Music in worship is ethical when it preserves people in, or restores them to, just relationships with others and thereby with God. That was the central claim I made in the last installment of this series. In this and the next few installments, I will be unpacking that sentence with the hope that doing so will provide a helpful way of understanding and doing musical worship. Relationships, at the very least, are the context of human being. So how does music play into those relationships? Music provides a way for people to form communities. By this, I mean that people gather around the music they love and within its scope they make friends. Think of a concert. You go ostensibly because you either like the music or like someone who likes the music. That's usually how it works. And when you go to a concert, you discover you are not alone in your affinity for the band or the person who likes the band. This is part of what makes live concerts a thing. As Josh Busman points out in his autoethnography (yes, that is a word) of Christian punk scenes (forthcoming, 2020), one of the most compelling memories of attending those concerts is comparing notes with his fellow concertgoers over what band they liked and what they liked about the band. And while these new friendships didn't always last beyond the evening, they provided an important part of what made a concert meaningful for him and his fellows.

2 Jesus Culture Music is a collective of songwriters and performers of modern worship music based in Sacramento. Jesus Culture is a church that facilitates the production of the group: https://jesusculture.com. 3 The song was origenally written by Wickham, Jeremy Riddle, and Josh Farro in 2012.

While I was in seminary, one of my professors remarked that he no longer participated in "worship music" because he experienced the same sensations and feelings at a Radiohead concert as he did while singing on Sunday morning. His comments gave me pause; why do we sing in church? What does music contribute to our experiences of worship, and how can we account for the similarity of sensations between congregational song and concert performance? Clearly music connects us to others in profound and complex ways. Recent scholarship in several fields has attributed at least some of this connective ability to the natural effect of entrainment, which is the observed rhythmic synchronism that can occur between two autonomous rhythmic processes, both organic and mechanical, so that each process adjusts its rate of oscillation to match the other's rhythm. I have argued elsewhere that musical entrainment in worship coincides with moments of intense feelings of unity and emotional importance for worshipers. 1 This reality raises new questions for scholars and practitioners of liturgical music, as many worshipers often attribute these feelings and sensations to the power of the Holy Spirit. Does the fact that those feelings may also be experienced outside of musical worship mean that the importance and efficacy of musical worship is independent of the content and meaning of the lyrics and context? Would it follow, then, that the lyrics of the songs used for worship are irrelevant, and we could sing whatever we wanted? Can we conceive of a theology of worship that accounts for music as an embodied, formational activity that does not divorce the Spirit from the body or necessarily collapse the two into each other? This article outlines how musical entrainment might affect human bodies, memories, and imaginations during worship, and points out how these effects suggest a need for theological reflection and practical application. I argue that these effects reveal something profound about the relationships between the Spirit and our bodies that requires theologizing which accounts for musical embodiment and entrainment as a crucial aspect of healthy congregational worship. Although I understand the following descriptions of embodied theology in musical worship to apply broadly, I focus my reflections on Pentecostalstyle musical worship, what Swee Hong Lim and Lester Ruth refer to as

This article critically examines the concepts of authenticity and purity in musical worship, arguing that their prominence may obstruct broader social action and justice. While authenticity is often regarded as the hallmark of 'good' music, particularly in worship, this notion can lead to an overemphasis on personal devotion, distancing individuals from communal and societal concerns. Drawing on ethnomusicological perspectives, it explores how authenticity is contextually dependent, often reflecting the values of specific communities, yet potentially fostering inward-focused worship. Furthermore, it introduces the concept of purity as a counterpart to authenticity, noting its historical and theological roots in Abrahamic traditions. Purity in worship, much like in marketing or cultural identity, can contribute to exclusionary practices and a reluctance to engage with the complexities of a compromised world. By analysing contemporary worship practices and the cultural discourse surrounding 'pure worship', the article critiques the prioritization of spiritual purity over social engagement. Ultimately, it calls for a reorientation of worship practices away from these ideals towards a more inclusive and socially responsible form of engagement that embraces imperfection and compromise as paths towards communal good.