Category Archives: Songs Without Notes: A Meandering History

From the comments: Bob wrote, Put another way, edification is sacramental as well. Exactly. In fact, I’d add “… and especially.” The common definition of a sacrament accepted by the Reformed and Roman Churches is that of an outward and … Continue reading →

Rant In many Churches of Christ, the kinds with “worship leaders” rather than “song leaders,” we’ve rejected hymnals altogether, replacing them with projection of the lyrics on a screen (actually, a very good idea) backed by a waterfall scene. For a … Continue reading →

Restoration Movement The Restoration Movement is the product the merger of two earlier movements, one founded by (among others) Barton W. Stone in Illinois and one founded by Thomas Campbell in western Pennsylvania. Both men were defrocked Presbyterian ministers, expelled … Continue reading →

Isaac Watts In the early 18th Century, Isaac Watts began writing hymns by either arranging Psalms to have meter and rhyme or, in a revolution of doctrine and practice, composing entirely original hymns. Although the Lutherans had been composing hymns … Continue reading →

The Calvinist Regulative Principle of Worship In Switzerland, unlike Luther’s Germany, the Reformation went an entirely different direction. In Zurich, Ulrich Zwingli adopted the Regulative Principle of Worship, arguing that we may only do that which has been authorized by express … Continue reading →

The early church sang hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs. Commentators don’t even know for sure whether these were words for different things or essentially synonyms. We don’t know much about how the early church sang. We have an entire book … Continue reading →