Music in American Religious Experience

Philip V. Bohlman teaches at the University of Chicago, where he is Mary Werkman Professor of the Humanities and of Music, Chair of the Committee on Jewish Studies, and Artistic Director of the cabaret ensemble, New Budapest Orpheum Society. Edith L. Blumhofer is Professor of History and Director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College (Illinois). Maria M. Chow is a native of Hong Kong, and her Ph.D. dissertation (University of Chicago) is a study of the modern discourse on music and its impact on the Chinese national self-identity in the first half of the twentieth century.

Music in American Religious Experience is a fine collection of essays that enlighten us on a great variety of research topics concerning sacred music in America. The articles that discuss Lutheran hymnody and worship are ground breaking, and it would do Lutheran church musicians well to read them. By doing so, their understanding of the music that they use weekly in worship will be deeper and their consideration of other religious groups will gain them appreciation for the musical traditions of those people.

• Foreword, Martin E. MartyContributorsIntroduction: Music in American Religious Experience, Philip V. BohlmanPart I: Experience and Identity1: Regula Burckhardt Qureshi: When Women Recite: "Music" and the Islamic Immigrant Experience2: Jon Michael Spencer: African American Religious Music from a Theomusicological Perspective3: Anne Morrison Spinney: Medeolinuwok, Music, and Missionaries in Maine4: Margarita Mazo: Singing as an Experience of American-Russian MolokansPart II: Liturgy, Hymnody, and Song5: Stephen A. Marini: Hymnody and History: Early American Evangelical Hymns as Sacred Music6: Paul Westermeyer: The Evolution of the Music of German American Protestants in Their Hymnody: A Case Study from an American Perspective7: Otto Holzapfel: Singing from the Right Songbook: Ethnic Identity and Language Transformation in German American Hymnals8: Judith Gray: "When in Our Music God Is Glorified:" Singing and Singing about Singing in a Congregational ChurchPart III: Individuals and the Agency of Faith9: Edith L. Blumhofer: Fanny Crosby and Protestant Hymnody10: Philip V. Bohlman: Prayer on the Panorama: Music and Individualism in American Religious Experience11: Janet Walton: Women's Ritual MusicPart IV: Congregation and Community12: Jeffrey A. Summit: Nusach and Identity: The Contemporary Meaning of Traditional Jewish Prayer Modes13: Maria M. Chow: Reflections on the Musical Diversity of Chinese Churches in the United States14: Jeff Todd Titon: "Tuned Up with the Grace of God:" Music and Experience among Old Regular Baptists15: Don E. Saliers: Aesthetics and Theology in Congregational Song: A Hymnal IntervenesIndex