Secular Music, Sacred Space

This book was based on ethnographic research I conducted as part of my dissertation for my Ph.D. at The Catholic University of America.

Ever since my days of learning “Dances Sacred and Profane” by Claude Debussy on the harp, I have been fascinated by the idea that musical styles and genres signify different things within a culture. For this book, I interviewed music ministers and directors at various post-denominational evangelical churches around the Washington, DC suburbs about how their congregations decided which music “belonged” in a worship service and which music didn’t. I also got to dive into some ethnomusicology literature for the first time and fell in love with that discipline alongside the religious studies discipline I was being trained in. It’s an academic book, and it’s expensive, but it was my first book and I loved every minute of writing it.