11 Reasons to Keep Screens out of the Sanctuary

Blogger Jonathan Aigner at the Ponder Anew blog this week posted a list of 11 reasons why churches should not use projection screens in their sanctuaries.

Several of these points tie back to earlier points in this blog:

• “5. Screens have hastened the decline in musicianship in the church. …  those of us who can read music are limited by not having access to it.” Even if people know the melody, as I noted almost seven years ago, the lack of a hymnal means the lack of musical harmony for all but the privileged members of the choir.
• “7. Screens open the door to theological disunity.  Denominational hymnals contain songs that are considered, examined, and vetted for adherence to their theological tradition. ” Or as I said in 2010:

• “This is also another reason why hymnals are important: a hymnal codifies a church’s doctrine and minimizes deviations from doctrine. It doesn’t matter whether the hymnal is photocopied, oversewn or a PDF: what matters is that it has been vetted the same as any other part of the liturgy. As Anglicans, we don’t allow just anything to be read as scripture or prayer, so of course the hymn selection should be put to the same test.”

• “8. Screens have cost us an awareness of our common hymnody. Printing songs in a hymnal gives them legitimacy and permanence, especially when they’ve been included in volumes for decades or even centuries. Even when we don’t sing them, they remain there, and we encounter them in the pages. … Before long, we may lose the best of our musical heritage completely, simply because nobody’s ever seen them, let alone thought of recording them.” This is exactly the point I’ve been making since the beginning of this blog, emphasizing the importance of timeless hymns that provide “continuity across generations and the centuries.”

Aigner (and others) have predicted the imminent decline of praise music, but I doubt that the persistent rants of a few of us traditionalist bloggers will be enough to turn back decades of CCM. Still, the same principles that cause baby boomers to reject music largely from the 15th through 20th centuries would presumably mean that each generation would reject the previous — thus rendering obsolete the music that the boomers fought so hard to bring into the church.