The issue has been debated for centuries: Does music add to worship or detract?

WICHITA, Kan. – The orchestra was deep into Handel’s “Concerto in B-flat Major,” filling the church I was visiting here with powerful, moving sounds. I noticed a toddler standing on his mother’s lap in the first row of pews, swaying to the sounds. Even though the 18-member orchestra and the organ were still playing, he started applauding. The child was too young to understand his actions in this way, but they seemed to me to be a profound act of worship.

“One of the functions of worship music is delight,” says the Rev. Edward Foley, professor of liturgy and music at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

Clearly this child was delighted. At the same time, his applause – and later his squeals – demonstrated an ancient worry about the uses of music in religious services: Is music a pure, joyful noise offered to God or can it be a controlling device that merely engages our emotions at the expense of our minds?

“Music can be manipulative,” says Terry W. York, associate professor of Christian Ministry and Church Music at the George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. For instance, he notes that “there’s an entire science called music therapy.”

More than 1,500 years ago, St. Augustine worried about exactly that. After a long description of the pros and cons of music in worship, he wrote: “Thus do I waver between the danger of sensual pleasure and wholesome experience.”

Over the centuries, the role of music in religion has varied widely. Even within individual religions today it’s possible to find conflicting views. Some Protestant sects, for instance, forbid the use of instrumental music in worship, while others – such as the Protestant church in Wichita I attended – rely on instruments to enhance worship.

“Whether or not music would be used in Christian worship was hotly debated for centuries,” says Thomas H. Troeger, a marvelous hymn writer who is also dean of academic affairs at Illif School of Theology in Denver.

“The great breakthrough,” he says, “was when the Christian church started drawing upon Greek philosophers. One they drew upon was Pythagoras. He argued that the spheres of heaven made music, and when we sing in harmony with the spheres, it puts us in harmony with the divine. I cannot overstate the importance of this argument.”

The differences of opinion Troeger describes are easy to see in the origins of Protestantism. For instance, Martin Luther, who started the Reformation, once said that “next to the word of God, music deserves the highest praise.”

But his contemporary reformer, John Calvin, believed that only Psalms should be sung in church. Another famous reformer of the time, Ulrich Zwingli, was an excellent musician but wanted music only outside of church, not in worship.

One of the worries then is still a worry – “that religion is all about entertainment,” as Foley puts it.

Most of Judaism and Christianity employ music in worship in various ways, though not without occasional reminders that the idea is to praise God, not just to entertain the congregation. Traditional Islam, by contrast, avoids music in worship, though sometimes the five daily calls to prayer and even the reading of the Quran can sound like song. As American University Professor Akbar S. Ahmed says, “Orthodox Abrahamic faiths discourage the use of music in worship because music is often associated with pagan rituals.”

But when Islam has come to different regions over the centuries, it has adapted, says Ahmed, author of “Discovering Islam: Making Sense of Muslim History and Society.” “The most dramatic example is from India 1,000 years ago, where Hindu devotional songs influenced Islam to the point where Muslim poets write verses in honor of God and the prophet (Muhammad). These are called Qawali. Qawali singers in south Asia are as big as the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.”

Balancing emotion and intellect in worship is always difficult, says York, author of “America’s Worship Wars,” because “worship at its best is a very deep emotional expression. And there are some of those emotions that can’t be expressed with words alone.” In some of those cases, he says, “we add music to it. When our singing doesn’t do it, we move to prayer. The highest level in expressing our emotions is silence.”

In a prayer offered at the worship service I attended here in Wichita, a pastor gave thanks for the “beauty and majesty of the music.”

That’s my position. For me, music in worship a right-brained way of offering the message that the sermon delivers in a left-brained way. Maybe I’m slow, but I need both. I just wish I were as uninhibited as the little kid cheering and clapping in the front pew.

Bill Tammeus is a columnist for The Kansas City Star.