Christian Sacred Music in the Americas

Christian Sacred Music in the Americas explores the richness of Christian musical traditions and reflects the distinctive critical perspectives of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music. This volume, edited by Andrew Shenton and Joanna Smolko, is a follow-up to SCSM's Exploring Christian Song and offers a cross-section of the most current and outstanding scholarship from an international array of writers.
The essays survey a broad geographical area and demonstrate the enormous diversity of music-making and scholarship within that area. Contributors utilize interdisciplinary methodologies including media studies, cultural studies, theological studies, and different analytical and ethnographical approaches to music. While there are some studies that focus on a single country, musical figure, or region, this is the first collection to represent the vast range of sacred music in the Americas and the different approaches to studying them in context.

Andrew Shenton is professor of music at Boston University. His research areas include music and transcendence, humor and religion, performance practice, and theology and the arts.
Joanna Smolko is an instructor at the University of Georgia. Her research areas include American popular music from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, American sacred music, American folk music, and film music.

Introduction: Exploring Christian Sacred Music in the Americas
Andrew Shenton and Joanna Smolko
 
I. Liturgical Music
 
1. Liberation Theology: Affirmation and Homage in Three Brazilian Popular Masses
Cathy Ann Elias
 
2. The Guatemalan Choirbooks: Facilitating Preservation, Performance, and Study of the Colonial Repertoire
Martha Thomae
 
II. Hymnology
 
3. Sweet Harmonies of Praise: Reviving Shape Note Singing in Rural Arkansas
Andrew Granade
 
4. Hymns of Joyful Praise: Sacred Harp Singing in Athens, Georgia
Joanna Smolko
 
5. The Hymn Tunes of Thomas Hastings
David W. Music
 
III. Contemporary Worship
 
6. 'Evangélico e Brasileiro': Brazil's Alternative Christian Music Scene
Marcell Silva Steuernagel
 
7. Ethics, Justice, and Politics in Contemporary Worship Music
Jeff R. Warren
 
IV. Paraliturgical Music
 
8. 'Resignation' and Virgil Thomson's Hymns from the Old South
Zen Kuriyama
 
9. "Rock of Ages: Images of Jesus in Popular Music."
Delvyn Case
 
V. Diasporic Musi