Liberating Congregational Singing: A Critical Engagement with Hymns, Songs, and Congregational Singing Practices Using Postcolonial, Decolonial, and Liberating Perspectives

• Main Author: Whitla, Becca
• Other Authors: Kervin, William, Pastoral
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Subjects: Liturgical theology; Practical theology; Decolonial; Postcolonial; Congregational Song; Church Music; Liberation Theology; Latina/o Theology; Singing; Choral Music; Victorian Hymnody; Hymnody; 0469; 0413; Canada; Fuller; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/99726

Drawing upon liberationist, postcolonial, and decolonial scholarship, this thesis interrogates the colonizing forces in Western European and Anglo North Atlantic congregational singing. It is undertaken in the context of recent scholarly discourses on hymnody which have begun to uncover eurocentrism in the study of music and entails an interdisciplinary engagement with the hymnic (congregational song) inheritance of historic mainline Protestant churches in Canada, focusing on the United and Anglican churches of Canada, as well as with congregational singing and song leading practices in those traditions. It also shows how congregational singing can embody a liberating praxis by fostering an opening up to traditions from the Global South and those marginalized in the Global North, along with carefully reclaimed elements of this hymnody. The study’s praxical approach privileges processes of identification and contextualization because they allow us to understand how identities, relationships, and ecclesial (church) and social contexts are conditioned by and implicated in the history of colonialism in Canada. As such, engaging decolonial thinking is a key strategy for interrogating, undoing, and identifying the coloniality lurking in hymnody. By reckoning with the complex histories of mainline denominational contexts and examining hymns from those contexts, the nineteenth century roots of hymnic canons from the peak of the British Empire are exposed and a coloniality in text and music—musicoloniality—is unmasked. Colonial hymns can also be reconfigured, or flipped, by the communities that sing them becoming expressions of forbearance, hope, and resistance. At the same time, hymns and ritual practices from the Global South offer liberating possibilities. An examination of marginalized communities has something to teach the mainstream. Through an analysis of the practices in two Toronto community settings, an Anglican congregation and a choir of Jamaican Canadian hotel workers, the possibilities and the limitations of decolonial thinking, particularly border thinking/singing, are illuminated. Inspired by liberationist theologies, especially Latin American Liberation and Latina/o theologies, the dissertation concludes by proposing initial principles for a liberating liturgical theology. Congregational singing can be both embodied and liberating, nourishing fuller expressions of complex cultural identities in present-day churches in Canada. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)