Church Music as a Genre

One point that I think has been overlooked in the so called "worship wars" is the fact that church music is a musical genre. Usually I wouldn't be keen on such categories as they tend to be arbitrary labels used for marketing purposes. (In that sense the genre called "classical music" is misleading because it includes everything from Gregorian Chant to Johann Strauss Jr to Stravinsky. You couldn't get any more diverse.) But for the purpose of this discussion and the greater effort to reform worship in our time the genre/category called church music deserves its own consideration.

The problem with church music in general is that it has lost some of its own distinctives that make it church music. A number of unhealthy assumptions have lead to this including gnosticism, pragmatism, and pluralism. Church music fails to be distinct from popular music and folk music. In some cases it has failed to be distinct from classical music.