Word: secularized
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...music, thinks the professor, has infiltrated the Protestant service from start to finish: "The organists play pieces either transcribed literally from secular sources or written in imitation of them. . . . The congregational hymns in widest use recall the rhythms of the beer garden and the dance pavilion. . . . Most of the choir anthems and canticles are the grandchildren of French opera, piano pieces and military marches...
...foreign language; one person in a hundred knows its grammar and syntax, not one in a thousand knows its esthetics." Good church music, the professor believes, besides being written by the best composers, must either: 1) be set in a musical style that does not sound at all like secular music (i.e., the unaccompanied Gregorian chants-still sung in many a Catholic and Anglican church); or 2) have its secular elements "assimilated and purged of their worldly connotations" (i.e., the cantatas, Passions and organ works of Bach...
Money. As Government and secular agencies have been taking on more & more of the burden of social welfare, church expenditures in this field have been going down. Despite a rise in consumer income of $10 billion between 1929 and 1941, contributions to churches and social welfare institutions dropped from $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion. And to churches "families at the lowest income levels contributed more generously than those at the highest...
...study of the religious classics . . . in the regular literature program [should be expanded]. . . . The Bible is second to none among the books that have influenced the thought and ideals of the Western world. [It deserves study] conducted with at least as much respect as is given to the great secular classics, and devoid of arbitrary interpretations to the same extent...
...same is true of the movies. People love to see people get by with, get paid for, the very sins they do in secret. The secular press and the movies are doing more to hasten the downfall of America through moral bankruptcy and spiritual blackout than all other agencies of hell combined...