Carl Trueman on THE Problem with "Contemporary Worship"

(image@thegospelcoalition.org)

Over at First Things, Westminster Seminary Church Historian Carl Trueman has written a spot-on piece about what is wrong with the "praise band"-oriented "worship" that so characterizes most of contemporay "evangelicalism." Simply put, it is the well-nigh eradication of the tragic dimension of human existence lived in the constant shadow of death. The very element that makes the works of Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy so trenchant, that gives the blues and Gustav Mahler's symphonies their compelling power—indeed, the very element that grounds the biblical lament pslams in the world as it is—has all been ignored in the quest to put an artificial "smiley face" on the vicissitudes of life. Read, reflect, and work to eradicate the bastard triumphalism that has so marred the church's public face.