Where Can We Find Non-Western Worship Songs?

In a recent Gospel Coalition article, Trevin Wax highlights a big problem with modern worship songs —they're too Western. Having attended the Fourth Lausanne Congress for World Evangelization in South Korea — the largest gathering of global evangelicals in history — he was left with a lingering concern that "the globalization of worship music has largely meant the Westernization of worship".

Churches in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Australia compose and record songs, which are then translated and sung around the world ... But what happens if most of the songs sung in a Romanian or Brazilian or Ghanaian congregation are translations of Western works? Might something beautiful be lost?

Where Can We Find a Canon of Songs?

Wax has written before about the importance of a church developing a “canon” of songs. I think he's on to something. We have the canon of Scripture — 66 books. If only we also had a canon of songs. If only one of those 66 books had been a Spirit-inspired and divinely-collated collection of hymns, it would make everything so much easier.

Instead, we are left having to write our own (although the question of who might be qualified to do so is rarely discussed).

Where Can We Find Truly Catholic Songs?

Wax highlights another problem. Much worship music isn't simply too Western, it's too modern. He calls us to sing songs that display to our congregations that we belong to a people spanning not only geography, but generations. In his earlier article, he laments the fact that average lifespan of a worship song has dropped from 10-12 years to three or four. (That's 10-12 years back in the good old days — not centuries).

Once again, I couldn't agree more. I've long felt that the practice of including the date a hymn was written — or the years in which its author lived — flags up something problematic every time we open a hymnal. Rock of Ages, written in 1776, would be on the older end of the scale in most hymn books. And yet there in front of us is a reminder that the church existed for almost eighteen centuries without anyone ever singing it. (And much longer if we think of the church beginning in Eden rather than at Pentecost).

Wax calls for worship songs that reflect that church's catholicity:

When we add contemporary songs from believers in other lands, and when we tell their stories, we can better sense our connection to the church that transcends our nation. We show in song what we confess in the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.”

And yet are we really being catholic (in the sense of universal) Christians if we're singing songs that no-one at Nicea had ever sung? Could it be that any worship song we write today will be inherently sectarian, cutting ourselves from everyone else in the history of the church?

Come to think of it, Martin Luther did mention a book of songs that "holds you to the communion of the saints and away from the sects". A songbook which "teaches you in joy, fear, hope, and sorrow to think and speak as all the saints have thought and spoken". In fact Luther said that this songbook contained "better and finer hymns" than any "worthless and wretched poetry" he himself could come up with. It would seem, however, that such a book has since been lost. [1]

Where Can We Find Songs That Persecuted Believers Have Sung?

According to Wax, one of the benefits of widening our repertoire would be that "American believers could worship with the words that sustained persecuted Christians in Eastern Europe".

It certainly would be a powerful thing to sing words we knew had sustained persecuted Christians. I guess if I had my choice I would choose songs that had first sustained my Saviour— and then, as a result, sustained persecuted believers elsewhere. Songs that had first strengthened the Head, and so could be guaranteed to strengthen the Body.

Certainly it would be powerful to be able to sing from a canon of songs, knowing that "many [were] born from suffering". If we had such a canon in Scripture, written by a man we knew had suffered deeply — and if Someone descended from him had taken those songs on his lips at the most significant moment in history — it might be even more powerful.

Who Can Write Songs That Apply to Every Believer?

My only real disagreement with Wax's article is when he commends songs composed by Romanians because they "express a distinctly Romanian reliance on God". This seems at odds with the Apostle's insistence that "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). As a Northern Irishman, do I need to be able to sing songs which express a distinctly Northern Irish reliance on God? A distinctly British reliance on God? A distinctly Western reliance on God?

Wax's general point is solid though. Unless we are inspired — in the sense that the authors of Scripture were — it will surely be hard to write songs which aren't in some way limited by our background, etc. For example, who in the affluent churches of the West is writing imprecatory songs today? Who is writing songs that ask questions of God? Yet those in other parts of the world will have their own blind spots too.

Probably the ideal solution would be songs breathed out by the Holy Spirit, and on the same level as Scripture itself. Then we would know that they would be relevant to every believer. They would still have a human element — in the sense that God would have shaped the human author in such a way that they would write what he wanted them to write — but we could be confident that they were untainted by human sin and shortsightedness.

The Search Goes On

Wax highlights a pressing problem, but I'm not sure what the solution might be.
In short we need a canon of songs, many of which are written from a context of suffering, but not restricted by the geographical limitations inherent to us as human beings. The songs would also need to connect us, as Wax puts it in his previous article, to "our forefathers and mothers in the faith". These songs would need to have been written at least 10-12 years ago, but preferably date back centuries. Given that the faith wasn't invented in the 18th, 19th or 20th centuries, they would ideally would be songs which could have been sung at the councils of Nicea (325), Constantinople (381) and Ephesus (431), as well as by the Reformers, Puritans and Covenanters. That's probably already too much to ask, but if they could also have been sung by Jesus and the Apostles, it would be the icing on the cake.

The global church is in pressing need of such songs. If only such a canon existed. The search goes on.

[1] Luther's Works, 35:256-7; 13:351.