ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I explore the musical sounds of the contemporary worship music (CWM), and examine how the sounds of the CWM relate to the ethics of the CWM. Or, to put it another way, I ask: what do the sounds of the CWM have to do with how congregants respond to other people and God? I pursue this question through two philosophical threads. The first is the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas, who argues that ethical responsibilities emerge from encounters with others. The second thread is from Alphonso Lingis, an important influence on Object Oriented Ontology, who argues that things present us with perceptual imperatives. I closely examine one sound prevalent in the CWM, a type of pitch-shifted reverberation often called “shimmer.” Examining shimmer reveals that it can only be understood by doing things with it, supporting Lingis's argument that things must be described separately, and resisting easy responses that shimmer fits into a causal structure or that it is simply what human beings make of it. In short, I argue that closely describing shimmer, including how we interact with shimmer, contributes to a richer discussion about how worship music relates to ethical responsibilities to other people and God.
