What do different religions say about music?

Many religions incorporate music into worship rituals for a variety of reasons. Partially because tunes are easier to memorize and therefore allow more people to be part of the religious experience, and also because many people feel that they express their devotion and faith better through music than through speech alone.

Many cultures and religions (are there any that don’t??) use music as a part of ceremony.
I know in my culture music is very important for ceremony, tradition, gatherings, spirituality, etc… There are many reasons we use music. Perhaps this is because music is something that we can all easily access. Also studies are now proving that music can alter your physical/emotional state at the level of your atoms. So it is easily accessible and very powerful.

I have been to three kinds of christian churches.

1. Church of Christ- Believes in a bible verse that says “Thou shalt not add to the church.” They dont have instruments or recorded music only sing hymns. They believe Baptists and Pentecostals are going to hell because they have instruments in the church

2. Southern Baptist- They sing, have pianos, organs, and some have a full on band the band is kind of reserved. Its a lot mellower than the next one

3. Church of God/Assembly of God/Pentecostal. This church takes the verse, “Make a joyful noise unto the lord,” seriously. They have a full on rock band. Drums, guitars, pianos, hand clapping. The services can last several hours. 90% of a Pentecostal service is singing clapping rolling in the floor and praising god. Not much preaching just rocking out for the lord. If I was to go to church I would go Pentecostal. Seriously they get pumped up by the music. It also moves them to get possessed by the holy spirit, flail around, jabber in tongues, and roll around in the floor. Hence the term holy rollers.

Then there is the christian hip-hop and my favorite oxymoron christian death metal.

I was raised in the Church of Christ. I have heard many of my friends who are baptist that ask me why we don’t have instruments in worship. The verse that Buster mentioned about not adding to the church is true but theres another verse that mentions to “make melody with your heart”. You can take that anyway you want to. I always point out that verse cause if you look through the old testament, it was part of Gods request to use instruments, i.e., tamobrines, bagpipes, harps, etc. But that was under the old law, Old Testament. Once Jesus died on the cross, the new covenant came into effect, New Testament. There are roughly 600 years between the Old and New Testament. In the New Testament, there isn’t any verse anywhere that mentions using instruments only to , “make melody with your hearts”. Hearts being the instrument to use in regards to worshiping God. You don’t have to agree with any of this. I’m not trying to be disrespectfull to Buster, just trying to follow up on what Buster said to maybe help clairify more on why the Church of Christ doesn’t use instruments. You have to understand that when God makes a command regarding anything, He’s very precise. Look at Noah and the Ark. God told Noah how to build the ark. He told Noah what type of wood to use, how wide, how long. God didn’t tell Noah, “just build the ark the way you want”. If Noah had built the ark the way he wanted to, theres a good chance that no on e on the ark would have survived the flood. God gave Noah precise instructions. God does that with everything when instructing men throughout the Bible. In the Church of Christ, we take the guidelines that God gives very literally when it comes to worshiping Him. To follow up also that Buster mentioned that the Church of Christ thinks everyone else is going to hell is partly true. I treat all my friends with the upmost respect in terms of how they want to worship God. Its not my place to tell someone where they are going to go in the afterlife. Growing up I had some really close friends who were hardcore catholics, went to mass everyday, etc. One day they told me that if you werent’ catholic, everyone else is going to hell. So its not just some people in the Church of Christ that says stuff like that, its in other churches as well. Hope this helps a little.

Some say yeaaaa and some say nayyyyy.

Different churches and denominations make their own choices about the music they play or don’t play during a service. Some like to sing with no instruments and some like a full accompaniment of instruments. Some like organs and some like pianos.

Some like potatoes and some like tomatoes.

The Bible says make a joyful noise, whether it be from your mouth or an instrument to God.

Hope this helps
Jeff