The Gaither's New Boogie Woogie Album

Bill Gaither’s new album Happy Rhythm, is described as “bounce, croon, boogie woogie, and worship” (www.hallels.com, Mar. 13, 2015). Boogie woogie and worship are incompatible. One celebrates the flesh, the other the Spirit. One is of the world, the other of heaven. One is of the devil, the other of God. What confusion! Few men have done more to break down the walls between the “church” and the world than Bill Gaither. As far back as 1980, a firsthand report of the Gaither’s appearance at the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis said, “The Bill Gaither Trio entertained 15,000 Southern Baptists on Sunday evening with a musical program worldly enough to make any true believer weep” (Robert S. Reynolds, Foundation, Volume VI, Issue 1, 1985, p. 9). Gaither has increasingly used every type of rock rhythm in his music. During the disco craze in the late 1980s, the Gaither Trio even recorded a disco album (Calvary Contender, August 15, 1989). Gaither is helping to build the one-world “church” with his ecumenical philosophy. In his autobiography It’s More Than the Music, Gaither stated that one of the benefits of playing concerts in “neutral, non-church environments” was that people from “all church denominations” attended. “Before long, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, charismatics, Catholics, and Pentecostals were all praising the Lord together. Subtly, the walls between denominations began to crumble...” (It’s More Than the Music, p. 115). Gaither’s Hymns for the Family of God was purposefully “nondenominational” and included devotional readings from a wide variety of Christians, including heretics such as Deitrich Bonhoeffer (one of the fathers of Neo-orthodoxy), Malcolm Muggeridge (a Roman Catholic who did not believe in Christ’s virgin birth or bodily resurrection), and Robert Schuller, who redefined the gospel in terms of his self-esteem heresy. The Gaithers provided the music one evening at Indianapolis ‘90, a large ecumenical charismatic gathering I attended with press credentials. One-half of the 25,000 participants were Roman Catholic. A Catholic mass was held each morning, and Catholic priest Tom Forrest from Rome brought the closing message. At New Orleans ’87, which’ I also attended with media credentials, Forrest said that purgatory is necessary for salvation. The Gaithers were perfectly at home in this unscriptural gathering and entertained the mixed multitude with their jazzy music. For more about the Gaithers see The Directory of Contemporary Worship Musicians, available in print or as a free eBook from www.wayoflife.org.

(Friday Church News Notes, March 27, 2015, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

---