Mark Porter

@markporter.co.uk

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Sometimes post about my research (music/religion/ecology), sometimes about other things. markporter.co.uk

Recent years have seen an increasing number of Christian communities begin to grapple with the implications of a period of ecological crisis for their faith and theology, for their communal life together, for their rituals, and for their engagement with the communities by which they are surrounded. While music is rarely the primary location of this engagement, it plays an important role in the shaping of communal narratives, emotions, and imaginations, in speaking to a wider public, and in the broader negotiation of a variety of different relationships. Individuals have begun to write new songs and adapt old ones; communities have begun to explore the possibilities and limits of outdoor worship alongside attempts to learn from other religious/spiritual traditions; music is used in faith-based activism; requiems have emerged in a wide variety of forms; and music finds its way into a range of different ecological projects and communication strategies. At the same time, Christian imaginations and musical practices spill over in a variety of different ways to the broader social/cultural/musical world of which the music of congregations and communities is just one part. The availability of Christianity as part of an established cultural repertoire means that Christian expressions form a point of departure or critique for musical expressions in a wider range of popular, classical, or activist projects that engage with ecology. Engagement between ecology and Christian musicking is nothing new, and much longer traditions of environmental hymnody and imaginations of cosmic musical harmony can be traced through many centuries of different Christian traditions. An awareness of the potential for something new to emerge sits alongside an awareness that existing practices might, in a variety of different ways, either serve as a resource, or be unsuitable to negotiating the world as it is right now – as they have been bound up with practices/imaginations of extractivism and empire…
In a polarizing world, Porter offers a thoughtful and timely contribution that moves beyond finding the “right answers” and instead focuses on finding contextually appropriate responses. […] He convincingly argues for the value of considering this diversity in practice, resisting efforts to reduce musical innovation into uniformity. […] For the practitioner, Porter offers an overview of musical responses to the climate crisis. For the academic working on ritual, liturgy, and/or hymnology, the work provokes further consideration of power relations in music and the meaning of ritual within contexts where action and transformation are desired.
"However, when exploring attachment distress with God, those who are primarily avoidant in their attachment to God report Traditional Chant to be more effective in coping with stress, even though they listen to Praise and Worship the most."