John MacArthur wrote a great article about this a couple of years ago. He drew a distinction between "old hymns" and "spirituals" or "gospel songs."
In a nutshell, he said that the old hymns (meaning, generally written before 1900) were full of powerful language and sound doctrine.
Spiritual songs (gospel songs, etc. roughly from 1900-1950ish) were sound, but much lighter and fluffier.
And contemporary music was mindless, rather inane, and more designed to illicit an emotional response from the hearer, than anything else.
Great post. I love that Stuart Townsend song. My 20 year old son Lucas has led worship off and on the past couple of years and has learned many "contemporary" worship songs. He prefers the "meatier" ones like Townsend's. Chris Tomlin also writes some meaty ones like "How Great is Our God".
There was a cartoon a couple of years ago that showed the Pearly Gates of Heaven and a traffic sign that showed, "traditional" with an arrow leading left and "contemporary" with an arrow leading right.
In studying the history of Christian music, Lucas found the great hymn writer Isaac Watts (1674-174
, who wrote over 600 hymns including "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross", was chastised by his father for using "worldly" melodies (like popular tavern songs of the day) for his hymns.
Commenting by HaloScan
