ......................................................................................... 39 Visual Piety ................................................................................................................. 48 ix A Theory of Aural Piety ............................................................................................. 52 3. “A HARP OF MANY STRINGS”: A GENEALOGY OF CHRISTIAN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC .............................................................................................55 “More than a Feeling” - The Roots of American Music ............................................. 58 African Music ........................................................................................... 58 Calvinist Psalmody ................................................................................... 60 Lutheran Hymnody ................................................................................... 65 European Social Music ............................................................................. 67 “Sweet Emotion” - The First Great Awakening and the Rise of Hymnody ............... 68 “Rockin’ in the Free World” – Music after the American Revolution ....................... 78 “Sweet Child of Mine” – Victorian Religion and Song .............................................. 87 “For Your Precious Love” – Music after the Civil War ............................................. 94 “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” – Birth of the Recording Industry ........................... 102 Singing Evangelists and Southern Gospel .............................................. 103 Gospel Music and its Secular Relatives .................................................. 107 Yodeling Cowboys.................................................................................. 114 “Born to be Wild” – Music after World War II ........................................................ 117 “Sympathy for the Devil” – Christian Contemporary Music and its Contemporaries ..................................................................................................