As the title suggests, "rock/theology" is an interdisciplinary project, located both in theology and in musicology. Music has been a topic for christian thinkers since the beginning of church history, and composers and other music makers have throughout the same history wrestled with questions concerning representation of theological concepts through music. Theology and music meets in the liturgies of the church, but theology also encounter music when dealing with other parts of God's creation. In the thesis I will give space to outline some of the thoughts and ideas church thinkers and music makers have been dealing with (see Opsahl 2001). Here I will only point to some current discourses on theology and music, namely the field of theomusicology. The term was coined by Jon Michael Spencer in the late 1980's, who through several publications and other academic activities have argued for theomusicology as an independent academic discipline. Spencer presents theomusicology as

musicology as a theologically informed discipline. This theologically informed musicology, wich especially borrows thought and method from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy, has as its subject the myriad cultural worlds of ethical, religious and mythological belief (Spencer 1991:xi).

By studying music that is created and consumed in what he call the domain of "the sacred (the religious), the secular (the theistic unreligious) and the profane (the atheistic irreligious)", the theomusicologist is able to discern how "particular peoples perceive the universal mysteries that circumscribe their mortal existence and how the ethics, theologies, and mythologies to wich they subscribe shape their worlds and the world" (ibid). The tripartite division of "sacred", "secular" and "profane" and the corresponding parentheses "the religious", the "theistic unreligious" and "the atheistic irreligious" is referring to a theoretical framework derived from Augustine’s City of God.

In City of God Augustine divides the Cosmos in two realms, wich is called the City of God – constituted of those living according to the spirit – and the City of Man – constituted of those living according to the flesh (this and the following presentation is based on Spencer 1991:19-33). They both have temporal stages on earth, were the citizens of the two cities intermingles, but after judgement there will be two separate realm. Following the lines of Augustine scholar Robert A. Markus, Spencer divides the Cosmos into the Sacred, The Secular and the Profane, where the Sacred and Profane refers to the City of God and the City of Man, respectively. The Secular is the world or "the whole stretch of time in witch the two cities are ’inextricably intertwined’" (Markus cited in Spencer 1991:23). In the Secular, the temporal world we now are living in, Spencer discerns three spheres, the sacred, the secular and the profane (in lower case), depicted as three overlapping circles:

fig 1 (from Spencer 1991:26)

The overlapping areas in the circles are the temporal sacred wich is the shadow of the eschatological Sacred (City of God) and the temporal profane wich is the shadow of the eschatological Profane (City of Man). The remaining area is the temporal secular, or what he calls "the secular city". The three spheres are inhabited by three kinds of people who Spencer names "the religious", "the theistic unreligious" and the "atheistic irreligious", wich to a certain degree corresponds to Augustine’s "those of our faith", "our neighbours" and "those others".

Theomusicology can, according to Spencer, employ traditional musicological analysis , but with emphasis on studying the "normative in the ethics, religion, or mythology of the community of believers being studied". And he finds three analytical approaches: descriptive theomusicology, with emphasis nonjudgemental description of the creators and consumers of music; normative theomusicology, wich also studies the creators and consumers of music but also involves comparison with the "tenets of canonical authority"; and finally predictive theomusicology, where one involves in an "analysis of the future state of affairs to wich music speaks or directs a community" (Spencer 1991:4). The normative approach is best suited for the music traditionally associated with theology, the music of the sacred sphere, hymns, liturgical- and other kinds of sacred music. But it is not suited for the secular or profane music, unless the scholars are "exhaustively examining the theologies being predicated, the ultimates being thematized, and the evils being exorcised" (ibid:5). Spencer himself has worked extensively with african american sacred music, such as spirituals and gospel (Spencer 1990, 1992), but sees for theomusicology the far more important task to study popular music, because

it is not the sacred music of the church that characterizes and thematizes life in the secular world, but rather, for the most part, the myriads of secular popular music... one of the missions for theomusicology is to initiate intellectual interest in secular popular music, wich is probably the single most important key to decoding the theology of the masses of popular culture (ibid: 12-3).

Spencer, and most of the contributors to Black Sacred Music: A Journal of Theomusicology writes from an african american perspective, and the popular music they study is mostly rooted in african american tradition, such as blues, jazz, rythm & blues, funk, soul and rap. Spencer do however points to others that have studied anglo-american music, such as Andrew Greeleys work on Bruce Springsteen and Madonna, and in later issues of Black Sacred Music there has been occational articles on rock, western classical music and country music (see Spencer, ed 1994)

Spencer’s work has been met with some oposition, to wich he vaguely refers in the preface of Theomusicology (Spencer 1994:v-ix). Some ethnomusicologists have asked whether it is necessary to make up a new discipline when the field already is covered by ethnomusicology (ibid:v). Others have more maliciously described theomusicology as a cult, with Spencer as the high priest (ibid:vi). The latter argument is understandable, taking into account Spencer’s normative and prescriptive style of writing. But Spenceris not the only one doing theomusicology. Special issues of Black Sacred Music offers a wide array of aproaches in articles written by different scholars with a variety of backgrounds, ethnomusicologists, theologians, scholars of popular music, of african american studies and so on. And although there can be argued that ethnomusicology and other fields of study to some extent are able to deal with many of the questions and aproaches Spencer prescribe for theomusicology, I find the term itself useful, in that it signals both theological and musicological concerns. However, there are several aspects with Spencer’s aproach I find problematic. First of all I think theomusicology should be something that is not necessarily based in neither theology nor musicology, but a field of study that is as much theology as it is musicology and vice versa. My own project rock/theology could then be described as "theology as a musicological informed discipline" as well as the other way around.

Both theology and musicology are employing interdisciplinary aproaches and borrow methods from numerous other fields, so I don’t find it necessary to limit it to "anthropology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy". In my own work I will look to other fields as well, such as cultural studies, gender studies, and poststructural theories ( as well as subfields of theology such as various forms of liberation theology), while anthropology and psychology will be of less interest. I also think that he and other contributors could make it clearer that the music of the secular and profane spheres doesn’t necessarily have to be popular music, but also various kinds of "classical" and traditional music. However, the most problematic aspects of Spencer’s framework in my view is his tripartite model. How do you in music discern what is profane and what is secular? While Spencer define the music of the sacred sphere as hymns and various kinds of church music and the secular music as various kinds of popular music, he doesn’t give any criteria for what profane music could be. He amits this, writing that when it comes to non-sacred music it is "difficult to discern whether its creators are secular or profane, semi-religious or pseudo-religious, theistic or atheistic" (ibid:40). And this leads to the basic problem of Spencer’s model, the criteria for what’s sacred, secular or profane is based on the intentions of the creators and consumers of music, not the music itself.

With a little help from Dietrich Bonhoeffer I would propose a different model with only the sacred and secular sphere. Bonhoeffer was one of the initiators of the "secular theology" movement, and have in several of his writings argued against concepts of the church as an entity separate from the world, or with a privileged place in the world. In a series of lectures from 1932 called "Das Wesen der Kirche" (english translation in Bonhoeffer 1990:87-92), he describes the church as

... a reality in the world, a bit of the world reality. The secularity of the church follows from the incarnation of Christ. The church, like Christ, has become world. It is a denial of the real humanity of Jesus and also heretical to take the concrete church as only a phantom church or an illusion. It is entirely world. This means that it is subjected to all the weakness and suffering of the world.. It has its place not only with the poor but also with the rich; not only with the pious but also with the Godless. All are world. It faces both group with the same impartiality. There is no sphere from wich it distances itself out of anxiety over going astray (Bonhoeffer 1988:92).

Theologian and sociologist Andrew Greeley describes the sacred and the secular sphere as "... somewhat distinct [but] the boundaries between the two are amorphous and permeable. The secular intrudes into the sacred, and the sacred into the secular everyday" (Greeley 1982:1)". This leads me to the following model, where the sacred sphere is where the sacred sphere is distinguishable, but still part of the temporal secular sphere:

Fig 2

Cultural expressions are produced and consumed in both the sacred and the secular sphere, and both spheres will produce both secular and sacred cultural expression.

For the purpose of interpretation of rock songs, I will in the following understand "sacred sphere" and "secular sphere" as hermeneutical horizons that are taken into consideration in interpretation. Something in the song or whatever being interpreted can for instance point to "church" or "christian tradition", wich then again sings with the song. The sacred sphere could be constituted of religious institutions, denominations, so called "christian" segments of mass media and popular culture, religious traditions and so on. The secular sphere would then be all other arenas for cultural expressions, for instance the record industry, concert halls, music press, mass media, political and humanitarian organizations and so on. Sacred cultural expressions would be religious symbols and religious language, any expressions concerning "god" or that refer to the sacred sphere in some way or another. Secular cultural expressions is all kinds of expressions, political, erotic and so on that doesn’t specifically points to the sacred sphere. With this model, there will be four kinds of cultural expressions: 1) sacred expressions in the sacred sphere, 2) sacred expressions in the secular sphere, 3) secular expressions in the sacred sphere and 4) secular expressions in the secular sphere. But the distinctions are blurred. The distinction between "cultural expression" and "sphere" is not clear. A "sacred sphere" can for instance be made up of a set of "sacred cultural expressions", a "sphere" can in itself be a cultural expression. The division between "sacral" and "secular" spheres is not clearly distinctive, either. When a large sport stadium is used for a christian rock festival, one can argue that a secular sphere is converted to a sacred sphere. Finally, cultural expressions can be both sacred and secular. Erotic expressions are often placed in the secular sphere, but are also found in biblical litterature and hymns. The Song of Solomon is traditionally interpreted as a sacred cultural expression, where the erotic language and symbols are interpreted metaphorically. But it could still be interpreted as an erotic text, without religious connotations. Similarily, in many rock songs, there are religious language and symbols that are used in erotic contexts, wich opens for a secular use of sacred cultural expressions.

Rock music would usually be interpreted as cultural expressions that takes place in a secular sphere. It is performed on stages, distributed by companies and broadcasted on radio- and tv stations that have no connection to religious institutions. In rock music there is both secular and sacred cultural expressions. In "rock/theology" I will look especially look for sacred cultural expressions found in rock tunes, also expressions that are both sacred and secular, and see how they work together with secular expressions.

 

©carl petter opsahl 2001