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“If participation in church is a choice rather than a social default, how are vibrant congregations optimizing music to create connections?”
— Dr. Deborah Justice

(White)Washing Our Sins Away

American Mainline Churches, Music, Power, and Diversity

https://sunypress.edu/Books/9/White-Washing-Our-Sins-Away

Workshops and Consultation to optimize your worship

Analyzes how White American mainline Protestants used the internal musical controversies of the turn-of-the-millennium Worship Wars to negotiate their shifting position within the nation's diversifying religious and sociopolitical ecosystems.

What if simply changing musical styles could resurrect social power and religious vitality? By the early 1990s, Christianity was losing ground nationally, and mainline Protestants were trending even Whiter and older than America's overall demographic trajectory. The churches knew they needed to diversify. Yet, many mainline churches focused their energies on the so-called Worship Wars, intense aesthetic and theological controversies running through much of White Christian America. Historically, churches had only supported one musical style; now, many mainline Protestant congregations were willing to risk internal schism to support both Contemporary worship—centered around guitars, praise bands, and choruses—and Traditional worship with its pipe organs, chancel choirs, and hymns. Surely, they thought, musical diversity would broadcast tolerance and bring in new members—perhaps it would even help them regain their historically central role in American society. Based on years of ethnographic research, (White)Washing Our Sins Away explores how American mainline Protestants used internal musical controversies to negotiate their shifting position within the nation's diversifying religious and sociopolitical ecosystems.

 

workshops & consultation

How can music help you?

  • is growth an Aspirational goal or reality in your faith community and personal practice?

  • how can music impact social and sacred identities?

For the last 20 years, Dr. Deborah Justice has been studying how people use sound to make sense of their worlds. She can help you understand the musical choices you are making, as well as take actions to optimize potential outcomes.

Dr. Justice has presented ideas from her new book, (White)Washing Our Sins Away, at:

  • The Yale Institute of Sacred Music

  • The Julliard School

  • Syracuse University

  • Indiana University

  • Wesleyan University

  • Amherst College

  • The Society for Ethnomusicology

  • The American Musicological Society

  • International Associaltion for the Study of Popular Music

  • First Presbyterian Church, Ithaca, NY

  • Dutch Neck Presbyterian Church, Princeton Junction, NJ

Dr. Justice is an ethnomusicologist and musician. Critical questions arising from her own music-making led her to study how people use music to make sense of the social worlds around them. As a result, her research draws on interdisciplinary scholarship—from ethnomusicology and sociology to media studies and architecture—to interrogate constructs of “American-ness” and ethnicity by investigating the changing musical, spiritual, and demographic borders of communities. Her work has been featured in The Oxford Handbook of Music and World Christianities, Routledge Press’ Congregational Music Studies series, collections in cultural geography from Springer Press, The Yearbook for Traditional Music, as well as other peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations. Justice has taught at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Syracuse University, and Wesleyan University.

 
“Workshops and consultations to help your congregation explore how its sonic, social, and sacred identities are entwined. ”

Ultimately, (White)Washing Our Sins Away offers an excellent account of musical identity formation and its significance for spiritual experience. Its detailed parsing of the ways in which musical practice had unexpected consequences for congregational identity demonstrates how important music is to the study of religion. It pinpoints the tensions within mainline Protestantism’s identity in an era of numeric decline. The book is honest in its grappling with the way in which racist legacies continue to inform the communities, both religious and academic, to which Justice is committed. This honesty lays the groundwork for further critical engagement with both ethnography and mainline Protestantism.

Dirk von der Horst, Mount St. Mary’s University, Los Angeles, published in “Reading Religion,” a review publication by the American Association of Religion


take action

SINGLE SESSION: In one session, Dr. Justice will introduce basic elements about sonic (musical), social, and sacred identities. She will help you have interactive conversations about how music and worship are experienced in your congregation. Specific questions include:

—What role has music played in the history of your congregation?

—What have the major issues facing your church been and what are those today?

—How can musical choices make your faith community more vibrant and impactful?

  • Ideal for a single Sunday School class or Adult Education session.

  • While reading Dr. Justice’s book (White)Washing Our Sins Away would be ideal, the ideas in the book can form the basis of this session.

MULTIPLE SESSIONS: Dr. Justice helps participants have deep discussions about their musical values and choices. Tailored to your congregations needs.

—What role has music played in the history of your congregation? How does that look when future-facing?

—What have the major issues facing your church been? What are those issues today?

—How can musical choices make your faith community more vibrant and impactful?

—How do your specific personal realities relate to national trends, historical trajectories, and congregational goals?

  • For these sessions,Dr. Justice will suggest sections of (White)Washing to read to help ground conversations.

iN-DEPTH BOOK DISCUSSION: Single or multiple sessions. Ideal for Sunday School classes and book discussion groups. A full, interative conversation of (White)Washing Our Sins Away with Dr. Justice. Working with the book materials helps participants take a closer look at how the sonic, social, and sacred arenas relate to the experience of worship.

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Teaching

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Scholarship and CV

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Concert Management

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University Teaching Feedback

“Class this semester was great and if you are teaching another class next semester, I want to know! I really enjoyed everything this semester and it was really fun”
— undergraduate non-major student
“I enjoyed the hands on experience we had through each subject whether it be musical examples, outside guest, interactive activities and group work. The instructor had a very good knowledge of the material of each religion and religious themes discussed. She is very eager to teach and makes the discussions interesting.”
— undergraduate music and religion student
“it was cool because (being a music producer myself) I actually felt like country music was able—to my surprise—to contextualize so many important events on a side of/century of the recording industry that I never really studied in my major or paid much attention to before thanks again for helping me...really take something away from your class.”
— music industry student
“I liked the actual analysis of music and history of actual songs/examples....Eye-opening. Never really looked at music like that.”
— undergraduate non-major student
“After taking this course... I know how to find the information I need. And it helped broaden my mind when I was practicing.”
— graduate performance student
“Dr. Justice has a passion for the material and is engaging.”
— undergraduate music history student
“I actually really enjoyed this project. The format ...[of tracing a theme over a century] honestly made me feel like i was in a time machine. I learned a lot more about events that shaped sound engineering from a different side of what I’m used to!”
— music industry student
“My professor is very straight-forward and passionate about what she teaches....I liked the variety of subjects we learned. I can’t really think of any changes [I would make to the course].”
— undergraduate music history student
“Even though this class is in a 3-hour time slot, Dr. Justice keeps it interesting!”
— graduate music education student
“Dr. Justice is very knowledgeable about the history of American music. She is able to communicate her knowledge to students in an interesting way that made it fun to learn.”
— undergraduate History of American music student
“Thanks for being an actually engaging professor... It was always a great time!”
— undergraduate student
“Great Professor! Takes The time to create assignments and make sure they are relate-able and instructional”
— undergraduate student
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“We will definitely be attending more events on the Cornell Concert Series!”
— Martha Pollack, President, Cornell University

The flagship performance series of the university, Cornell Concert Series has been hosting musicians and ensembles of international stature since 1903. We present great traditions from across the world, ranging from Western classical to jazz to Indian to taiko to American roots.

See more at www.cornellconcertseries.com

As the managing director of the Cornell Concert Series, I am responsible for programming choices, finances, and public education and outreach. In the past 5 years, we have had over 20,000 ticket holders at our concerts. As a dedicated educator, I have pushed us to be more creative in reaching our to students and to win more grant funding in order to develop more robust engagement opportunities for students, community members, and artists. Under my guidance, in 5 years, we have won over $70,000 in funding from internal and external sources. This fundraising has helped support more than 2,000 students and community members having in-person interactions with our artists.

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New Book

Analyzes how White American mainline Protestants used the internal musical controversies of the turn-of-the-millennium Worship Wars to negotiate their shifting position within the nation's diversifying religious and sociopolitical ecosystems.

What if simply changing musical styles could resurrect social power and religious vitality? By the early 1990s, Christianity was losing ground nationally, and mainline Protestants were trending even Whiter and older than America's overall demographic trajectory. The churches knew they needed to diversify. Yet, many mainline churches focused their energies on the so-called Worship Wars, intense aesthetic and theological controversies running through much of White Christian America. Historically, churches had only supported one musical style; now, many mainline Protestant congregations were willing to risk internal schism to support both Contemporary worship—centered around guitars, praise bands, and choruses—and Traditional worship with its pipe organs, chancel choirs, and hymns. Surely, they thought, musical diversity would broadcast tolerance and bring in new members—perhaps it would even help them regain their historically central role in American society. Based on years of ethnographic research, (White)Washing Our Sins Away explores how American mainline Protestants used internal musical controversies to negotiate their shifting position within the nation's diversifying religious and sociopolitical ecosystems.

Hardcover : 9781438489612, 266 pages, August 2022

 

Research and Scholarship

My research addresses how humans experience meaning through sound and addresses topics such as contemporary experiences of traditional sacred musics, the role of music and sports in society, the globalized music industry, and live music in the digital age. My most recent paper, “(White)washing our Sins Away: Race, Music and Symbolic Violence in American Churches” was presented at the 2018 Society for Ethnomusicology meeting. My work on music in the United States relates to my broader research on the transnational sacred music industry. For example, my forthcoming 2019 article “ESL: English as a Sacred Language in German Evangelical Worship Music” integrates social geography techniques to explore the Anglophone worship music industry’s linguistic transformation of contemporary Christian music and communities in the context of globalization and Americanization. This work, which will be published in Springer’s The Changing World Language Map explores blurring linguistic boundaries, imagined communities, and socioeconomic tensions across borders.

Other aspects of my research develop new theories about how humans perceive music. My 2015 Yearbook of Traditional Music article on collaborative fieldwork, co-authored with Dr. Fredara Hadley, explores the dynamics of working together in the field. I also analyze innovative uses of technology in student assignments in a pedagogy article recently featured in Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments. This article resulted from a Music and Sports course that I developed for Syracuse University, which attracted a roster and waitlist of music majors, music industry students, journalism students, and Division One student-athletes every semester it was offered. In summer of 2019, I guided the Public Religion Project team from University Colorado, Boulder’s Center for Media, Religion and Culture on a study trip to the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music in Fes, Morocco.