Marc Hopkins investigates the trend of incorporating jazz music into Christian worship services:
Elements of jazz have been in black churches since enslaved peoples transformed Christian hymns with West African rhythms. Jazz would later emerge from gospel and blues as a distinct genre. But the music developed a stigma for being worldly, played in dimly lit smoke-filled venues, and deemed inappropriate for Sunday morning. In the 1960s, jazz artists began to shift this perception with sacred compositions. Among them: pianist Mary Lou Williams with the album Black Christ of the Andes, and the bandleader Duke Ellington, who performed three “Sacred Concerts” in churches and cathedrals across the U.S. and Europe.
What’s different now is that churches of varying perspectives and racial identities have picked up on [Rev. Dr. Henry T.] Simmons’s strategy of using jazz to attract disaffected believers, and a number of pastors have embraced the notion that jazz has something to do with prayer and can enhance the worship experience.
The Dish 