The Devil's Tunes: SDA Views on Music
Support the Show • Did you ever get scolded for the music you played in church? We're diving into traditional Seventh-day Adventist attitudes toward music and talking about my own personal experience with music while growing up in the church. We'll also cover historical Protestant views on organs, early Adventist resistance to musical instruments, and the silly debate around Christian Contemporary Music.
-Santiago
Sources:
SDAs didn't use instruments for first 3 decades
First documented use of an organ in 1877
E.J. Waggoner "Solo singing has no rightful place..."
Ira Sankey hymns called the "devil's tunes"
Alma Blackmon quote re: White elitist professors
Who is Heinrich Schenker and why should you care?
Music Theory and the White Racial Frame
Music Theory and White Supremacy
Jacob Aranza Interview
Rock Is Dead, Thank God
IFPI 2023 Global Music Report
Spotify Top Trends of 2023
Who killed the CCM industry?
SDA propaganda given to me:
10 SHOCKING "FACTS" (BS) About CCM
Inside Rock Music by Vance Ferrell
Ted Wilson Facebook Post
Seventh-day Adventist Philosophy of Music
Recommended reading:
The Devil’s Music - How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll
Full Transcripts, resources and more: hell.bio/notes
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Credits: Music: Hall of the Mountain King Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) • Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
Intro
[00:00:00] Santiago: Welcome to Haystacks and Hell, an ex-Adventist podcast where we tell stories about growing up Seventh-day Adventist, leaving faith behind, and building new, fulfilling lives.
My Background with Music
[00:00:16] Santiago: Hey everyone, welcome back to Haystacks and Hell. I'm your host Santiago, and today we're doing a deep dive on Adventist beliefs and attitudes toward music, and the propaganda that was shared with me at church. Depending on when and where you grew up, you might have witnessed the Satanic Panic of the eighties.
[00:00:38] And even if that was before your time, kind of like it was for me, you've probably felt its effects if you attended a conservative Adventist church like I did. Conservative Adventists have always had a complicated relationship with music, and today we're gonna talk about why.
[00:00:57] I actually did a lot of the research for this episode about five years ago, near the end of my deconstruction, and way before I had any idea I'd be making a podcast. This all started because one Sabbath, my youth class was assigned to lead the worship songs during the main church service, and one of the kids brought a cajon and played it in a way that I thought was really appropriate and respectful.
[00:01:23] If you're not familiar, a cajon is a box-shaped percussion instrument that's originally from Peru, and you play it with your hands. It's not a drum set, there's no drumsticks. But one of the moms of the other kids in my youth class had a big issue with it. And since I was the youth leader, she spoke to me after church and told me that she thought it was inappropriate.
[00:01:47] And then later another church member sent me a YouTube video about why Christian Contemporary Music is bad. And she also stopped me in the church parking lot to give me a book about the evils of rock music. All of this happened just because a kid respectfully played their cajon during the main worship service. If you can't already tell, the church I grew up in was very strict about music.
[00:02:16] Drums and electric guitars were absolutely not allowed, and we rarely had anyone playing the acoustic guitar, although that was okay. When our church was evaluating candidates for the position of associate pastor, some members of the church board found a video where one of the candidates had performed worship music at an Adventist university while drums were being used. And in the video they made a small comment about that being okay. And this one tiny quote was brought up and discussed at length during the board meeting.
[00:02:55] Even though they seemed great and they were totally qualified, some of the board members did not wanna hire them because of their views on music. This kind of nonsense, and the research it inspired me to do, is one of the many things that got me to think more critically about religious beliefs and traditions in general.
[00:03:16] So before we go into this deep dive, I actually want to give a little bit of background on my own history with music. In the nineties, my parents and I moved to an East Asian country because my dad was disillusioned with his career and he wanted to leave the United States for a few years. He'd heard about an opportunity to work as a missionary for the Adventist Church, and his mind was set, we were going.
[00:03:41] Even though I was very young and my mom did not want to move, my dad sold our home and we moved to the other side of the world. Based on the stories my mom shared with me, our living conditions when we first moved there, were awful. Mom fell into depression, and one of the only reasons we ended up in a better apartment was because one of the other people working there was an Adventist pastor from the United States who spoke up and told the local Adventist staff that they needed to do better.
[00:04:15] One story that stood out to me was how on our first Sabbath in this rural East Asian church, the local Adventists insisted that my mom and dad had to sit separately because all the men sat on one side and all the women and children sat on the other. And when it was time for potluck, the men lined up and ate first, and the women and children ate last.
[00:04:41] This wasn't the case at every church in this country. We eventually moved away from that rural part of the country to a larger city and noticed that it was a lot more relaxed there. Overall, living in this country for several years was an adventure for us, to say the least for, for better and for worse.
[00:05:01] For me, one of the biggest positives was being surrounded by talented musicians. My mom would tell stories about how on Sabbath mornings I always wanted to sit at the very front of the church to be near the musicians and watch how they played their instruments. So when we moved back to the United States, I begged my parents for an instrument and music lessons. And they eventually got me a used instrument from an Adventist couple at our church and paid for me to take lessons with an Adventist music teacher from another church.
[00:05:35] And, uh, I'm intentionally being vague about the instrument I played on the off chance that this detail could help someone identify me. But long story short, I've played music since I was around six years old and I was pretty good at it. And on top of joining the choir at my Adventist academy, I played music and sang regularly at our home church. I was invited to perform special music at other Adventist churches in our city, and I also helped form a music group with other young Adventists.
[00:06:05] My last music related project before I finished deconstructing and left the church was to record and produce my own music album and host a few of my own small concerts. And I'm only mentioning all of this to say that I know a thing or two about music, unlike some of the Adventist music police we're gonna talk about later.
Local Cultures Define Worship Styles
[00:06:28] Santiago: Something I want you to keep in mind as we go through this episode is how local cultures generally define how people worship and view music. In the 2010s, I went on a mission trip to a South Asian country and once again, I found myself in a rural church that segregated men and women.
[00:06:50] And in this case, the women not only had to sit on the other side of the church away from the men, but they also had to cover their heads and everyone had to take their shoes off. Funnily enough, the Adventists in this South Asian country didn't seem to have an issue with percussion. While their churches tended to be extremely conservative about gender roles and segregation in the sanctuary, they were more liberal about music than my West Coast Adventist church was.
[00:07:23] And again, this all comes down to culture. I have criticized the Adventist Church and its missionary efforts for promoting cultural erasure. But it's also true that local cultures and practices, especially conservative cultural practices, tend to influence worship styles of Adventists around the world. And that's been the case since the very beginning.
Protestants Hated the Organ?
[00:07:47] Santiago: The Millerites and the Adventist movement, which were born in the Northeastern United States, were naturally influenced by white American culture and the Europeans and Protestant denominations that came before them. So, for a second, let's actually talk about early Protestant views on music. Christians have been divided on the issue of music long before the Adventist movement came along.
[00:08:12] Today we tend to think of the organ as a classic instrument that you'll find in most churches, including Adventist churches. But during the Protestant Reformation, Dutch Calvinists and other Protestants passionately hated organ music. Some churchgoers referred to the organ as a "vainglorious," distasteful remnant of Catholic worship that was most appropriate for the kinds of songs sung in bars. Others called the instrument a "seducer" to "Roman anti-Christian worship."
[00:08:49] And John Calvin, a highly influential Protestant reformer, once described the organ as a "popish instrument" and even called it an invention of the prince of darkness. So John Calvin basically said that Satan invented the organ. About 100 years after Calvin died in 1564, many Protestant churches resumed using the organ despite some lingering opposition from the grumpy music police. The intense prejudice against organ music is just one example of the more sanctimonious and kind of stupid ideas that were held by early Calvinists and other early Protestants.
[00:09:32] In the King James Bible and even earlier translations, the word organ appears in Genesis, Job, and Psalms. And while Job 21 talks about the "wicked" and says in verse 12 that they rejoice at the sound of the organ, Psalm 150 verse four tells people to praise God with stringed instruments and organs. Of course the word "organs" doesn't refer to modern organs, but the original Hebrew does refer to wind instruments believed to be flutes or pipes in this context. So despite the affirmation in Psalms, many early Protestants tried banning organs as part of their efforts to reject everything they associated with Roman Catholic worship.
Early Adventists Didn't Use Instruments
[00:10:21] Santiago: Most traditional Adventist churches have used organs every single Sabbath as part of their worship services, but during the first three decades of the Adventist movement, Seventh-day Adventists did not use any instruments when singing hymns. The first documented use of an organ by Adventists happened in 1877 during the sixth camp meeting held in California.
[00:10:49] James White is actually the one who borrowed a reed pump organ from a dealer in San Francisco, and some of the Adventists at this camp meeting had a big issue with it. So at the first morning meeting, one of the SDA pioneers named J.N. Loughborough, he read Psalm 150 out loud and pointed out that the Bible literally tells people to praise God with stringed instruments, and, he slowly spelled out the next word for them, O-R-G-A-N-S. Organs. And so despite the earlier opposition, everyone at the camp meeting decided that having an instrument probably did improve their singing.
[00:11:33] So amazingly, over three centuries after the death of John Calvin, an Adventist evangelist had to read Psalm 150 out loud to convince people at an Adventist camp meeting in California that it is acceptable to use an organ during worship.
[00:11:52] This wasn't the only ridiculous attitude held by earlier Adventists. Today, Adventist E.J. Waggoner is known for his defense of righteousness by faith at the 1888 General Conference session. But the year before in 1887, Waggoner said that solo singing has no rightful place in the worship of God. Think about that. Basically every Adventist church I've ever attended had people singing by themselves for special music during the worship service and for other services. But apparently some influential Adventists believed solo singing wasn't appropriate for worship.
[00:12:35] Around this same time, gospel songs written by Ira Sankey were being called "the Devil's tunes" by a seminary professor. And E.J. Waggoner, acting as the Adventist music police, republished one of the articles by that professor. For context, Ira Sankey wrote the music for well-known hymns, including Faith Is the Victory, A Shelter in the Time of Storm, and the Lilly of the Valley. These are totally appropriate hymns that are included in the current Adventist hymnal, and we sang them quite often at the church I grew up in. But because these hymns are a little bit more upbeat and cheerful, some people many years ago, associated these hymns with the devil.
[00:13:24] You can't make this stuff up. Instruments and even hymns that were once considered of the devil, are now considered sacred. It just goes to show that music tastes change over time and are very, very subjective. And again, culture informs how people worship and how they view music.
[00:13:48] Ellen White also covered music in her writings, calling it a precious gift from God that could also be a terrible curse when put to quote unquote, the wrong use. And in response to a charismatic group of Adventists in Indiana referred to as the Holy Flesh Movement, Ellen White explicitly condemned drums and dancing. Here's a brief quote:
[00:14:14] Santiago (Narrating): The things you have described as taking place in Indiana, the Lord has shown me would take place just before the close of probation. Every uncouth thing will be demonstrated. There will be shouting with drums, music, and dancing. The senses of rational beings will become so confused that they cannot be trusted to make right decisions. And this is called the moving of the Holy Spirit.
[00:14:46] Santiago: This warning has been interpreted by some Adventists as a prophetic critique of the worship practices found in Pentecostal and charismatic churches, which emerged in the early 20th century, which was decades after Ellen White wrote that statement. But in reality, Ellen White was just reacting to the things she was already seeing among some charismatic Adventists. And it's now been over 100 years since she wrote that statement. And, uh, apparently probation hasn't closed yet.
Racist Attitudes
[00:15:18] Santiago: Another thing I found interesting when looking into the history of attitudes on music is how xenophobia, bigotry, and even racism can play a role in this. It's pretty common knowledge that Christianity and the Adventist movement in general have had a long and complicated history around race and racism. If you haven't already heard Season One episodes 19 and 20, I definitely recommend to go back to those for some more context, I did some deep dives there.
[00:15:49] And even today in the United States, racial segregation still exists at an institutional level in the SDA church, so it shouldn't be surprising to learn that older Adventist hymnals also bear some traces of racism. Alma Blackman was a Black Adventist professor, musician, and choir director who helped produce the 1985 Adventist hymnal. And in 1996, she wrote about the exclusion of African American Spirituals from the previous Adventist hymnal. Here's a quote:
[00:16:28] Santiago (Narrating): The 1941 Church hymnal contained music of various nations of the world, and even hymns sourced from other denominations. But there were no inclusions of the Negro spiritual. In fact, at certain Adventist institutions of higher learning, White elitist professors of music were commenting on the inferiority of the Negro spiritual as a musical form.
[00:16:58] Santiago: End quote. So on top of earlier Adventists viewing some hymns as "the devil's tunes," some White Adventist professors, years later, made elitist, bigoted and racist comments about Black spiritual music, and Spirituals were not included in the 1941 Adventist hymnal. This is yet another example of how culture and personal biases influence how people worship and how they view and talk about music.
[00:17:31] Even today, you can still find Adventists from various backgrounds and ethnicities who will look down on music from non-white cultures. They tend to conflate jazz and rock with voodooism and have a generally xenophobic and bigoted attitude toward music that they don't like or understand. But these attitudes aren't exclusive to Adventists.
Music Theory in the US
[00:17:58] Santiago: In the United States, music theory was greatly influenced by a man named Heinrich Schenker. In fact, he's been described as arguably the most influential music theorist in American music theory. Even though he was Jewish, Schenker was a racist German nationalist who considered the Austro-German musical tradition to be the pinnacle, while everyone else's music was "inferior."
[00:18:25] For example, he compared Turkish and Japanese music to "the babbling of infants" and he didn't think very highly of non-German Europeans. And by the way, the term music theory as it's used in most of the Western world, is more accurately described as the harmonic style of 18th century Western European musicians. That's a mouthful, and I am no expert on music theory, but there's a great video on this topic called Music Theory and White Supremacy, which will be linked in the show notes.
[00:19:01] Long story short, there is no single music theory. There are many different kinds of music theories. But historically musicians in the West have tended to be uninformed and or uninterested in them. And so this Eurocentric view has permeated the United States and influenced how American Christians and Adventists have viewed music in general. That brings us to rock and Christian Contemporary Music.
Rock and CCM
[00:19:31] Santiago: There's an interesting book called The Devil's Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock and Roll. Here's a few quotes from the description of the book:
[00:19:43] Santiago (Narrating): Rock's origins lie in part with the energetic Southern Pentecostal churches, where Elvis, Little Richard, James Brown, and other pioneers of the genre worshiped as children. The music, styles, and ideas of tongue-speaking churches powerfully influenced these early performers. As rock and roll's popularity grew, White preachers tried to distance their flock from this, quote unquote, "blasphemous jungle music" with little success. By the 1960s, Christian leaders feared the Beatles really were more popular than Jesus, as John Lennon claimed.
[00:20:26] In the early days of rock and roll, faith served as a vehicle for the racial fears of White people. A decade later, evangelical Christians were at odds with the counterculture and the anti-war movement. By associating the music of Black people and hippies with godlessness, believers used their faith to justify racism and conservative politics. But in a reversal of strategy in the early 1970s, the same evangelicals embraced Christian rock as a way to express Jesus's message within their own religious community and project it into a secular world.
[00:21:10] Santiago: If you wanna learn more about this, I definitely recommend checking this book out. A link will be in the show notes.
Anti-CCM SDA YouTuber
[00:21:17] Santiago: So, with all of this background info, let's talk about the materials that I was given by a church member who was so concerned about the music played by my youth class. To start, she sent me a YouTube video uploaded in 2018 by a Seventh-day Adventist named Greg Sereda, who currently has almost 600,000 subscribers.
[00:21:42] The video she sent me has a clickbaity, all caps title "10 SHOCKING FACTS About Contemporary Christian Music," and here's how the video starts:
[00:21:55] Greg Sereda: Does contemporary Christian music glorify God or is it a tool of the devil?
[00:22:04] Santiago: Here we are some 500 years after John Calvin called the organ an invention of the Prince of Darkness, and an Adventist YouTuber is using the same type of language. This is the kind of bullshit that people spend their time on when they're too lost in the sauce of fundamentalist Christianity.
[00:22:26] Instead of feeding the hungry and helping the poor, they're policing the types of Christian music that's allowed in church and calling music they don't like or understand, a tool of the devil. This guy even claimed that Contemporary Christian Music can lead to demonic possession and can cause brain damage:
[00:22:49] Greg Sereda: Fact number five: Contemporary Christian Music can lead to demonic possession.
[00:23:04] Fact number six: Contemporary Christian Music can cause brain damage.
[00:23:17] Santiago: The entire video is full of logical fallacies and claims that Christian Contemporary Music is a slippery slope. You know, I've heard plenty of stories from ex-Christians and none of them listed Contemporary Christian Music as the reason for their deconstruction. Whenever they did mention music, it was usually to say that after they left the church, they realized how churches use music to create a heightened sense of spirituality and emotion. This is something that all churches tend to do. Even the church I grew up in.
[00:23:53] If you've ever been to a Revelation seminar or attended a sermon where there was some sort of altar call, you've probably seen someone sitting at a piano or an organ or with some other instrument playing slow soft music. And it doesn't matter if it's a hymn or if it's a Contemporary Christian song. They're both being played with the same purpose. To help people feel kind of an emotional tug on their heartstrings so they'll go walk up to the front and give their lives to Jesus, or whatever the call to action is.
[00:24:31] Anyway, progressive or moderate Adventists would probably call this YouTuber a fringe Adventist. But even though his content is cringe-worthy and very clickbaity, you've gotta admit that 600,000 subscribers is a huge audience for an Adventist YouTuber.
Inside Rock Music
[00:24:50] Santiago: Now, let's talk about the book that was given to me in the church parking lot by the same person who sent me this video. The book's called Inside Rock Music, and it was published in 2006 by Vance Ferrell, who was an ultra-conservative Seventh-day Adventist. He went to Pacific Union College. He worked as a pastor, he self-published a bunch of books, and then he passed away in 2023. And in this book, Ferrell tried to conflate secular rock music with all Christian Contemporary Music. Now, I'm not invested in this debate anymore, but I think it's kind of funny. It actually reminds me of this clip from King of the Hill:
[00:25:36] Hank Hill: I'm taking my son home.
[00:25:38] Bobby Hill: I can't believe you, dad. You're embarrassing me in front of the pastor!
[00:25:42] Pastor: Mr. Hill, you just don't get it. This is how we testify!
[00:25:48] Hank Hill: Can't you see? You're not making Christianity better, you're just making rock and roll worse!
[00:25:53] Santiago: When I got handed this book, I was already skeptical since I had seen the YouTube video that she sent me and how it was like really low quality click bait. But I tried to keep an open mind and I did read the book. But just like the video, the book was sensationalist, full of questionable claims and pseudoscience, and reading it made it clear to me that Vance Ferrell didn't really know anything about music or music theory.
[00:26:23] It's almost like being a fundamentalist Christian gives you the confidence to authoritatively speak about subjects on which you have no subject matter expertise whatsoever. That became very clear to me when I saw that this same guy also published a book, almost 1,000 pages long, trying to debunk evolution.
[00:26:46] Anyway, according to Vance Ferrell, some of the key aspects of bad music include, and this is verbatim: Volume, the same. Tempo, the same with little or no change. Same key throughout. Rhythmic emphasis on syncopation. And perhaps my favorite: Repetition.
[00:27:13] In case you weren't aware, most of the hymns in the Seventh-day Adventist hymnal have the quote unquote "bad qualities" that Ferrell lists in his book. Because hymns are meant for congregational or group singing, they typically don't vary widely in dynamics or "volume" as he called it. These hymns tend to keep a steady tempo. They don't include key changes because that would probably be too complicated for most people singing in a group setting, and they almost always use a repeating verse-chorus structure. So, again, reading through this, I couldn't help but laugh. The guy clearly had no clue what he was talking about, and yet he wrote and self-published an entire book about it.
Jacob Aranza, Satanic Panic Provocateur
[00:28:02] Santiago: Another gem from this book is a 1985 quote that Vance Ferrell included from a guy named Jacob Aranza, who is currently the pastor of a network of non-denominational churches. But in a previous life, this guy was kind of like a youth evangelist, and he published in 1983, he wrote and published a book called Backward Masking Unmasked. And if you grew up during the Satanic Panic or know somebody who did, you probably read this book or have maybe heard about it.
[00:28:36] So this guy, Jacob Aranza, was partly responsible for helping spread Satanic Panic in the eighties. According to Aranza, some unnamed popular youth evangelist was flying on a plane and sat next to the manager of one of the largest rock bands in the world. Already, this doesn't seem really plausible. They probably would've been on a tour bus or maybe flying in first class, but what do I know?
[00:29:04] The popular youth evangelist and the manager of one of the largest rock bands in the world strike up a friendly conversation. And when this unnamed evangelist asked this unnamed manager, "What's next in the rock music world?" The manager told him about a four step plan.
[00:29:27] Step one was from 1955 to 65, and it pushed sex through rock music. Step two was from 1965 to 75, and it promoted drugs, rebellion, and anti-establishment movements. This was a thinly veiled jab at the anti-war movement that began in the mid 1960s. And by the way, I shouldn't have to say this, but it's a good thing to be anti-war. Step three started in the 1970s, and it was meant to increase sales through addiction to rock music's quote, "loud beats and violent tones." Step four, according to this very fictional character, was to bring rock into mainline Christianity because it would supposedly be the greatest motivator to get people to buy rock music.
[00:30:24] Again, here's what most fans of rock would probably say to this:
[00:30:28] Hank Hill: You're just making rock and roll worse!
[00:30:30] Santiago: So Vance Ferrell repeated and republished a clearly made up story from another pastor. And at the end of that quote, Vance Ferrell wrote that this fictional story was a "carefully worked out agenda by the devil."
[00:30:47] For a moment, let's put our magical thinking hats on and pretend that this story was actually real. Does the data show that rock music has been selling more and more since the 1980s? Did this demonic plan work out?
[00:31:02] In a 2018 article for Vice titled Rock is Dead, Thank God, music journalist Dan Ozzy pointed out what the music charts had been saying about rock. "The genre has been eclipsed in all measures of popularity and profitability by pop, hip hop, and EDM."
[00:31:24] Five years later, the IFPI Global Music Report showed that hip hop, pop, Latin, and Afrobeats were dominating the charts. Spotify also highlighted Afrobeats as one of the fastest growing genres of music, which had grown by 550% from 2017 to 2023. Rock is nowhere to be found on these lists. Similar to rock, Christian Contemporary Music has been on the decline, and CCM never even made up a huge portion of music sales. CCM sales peaked at around 50 million albums sold annually and dropped to 17 million in 2014.
[00:32:10] So clearly this story was bullshit, but don't just take it from me. Jacob Aranza himself admitted in a 2011 interview, quote, "Our goal was to scare the hell out of everyone." And he also agreed when the interviewer said that looking back, it seemed like a bit of a witch hunt. You don't say! Here's a few clips from that video:
[00:32:38] Interviewer: We had a God of Rock seminar come through our church and scare the holy, you know what, outta everybody.
[00:32:44] Jacob Aranza: Our goal was to scare the hell out of everyone.
[00:32:46] Interviewer: It did scare everyone to death, 'cause we thought the devil had a foothold in our church. So when you look back on all that, when I look back on it, it seems like a bit of a witch hunt.
[00:32:55] Jacob Aranza: Right, sure... All it was for me was a hook. All it was for me was an opportunity to get a bunch of kids together. And grab their attention and preach to 'em... So, yeah, I, I look back on that and that was really just a hook. That's really all it was... I mean, I think of a lot of things that I preached when I was young. I mean, primarily I was just happy to have an audience, number one. Number two, I wanted to keep their attention. And number three, I wanted to see a lot of people get saved. So if I thought yelling "rape" in the middle of the street would draw a crowd and I could preach, I would've done it.
[00:33:27] Santiago: Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that Jacob Aranza is still preaching today and has built a network of churches that probably totals a few thousand attendees every week. And every week, each one of his churches features the very same Christian Contemporary Music that he used to demonize. He accused the music industry of a conspiracy to infiltrate Christian music to sell more records, when in reality, he was using Satanic Panic as a hook to book more evangelistic gigs and grab kids' attention.
[00:34:08] There's a common phrase I've seen in response to hypocrisy from religious zealots. "Every accusation is a confession."
Recap and Outro
[00:34:18] Santiago: Anyway, to recap, all worship and attitudes on music are influenced by the surrounding cultures. This is something I witnessed in the United States as well as churches in East Asia and South Asia. Over 500 years ago, many Protestants hated the organ because they associated it with the Catholic church. Adventists didn't use musical instruments during their worship until the 1870s, roughly three decades after the movement started.
[00:34:50] And some influential Adventists, like E.J. Waggoner, even said that solo singing had no place in worship. Waggoner also promoted an author who referred to some hymns as "the devil's tunes." So hymns that were once considered the devil's music, are now considered sacred. And believe it or not, some of the hot takes around music theory actually stem from racism and white supremacy. And unsurprisingly, one of the pastors who helped spread Satanic Panic was a lying hypocrite who now uses Christian Contemporary Music in all of his churches.
[00:35:29] Anyway, I'd love to hear your stories about music and Adventism. You can send me a DM on Instagram or submit your story for publication on the Haystacks and Hell website using the link in the show notes. Also, don't forget that we have a growing subreddit for ex-Adventists, which will also be linked in the show notes.
[00:35:51] Keep an eye out for the next episode as I'll be republishing Abby, Ami, and Alex's conversation on their experiences with music.
[00:35:59] Thanks for listening. If you have a story to share about your Adventist or fundamentalist experience, we'd love to hear it. You can submit stories on our website at hell.bio — that's H E L L . B I O, or leave us a voicemail at 301-750-8648 and we might feature it in a future episode. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you on the next one!
