A FOOTNOTE ON THE ORGAN

That title strikes me as odd, and I am not sure why I chose it. Perhaps because I think enough has been said on the subject and that we need to say nothing more, except an occasional footnote. Maybe I am influenced by Alfred North Whitehead’s comment about what ‘philosophers have done with philosophy since Plato. “We have only added footnotes to Plato,” he said, which is compliment enough for the old Greek sage. Anyway, this is a footnote, whatever a footnote is.

I am impressed by a report from Palma Bennett of the Bay Area Christian Church in Houston, a new church, to the effect that they have quite a number from the Church of Christ and not so many Independents. This confirms what I find in Christian Churches over the country: nearly always a few that have come from non-instrument churches. It works the other way of course, for Christian Church folk often join our congregations. We have several in our Denton church. This is obviously the way it should be, with believers of the Restoration heritage moving about freely, with no lines drawn.

This raises the question of What difference does the organ make? It must make little or no difference to those who can move from a non-instrument church to one where there is an organ. It would only be an educated guess as to how many Church of Christ folk could adjust themselves to that kind of change, provided they were pleased with the church on all other counts. Some years ago arch-conservative Guy N. Woods, now an editor of the Gospel Advocate, estimated that a large percentage of our folk have no real objection to instrumental music. Perhaps he based this upon some survey. He was lamenting over the signs of digression among us and this was one.

My own guess would be that at least two-thirds of those in Churches of Christ could without great difficulty adjust themselves to membership in a Christian Church, provided the church was attractive to them otherwise, such as having strong Biblical preaching and an effective Sunday School. No more than one-third of our people would let instrumental music stand in their way. That’s my estimate, based on a lot of personal contact. While I do not recall exactly, brother Wood’s figures were something like that. They were high enough to be lamentable!

I am neither rejoicing or lamenting, for I could not care less about the organ. In terms of fellowship and inter-church relations it is to me a non-issue. And I am persuaded that the majority of Church of Christ people feel as I do about it. But I am pleased that our people in Christian Churches and Churches of Christ can move freely and lovingly from one church to another. It is a fact that generally speaking the only difference between the two churches is instrumental music.

These facts should cause our ardent anti-instrumentalists, who will not fellowship the Christian Church folk because of this matter, to do some hard thinking. If the instrument is so obviously a sin --- like drunkenness or lying --- why would so many among Churches of Christ view it so indifferently, especially after being taught against it all their lives? It is clear that a lot of our folk simply aren’t buying the old line. Do the ardent anti’s really believe this is a sign of apostasy on the part of our people, or is there something wrong with the argument that instrumental music is necessarily sinful?

I will include a prophecy in this footnote - “Prophecy About Instrumental Music” might have been a better title! While the Churches of Christ will always be acappella (for the foreseeable future), they will gradually move to a semi-instrumental practice. The instrument will be used more and more in “non-worship” settings - weddings, special programs, even in Sunday School. Once we have it in Sunday School, we will have gone full circle, for that’s where we were when we first objected to it. When Church of Christ historians tell of how J. W. McGarvey kept the organ out of the old Broadway church in Lexington for a generation and finally left when it was brought in, they neglect to point out that McGarvey always approved of the instrument for Sunday School. So McGarvey’s old Broadway “non-instrument” church was actually semi-instrumental, for they had two pianos going in Sunday School.

That is going to be bad news at places like Freed-Hardeman College where McGarvey is a hero. I hope I don’t cause the old boy to be withdrawn from posthumously.

That is my prophecy. We will eventually be semi-instrumentalists, with our kids getting married in our chapels with an organ and our youngsters using the piano in Sunday School.

In fact we are already “semi’s” (it might eventually become a label!) in our Denton congregation. At Christmas we were entertained by the little kids in a beautiful singing bee, with the piano (which is used by our day school, not in our “worship”). They could not have done the program without instrumentation. A funny thing, no one said the first word about the use of the piano. No one apparently gave it a thought.

There are two reasons why the instrument will never be used in congregational worship, perhaps three, and the scripturalness of it is not one of them. First, the instrument is not needed in the kind of singing we do, acappella singing being completely acceptable in and out of the church; second, a church can be as modern and fashionable as any other church without an instrument, as our people have proved; third, a century of tradition will keep us acappella unless there is a compelling reason to change, and there are no compelling reasons on the horizon, except those referred to, which will make us semi-instrumentalists.

Some of you younger ones can check this out in another quarter century or so, and if Churches of Christ do not have marriage chapels with organs in them, then you’ll know that I was a better editor than a prophet! --- the Editor.