The Spirit and the Song - (Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture) by Chris E W Green & Steven Félix-Jäger (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book considers how music can transport listeners beyond themselves. Both music and the Spirit operate between languages and cultures, between desires and longings, between the visible and invisible, and between the deep and near. Thus, the Spirit, through music, unites and gathers communities, revealing new possibilities.

Book Synopsis

The Spirit and the Song: Pneumatological Reflections on Popular Music explores pertinent pneumatological issues that arise in music. It offers three distinct contributions: first, it asks what, if anything, music tells listeners about God's Spiritedness. Can the experience of music speak to human spiritedness, the world's transcendentality, or a person's own self-transcendence in ways nothing else does or can? Second, this book explores how the Spirit functions within, and even determines, culture through music. Because music is a profound human expression, it can find itself in a rich dialogue with the Spirit. Third and finally, this book explores the contested status of music in Christian spiritual traditions. It deals with music as inspired by the Spirit, music as participation in Spiritedness, and music as temptation of "the flesh." As such, this book also engages music's placement in Christian spiritual traditions. The contributors of this book ask how Christian convictions about and experiences of the Spirit might shape the way one thinks about music.

Review Quotes

"Chris E. W. Green and Steven Félix-Jäger have struck a chord with me in publishing this edited volume on The Spirit and The Song. I warmly welcome this Pentecostal, socio-cultural, affective, and musicological composition into its unique place as an invaluable resource for integrative spirituality through song. Their creative and courageous affirmation of the personification of song, music as cultural gift, and the worship of the church, will no doubt challenge our perceptions about the songs we sing and the performative spirituality contained therein. Generations will benefit greatly from the scope and depth of their fully-orbed understanding of the nature of songs and their avant-garde experimentation. Sincerely, Thank you!" --Johnathan E. Alvarado, Bishop, Grace Church International, Atlanta, Georgia

"Like many who grew up in a singing Pentecostal community, I hope my children will sing but in different or newer, spirited ways. The commonality will be the God who makes (and remakes) our world even as we participate; it will not be simple transposing of culture, methods, chords or lyrics. The theologising in The Spirit and the Song, edited by Chris E. W. Green and Steven Félix-Jäger, has a way of holding on to the Spirit of Jesus as its authors examine the space between spirit and body, mourning and joy, past and present, sacred and secular. These stellar contributors weave a story capable of explaining music's sacramentality and importance to Pentecostals themselves, as well as its observers. In this creative and, even at times, provocative volume, a hopeful vision is presented: sound, both sacred and secular, woven creatively together with emotion, wisdom, poetry, literature, history, science, and light." --Tanya Riches, director of master of transformational development, Eastern College Australia

About the Author

Chris E.W. Green is professor of public theology at Southeastern University and director for St Anthony Institute of Theology, Philosophy, and Liturgics.
Steven Félix-Jägeris associate professor of theology and worship, chair of the worship and media department, and director of academic research at Life Pacific University.