Holiness and Worldliness

Abstract

What was truly distinctive about the black Gospel music style of the Sanctified Church was its extensive use of musical instruments previously associated with “the world.” Yet, this fact presents a theological conundrum. The very churches that were so enthusiastically “embracing” the Gospel style were, at the same time, ardently emphasizing strict moral living and the repudiation of all things carnal. In this article, I suggest lines of theological reasoning that may have informed early black Holiness and pentecostal Christians in their widespread liturgical use of the Gospel style. Drawing on primary source material from COGIC founding Bishop Charles Mason, I expand Lawrence Levine’s model of the relationship between early black Sanctified churches and the secular black musical world and argue that a more nuanced conception of the Christ-world relation than is generally assumed may have undergirded Sanctified development of early Gospel music.