{"id":7492,"date":"2016-03-01T08:58:46","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T13:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=7492"},"modified":"2016-03-01T08:58:46","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T13:58:46","slug":"church-without-the-sermon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=7492","title":{"rendered":"Church Without the Sermon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/STtz7ZhEC6U\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The hard-shell Baptist doctrine upon which I was raised plays very little part in my worldview these days. But that church music draws me still, and those singing conventions in my memory were its purest expression. <a href=\"http:\/\/bittersoutherner.com\/sacred-harp-let-everybody-sing#.VtWXCvkrK70\">Hundreds of voices coming together in rough harmony<\/a>, most all of them untrained except perhaps for a weeklong \u201csinging school\u201d at some church. No \u201cprogram\u201d to dictate the day\u2019s events. The \u201cpresident\u201d of the local singing convention would just call on a singer from the crowd to stand before the choir and lead the song of his or her choice. After a moment of hymnal browsing, you\u2019d hear something like, \u201cPlease turn to page 36 \u2026\u201d A piano player would roll through the first few bars of the song, and off they\u2019d go, making a joyful noise. You never knew what you would hear next.<\/p>\n<p>These Southern singing conventions thrived because the untrained singers, who had to sing from written music, could learn how through a technique called \u201csolf\u00e8ge,\u201d to use the music-school word for it. Plainer folks called it shape notes. You know the system. You\u2019ve heard it a thousand times.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe thing that I love about Sacred Harp is that when you walk into that church door, you have people from all different kinds of walks of life. You have people from different denominations, you&#8217;ve got people that are young, people that are old, people who have grown up loving the Lord their entire life, and you have people that do not know the Lord, who have rejected the Lord. Strong contrast, from any way you look at it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The hard-shell Baptist doctrine upon which I was raised plays very little part in my worldview these days. But that church music draws me still, and those singing conventions in my memory were its purest expression. Hundreds of voices coming together in rough harmony, most all of them untrained except perhaps for a weeklong \u201csinging &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=7492\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Church Without the Sermon<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[608,2458],"class_list":["post-7492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-religion","tag-culture","tag-sacred-harp"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}