The Music Wars - Part One

The next few posts will contain excerpts (from a variety of sources) that I have come across during my studies on the history of music in the church.   If nothing else, these posts should make us all more aware that this is not an issue that is unique to our generation; nor one that will soon, if ever, be resolved on this side of heaven.

Benjamin Keach (1604 – 1704) was a reformed Baptist Pastor. He was the pastor of a Baptist church in Horsley Down, Southwark (London, England) that later became Metropolitan Tabernacle, whose later pastors included John Gill and Charles Spurgeon. Benjamin Keach was one of the original participants and signers of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.

Although the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith states the following:
“…the acceptable way of Worshipping the true God, is instituted by himself; and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be Worshipped according to the imaginations, and devices of Men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations, or any other way, not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures,…”

Keach’s interpretation was different than others as to what the statement meant. Many church leaders and members at that time felt that only the Psalms should be sung. Meaning that only direct verses of Scripture could be sung,and not any man-made songs.

Somewhere between 1671 and 1673, Benjamin Keach lead his congregation in a hymn after the observance of the Lord’s Supper. This continued for almost twenty years. Just a hymn after the Lord’s Supper, then later a hymn on a Day of Thanksgiving. In 1690, Keach asked for a vote about allowing congregational hymn singing regularly. However it became a very heated meeting with several objectors. The vote to allow hymn singing did carry and a regular time of hymn singing was instituted after the sermon and prayer time. Some objected so much to this that they left after the sermon and prayer time. A few members objected so much that they split off and formed another church.

This resulted in a pamphlet war. Benjamin Keach arguing for restoring hymn singing as an “ordinance” of the church. Isaac Marlow, a church member, wrote against hymn singing in the church.

One of Keach’s arguments was that just because Catholics did allow hymn singing (by a choir in Latin) did not make it wrong to allow hymn singing. During the Protestant Reformation there were some who were so Anti-Catholic that if Catholics did it it must be wrong and thrown out. The battle that Keach fought has led to us being able to sing hymns and express ourselves in worship to our Lord. Keach wrote many hymns in his lifetime, often even writing a hymn to go with his message passage. However, his songs weren’t of a type that they were easily sung. Music tunes then were much different from what they are today. Isaac Watts was one of the first to write hymns in English for a congregation to sing. Without a study of church history we don’t appreciate how something as simple as singing a hymn was hard fought and won hundreds of years ago.

Author unknown