Updated April 15, 2004 (first published January 8, 1996) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

The Religious News Service, November 27, 1995, reported on "Blending the Spirit of Jazz with the Spirit of God." The article noted that jazz is becoming popular in various churches around the country. Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, said, "It was a novelty when it first started. Now it has become quite commonplace. Nowadays, it seems very acceptable."

For ten years a "jazz Nativity" has been performed at churches in New York City. A number of modernistic-ecumenical churches were mentioned in the article. A church in Orlando, Florida, features a jazz quartet and distributes the Lord's Supper to "a swinging version of 'This Is the Feast.'" The pastor of this church stated, "During the offering, our jazz band will go off on an 'Amazing Grace' improvisation that blows people's mind."

Jazz acceptance is not limited to modernistic circles, though. For example, black jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis conducted a "show-stopping" jazz concert at the Edman Chapel on Nov. 27, 1992, on the campus of Wheaton College (The Fundamentalist Digest, Jan.-Feb. 1993).

New Orleans '87, a massive ecumenical-charismatic conference, featured jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain and his band. They were introduced to the crowd by Pentecostal Vinson Synan and Roman Catholic David Sklorenko, the Chairman and Director of the Congress. When Synan introduced the jazz band, he said, "Give Pete a hand." The crowd clapped and shouted. Then he said, "Now let's give Jesus a hand." Again the crowd clapped and shouted.

An ad for Regent College (Vancouver, British Columbia) in Christianity Today, Dec. 11, 1995, said, "J.I. Packer loves the classics. Especially King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong--early jazz classics. Dr. Packer has an ear for the order and liveliness of jazz and a mind for the discipline and harmony found in Calvin and the Puritans--classic theology." Calvinism and Jazz. What a combo!

Even unsaved jazz musicians claim that jazz is religious.

Jazzman Dave Brubeck says, "To me, if you get into that creative part of your mind when you're playing jazz, it's just as religious as when you're writing a sacred service." Unitarian pastor Daniel Webster Aldridge Jr. says, "Jazz is a deeply creative and spiritual music, and I think it's another avenue for religious expression." The late jazz musician Duke Ellington is quoted as believing that every man prays to God in his own language, and his musical language was jazz (quoted by Stanley Dance, The World of Duke Ellington).

Sensual, relativistic jazz might be spiritual and religious, but it is not the Spirit of God nor the true religion of the New Testament faith. If man were not a fallen, sinful creature, who lives in a fallen, sinful world, it would be true that whatever man does would be pleasing to God. That was true before the Fall. But after the Fall, man and his world became sinful, and the devil became the god of this world (2 Cor. 4:4). Even when a man is saved, he still has the potential to walk after the flesh and to create carnal music (Galatians 5:16-25).

To say that jazz is a spiritual music is to deny what the Bible says about the world, the flesh, and the devil. A music which is at home in this world, which is loved by the licentious crowd, which appeals to the flesh, has no place in the house of God.

Man is not free to worship God in his own way. He must worship God according to the Scriptures. When Cain made his own way of approaching God, God rejected him (Gen. 4:3-12). When Nadab and Abihu approached God with strange fire, God destroyed them (Leviticus 10). When Uzzah attempted to steady the ark of God in a manner contrary to God's Word, God killed him (2 Samuel 6:6-8). When Jeroboam set up a system of worship contrary to God's Word, God cursed him and his lineage (1 Kings 12:28-33; 14:7-16). When King Uzziah usurped the priestly function and attempted to burn incense in the temple, God smote him with leprosy (2 Chronicles 26:16-21).

The Bible says the child of God is to “keep himself UNSPOTTED by the world” (James 1:27).

Like the blues, boogie-woogie, and ragtime, jazz was born in the unwholesome and sensual environment of sleazy bars, honkytonks, juke joints, and whorehouses. It was music designed to accompany gambling, drinking, dancing, and immorality. The very name “jazz” refers to fornication. “The origin of the word ‘jazz’ is most often traced back to a vulgar term used for sexual acts. Some of the early sounds of jazz were associated with whore houses and ‘ladies of ill repute’” (www.jazzhistory/introduction).

Blues historian James Dickerson notes: “Sex was inextricably linked with blues and jazz. It was not a prejudice: it was a fact of life. … In truth, black parents were also disapproving of blues and jazz music, and often pulled out the broomstick when their daughters showed an interest in the ‘devil’s music’” (Dickerson, Goin’ Back to Memphis, pp. 29, 30).

The famous jazz critic and author Martin Williams said, “Jazz knows no absolutes.”

Ozzie Nelson said: “Jazz is a vague something that you seem to feel pulsating from a danceable orchestra. To me it is a solidity and compactness of attack by which the rhythm instruments combine with the others to CREATE WITHIN THE LISTENERS THE DESIRE TO DANCE” (quoted by Barry Ulanov, A History of Jazz, 1952).

Popular song composer Harry Von Tilzer said: “Jazz … the opiate that inflames the mind and incites to riotous orgies of delirious syncopation” (cited by Harry Shapiro, Waiting for the Man, p. 45).

The jazz rhythms were described as “sound loud and meaningless” by the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1918, and it warned that such sounds could have “an intoxicating effect, like crude colors and strong perfumes, the sight of flesh or the sadic [sadistic] pleasure in blood.”

The mother of famous jazz singer Lil Hardin (who was married for eight years to Louis Armstrong) had the following to say about her daughter’s music: “[Jazz] is worthless immoral music, played by worthless immoral loafers expressing their vulgar minds with vulgar music” (cited by Larry Nager, Memphis Beat, p. 92).

“…it was widely felt among the jazz community that marijuana helped the creation of jazz by removing inhibitions and providing stimulation and confidence. ... Unknown numbers of jazz musicians, black and white, got involved with heroin to a greater or lesser extent in the forties and fifties. It was said that if you wanted to recruit the best band you had to go to the Public Health Service Hospitals at Lexington and Fort Worth, where many narcotics offenders were sent, supposedly to clean up” (Harry Shapiro, Waiting for the Man: The Story of Drugs and Popular Music, p. 64).

The famous composer John Philip Sousa said, “Jazz is prostituted music, and the sooner we get rid of the stuff, the better for our boys and girls” (quoted by Harry Vom Bruch, “The New Birth,” Modern Prodigals and Other Sermons, reprinted in Soul Stirring Sermons: Evangelistic Voices from the Past and Present by Ken Lynch, Chester, PA: Ken Lynch, 1996).

The jazz world is the world which the Bible tells the Christian to separate from. It is characterized by the things condemned in the Word of God: "fornication, uncleanness, covetousness, filthiness, foolish talking, jesting" (Ephesians 5:3-11). The Bible says, "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them" (Ephesians 5:11).

I don't believe the world will love spiritual music, and I don't believe spiritual people will love worldly music. If you play a truly spiritual hymn in a nightclub, the atmosphere would change immediately and the people would want “their music” back. Just so, if you play a worldly song in the house of God, the atmosphere changes immediately. It will entertain the flesh, but it will not edify the spirit. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever" (1 John 2:15-17).

"The emphasis of most of contemporary sacred and secular music is on the rhythm. Rhythm is that part of music which elicits a physical response. Therefore, most of today's music, secular and sacred, feeds and satisfies the self-seeking, self-centered, and self-worshiping part of man" (Frank Garlock, Music in the Balance, Majesty Music, 1992, pp. 79,80).

Worldly music does not glorify Jesus Christ and has no place in the churches, but the sad fact is that such music is not confined today to the ecumenical crowd. Increasingly, it is being brought into fundamental Baptist churches. The primary vehicle is the "canned" music presentation, which features tapes produced largely by ecumenical/charismatic entertainers and even by non-Christians. We would not allow such people to "perform" in our churches in person, but we do allow them into the churches when we use their carnal background rhythms. The next step is to sing their shallow, man-centered songs. There are exceptions, of course. The lyrics to some contemporary music is Bible- based. But that is the rare exception.

Beware of becoming the enemy of God by befriending the world: "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God" (James 4:3,4).