Make a Joyful Noise�Or Not | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Make a Joyful Noise�Or Not | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sharon King
10/07/07
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Worship was a noisy affair in the black Baptist church where I grew up in the 1950s. About mid-service, the “shouters” would start up. My grandmother’s cousin was one of them. These were the spiritual leaders of the church who “got happy,” shouted, and waved their arms when the spirit filled them. As a child, I thought these outbursts were contagious because once one shouter started, others would follow. Years later, I understood that my church members’ behavior was part of our cultural heritage as people of African descent. Shouts, chants, and physical gyrations were a requisite part of African spiritual rituals. Yet, emotive worship served another purpose for the people in my home church. We lived in a segregated society, at a time when discrimination was part of everyday life for African Americans. A rousing, joyful worship service was an opportunity for our church members to vent frustrations and acknowledge God’s sovereignty over the realities of the world they lived in.

Not everyone worshiped by shouting in my home church. Some, like my grandmother, just cried, folded their arms, and rocked side to side. These quiet worshipers sometimes looked askance at the shouters. “It don’t take all that,” was a common expression among those who preferred the quiet dignity of rocking and crying to the expressive displays of clapping and shouting. Another of my older cousins was a professional gospel singer and quite a shouter. According to accounts of family history, my pious grandmother was particularly embarrassed by the way our gospel-performing relative “shook herself” when she sang.

My family members co-existed peacefully, despite their disparate preferences for worship styles. This “hybrid” worship background characterized my attitudes toward church in my adult years. I was comfortable in either type of worship environment—lively or contemplative. I was surprised in some of my church connections to learn that people still equated worship style with spiritual authenticity—much like those in my home church years before. As a quiet worshiper in some livelier churches I attended, I was considered religiously suspect because I didn’t “feel” the spirit as others did. When I attended churches with more formal worship traditions, I was considered “over-emotional,” if I clapped during a gospel song or said amen after the preacher made a key point in a sermon.

As I grew older, I shrugged off this dichotomous perspective about what was “authentic” worship and what wasn’t. I eventually settled into a church environment that valued all styles of worship. For me, my family experiences were sufficient evidence that God is just glad to be in relationship with us and welcomes any approach we take to expressing our devotion to Him. God equally cherished my quiet, reverent grandmother and my shouting, gospel-singing cousins—as I know He cherishes the somewhere-in-between worshipers like me.

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