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How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry

christiandailyjournal.com

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Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry

#71

Post by jenebzix »

parski wrote: post #21
whatthesmack wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind elaborating? I personally enjoy the music Hillsong puts out, but am always curious about the inner workings of an organization such as theirs.

Yes, please elaborate.

Cult activities — they teach exclusion and isolation of their members against non-subscribers. Submission of financial independence of members, they must actually tithe of 10% their wage to the cult and this is actually audited by them; they hate the LGBT community (they are hateful anti-gay cult); tax free status, they make big dollars from victims and pay nothing toward society. Evil scum.

Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry

#72

Post by camelNotation »

JshWright wrote: post #47
camelNotation wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very modern perspective, not necessarily consistent with Christian theology at all. The notion that people in the ancient world or simply older people today enjoy church music out of preference seems to ignore the fact that street music and folk music were NEVER comparable to church music. The idea behind unique liturgical music was that the structure of the music itself revealed something about the nature o…

As with all things, this is complicated, and your description is only one facet of the history of music in the church. For instance, a major component of the Protestant Reformation was encouraging congregational singing, and (particularly Calvanist) church composers of the era brought the music of the church much closer to the contemporary "popular" music of the day.

The Protestant Reformation is exclusively a modern project. When I use the word ancient, I truly mean old. Much older than the high Middle Ages.

Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry

#73

Post by JshWright »

camelNotation wrote: post #72
JshWright wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with all things, this is complicated, and your description is only one facet of the history of music in the church. For instance, a major component of the Protestant Reformation was encouraging congregational singing, and (particularly Calvanist) church composers of the era brought the music of the church much closer to the contemporary "popular" music of the day.

The Protestant Reformation is exclusively a modern project. When I use the word ancient, I truly mean old. Much older than the high Middle Ages.

Given the fact that the Protestant Reformation encompasses roughly a quarter of the lifespan of the Christian church, I'm not sure it's fair to call it "exclusively modern".

Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry

#74

Post by exabrial »

barrow-rider wrote: post #31

"You're not making Christianity better, you're just making rock and roll worse" -H. Hill. https://i.redd.it/5iqvu91yz0ly.jpg

I laughed, but try playing the guitar solo in Drop-D from the track _Wonder_ for 10m while the preacher gets excited and leads an extended prayer :D Holy hand cramps batman

Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry

#75

Post by camelNotation »

weberc2 wrote: post #32
camelNotation wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very modern perspective, not necessarily consistent with Christian theology at all. The notion that people in the ancient world or simply older people today enjoy church music out of preference seems to ignore the fact that street music and folk music were NEVER comparable to church music. The idea behind unique liturgical music was that the structure of the music itself revealed something about the nature o…

How is that inconsistent with Christian theology? Theology is diverse and different schools hold different, often contradictory views on any given topic. Usually what is called “Christian theology” is that for which there is a general consensus among theologians, and I’m unaware of any such consensus on this particular subject.

In the year 2018, Christian theology is almost infinitely diverse, but it wasn't always so. That diversity is very modern. For the vast majority of Christian history, the sacramental role of music in Christianity was essentially a universal given. It wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that anyone even considered divorcing music from sacramental theology and it wasn't until the mid-20th century that the idea of church music as a matter of preference even arose. To speak authoritatively of "Christian theology" in the context of music in any meaningful sense, a "vote" needs to be given to every generation of Christians, not just the current one. And in that sense, there really is a consensus.

Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry

#76

Post by camelNotation »

JshWright wrote: post #73
camelNotation wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Protestant Reformation is exclusively a modern project. When I use the word ancient, I truly mean old. Much older than the high Middle Ages.

Given the fact that the Protestant Reformation encompasses roughly a quarter of the lifespan of the Christian church, I'm not sure it's fair to call it "exclusively modern".

Timespan is not as important as the shared perspective that defines modern religious thought, but even if it were, 25% is still far from a majority and, at least for most of that timeframe, Protestants were a small minority of Christians in the world (and they still are a minority).

Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry

#77

Post by rjmunro »

explorigin wrote: post #19
wbl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a Christian, but I feel like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ffg4mU7FNE&t=2s is far more divine sounding then someone with a guitar as in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io2WOQ-3aVs . Sadly my faith tradition is stuck with Debbie Freedman.

It's all about culture. If you were influenced by a high-church growing up, you're more likely appreciate hymns. People that converted without a high-church context gravitate toward a more modern style of worship. The downside of so much hillsong influence is that it dominates a culture and drowns out other modern styles. I feel like all hillsong songs sound the same.

I think that to people who haven't spent serious time listening to it, all organ/choral music "sounds the same".

Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry

#79

Post by netcan »

thrmsforbfast wrote: post #60
netcan wrote: post #45

I went to a few Hillsong events about 10 years ago, when the church was becoming very obvious cultural influence Australia-wide. There is a lot that's very entrepreneurial about this church. They also started Gloria Jean's, a big, international Starbucks competitor. Like the music stuff, this had to do with youth culture and creating social aspects to the movement. In Australia a lot of people called the denomination…

> just because they've been "making things happen". Actually, my biggest fear about Christianity in the USA today is that it's NOT "making things happen" Or, perhaps more accurately, the things that it's making happen are businesses. The mainline congregations and Catholics of the 19th and early-mid 20th centuries made serious contributions to: 1. Education. In addition to the obvious middle and high schools, they st…

I am looking at this as an outsider. I'm European, and even though charismatic churches are global, their history is american.

Anyway... I see your point. It's true.

But, you need to remember that american catholic and "mainline protestant" churches mostly descend from a state religion origin. The american revolution's secularism totally changed the role of the church. The church-state seperation (which is still very partial in most of europe) basically took away their roles in these capacities.

In europe, these churches were (and still are) recipients of tax/public funds (whether direct, formal or indirect) and providers of public services.

Churches often ran the health systems, school systems, orphanages, mother-infant homes, poorhouses and such. They also had/have much more formal, power wielding roles as community leaders, representatives.

Re: How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry

#80

Post by Balgair »

mysterydip wrote: post #67
thrmsforbfast wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just because they've been "making things happen". Actually, my biggest fear about Christianity in the USA today is that it's NOT "making things happen" Or, perhaps more accurately, the things that it's making happen are businesses. The mainline congregations and Catholics of the 19th and early-mid 20th centuries made serious contributions to: 1. Education. In addition to the obvious middle and high schools, they st…

Agreed. When I moved into a new area and was "church hunting", one of my stops was the largest church in the area, with multiple satellite campuses. I realized why it was so popular: every Sunday was a big production. People were going to be entertained, not engaged. There's definitely a continuum, though. There are small churches doing the traditional thing just as there's megachurches doing God, Inc. The church I a…

Semi-related: How are the scout troops out of those two types of churches? Is there a big difference between the mega and the regular church sponsored scout troops? We're starting to look for a good one and would love to know what to look out for, if anything.
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