Capitalist Music Choice in Christian America

“Sunday is the most segregated day of the week.”

Historians often point to the beautiful unity in the early church, which I had partially attributed to its homogeneity – the fact that it’s easy to be united when you have the same personal and cultural preferences anyway.

But in the book “Fresh Power”, Jim Cymbala, pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle Church takes issue with the “homogeneity” argument, bringing up how the early church created tremendous unity between Jew and Gentile, groups with cultural chasms between them.

So, since Pastor Cymbala refuted my first argument, I thought of another. 🙂

How many options were there for the 1st century Christian in terms of finding community? Because today, there are 25x the number of churches in America than there are McDonalds. And if there were only 1 church nearby, that’s probably the one I would go to. But if there’s a God-fearing, Bible preaching church down the street – that also plays music closer to what I’m familiar with and can more easily participate in – I’d be stupid not to go here, right?

Unless I’m intentionally trying to make a point that music doesn’t matter and unity is more important than anything else? But if we all did this, then we’d end up with 1 mega-church per town, right? Is that what we’re going for? I can’t remember now.

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