Sing Hallelujah to the Lord - Linda Stassen

If you heard someone mention hippies, Jesus freaks, and communes, or phrases like "free love", "One Way",or "Just Drop Jesus"(instead of ‘dropping acid’), you might think you’d stepped into a time machine and been transported to the 1970s. And, you’d be right. These words were coined during the Jesus (or Jesus People) movement in that decade. Instead of saying ‘I’m walking with the Lord’, a believer might have said he was ‘Truckin’ with Jesus’ 35 years ago. It was an era when college campuses vented frustration over the Vietnam War, the government, and American culture at large.

The counterculture reaction extended to Christianity too, so that most Jesus People rejected orthodox, organized churches in favor of simpler (at least to them) methods used in exercising faith. Such well-known evangelistic organizations as Jews for Jesus came from that era. And, many of today’s contemporary Christian music artists’ roots were in the Jesus People movement, in groups with names like the All Saved Freak Band, Petra, Love Song, Resurrection Band, Second Chapter of Acts, and Joyful Noise. Maranatha music was also spawned from a church of that time, Calvary Chapel, in Costa Mesa, California. One of its ‘freaks’, Linda Stassen, is the composer of the song “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord”, a tune still familiar in mainline churches in the U.S today. Linda Stassen’s “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord” is a very simple song, known not only by Americans, but also by people across the globe, including Europeans, Chinese, Persians, and Eskimos, testifying to its broad acceptance. One wonders whether Stassen knew what would eventually happen to one of her Calvary Chapel experiments.

“Sing Hallelujah to the Lord”, although beautiful in its simplicity, is a somewhat unusual praise song. Can you picture its composer, perhaps wearing a tie-dyed shirt, raggedy shorts and sandals, and maybe a flower in her hair? Not exactly what most of us today would recommend for your Sunday morning garb, huh? And, in keeping with the unconventional flow, her musical invention was different. Consider a proper hallelujah…most song-writers probably would begin with a bright and upbeat major key to aptly, and musically express praise to God, correct? Not Stassen. She wrote this song in a minor key (C minor). Why? Was she trying to fail?! The combination of Stassen’s musical chords and the words she chose tell us that perhaps she began to compose by drawing on how she felt viscerally about God, and what mood she wanted to convey. As we sing, we can sense that she was moved by the awesome, haunting sense of what God had accomplished for her, and wanted to express that feeling through the music structure, in a minor key. Did you notice that the minor key matches what we sing about Jesus rising from the dead in verse two (an awesome, overwhelming event), and that other things we sing about our king in the song -- his reign in the church and over earth, and his sure return to claim us -- should make us sense the majesty, and the greatness of our Lord, with deep reverence. It makes me re-evaluate the significance of this song’s message to my spirit. I used to think it’s just a simple tune that I could hum in a carefree way, but now I think it’s something I need to contemplate and dwell upon, and so carry myself to respect and honor Him in all that I do. …kind of an unexpected lesson from a freak.

 Information on Linda Stassen in the story was gathered from the “The Complete Book of Hymns: Inspiring Stories about 600 Hymns and Praise Songs”, by William J. and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Information on the “Jesus People Movement” was gathered from the following Wikipedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_movement.