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Take the example of James White, one of the three founders of the SDA Church. He used his Bible as a drum! When he walked into meetings where he was preaching, he would be singing -- and accompanying himself by playing the beat of the song on his Bible (William A Spicer Pioneer Days of the Adventist Movement p147).
Some church people think the guitar is a musical instument so modern that it should not be used in church. But it is not as modern as they think. In the 1880s book Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions, Adventist Church co-founder Ellen White speaks favourably about using guitars in church (page 195).
And the organ, so much approved of today in church, was considered the devil's musical instrument by some SDAs. "JN Loughborough and other church leaders had to introduce biblical arguments to ease the acceptance of the first organ used by Adventists in California" (Ministry Oct 1991, p12).
The sons of James and Ellen White played the old version of a portable keyboard called a melodeon, a small portable organ (Life of HN White, page 22). That probably made them radical in a music environment where many did not approve of an organ in church.
Would the SDA Church today sing hymns in church that were written to the tunes of Rock and Roll stars like Guns N Roses? Most probably not. But the exact equivalent occurred in the early Adventist Church. Adventists often took the most popular secular songs of their day and wrote sacred words to them to sing in church.
For example, "Way down upon the Swanee River" was one of the most popular songs of its day. The Adventists changed it to "You will see your Lord a-coming."
Uriah Smith, the best-known of the church's pioneer writers, changed the the words of the well-known song "Dixie." Under his pen it became a song about the Advent hope.
"We are travelling toward a country bright
where all is peace and love and light
Look away, look away,
look away to that bright land."
The love song "Bonny Eloise" started with the words "How sweet is the vale where the mohawk gently glides." But to that popular tune the Adventists sang (and still sing) "How sweet are the tidings that greet a pilgrim's ear."
The use of then-modern tunes is obviously a far-cry from modern Adventist church services -- where most songs are tunes of a generation now long dead.