The theological ignorance of emergents (assuming the term emerging church still describes a non-imaginary thing) is mildly irritating. One of the many things that escaped emergents' attention was the actual patterns of worship established by earlier generations of believers. They paid paltry lip service to Robert Webber and his ancient future idea, but when these posers spoke from their hearts they quoted U2 and Bruce Springsteen. Brian McLaren wrote a little pre-adolescent verse. Then there was Mark Scandrette and his faux beat poetry and the Church Basement Roadshow—which wouldn't have been invited back to a karaoke bar for Free Beer Night even if members of the audience agreed to tune their instruments for them.

All these people did was hang cheap prints of a few saints, light some votive candles and sing In The Garden at me.

So as I say, this is mildly irritating, but I can handle it because I'm a patient man. It's unfair to expect anything more from clergyfolk who don't even know the significance of the rainbow in "The Flood Story". From flunkies like this you don't expect great devotional insights or a moving liturgy.

What is completely insufferable is a "conservative church" (assuming the term conservative church still describes a non-imaginary thing) that does precisely the same! We expect illiterates to miss the importance of the Psalms of David just as easily as they miss Christ's teaching on Hell or St. Paul's on the atonement. What beggars an imagination raised on Homer, Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Dunsany, Charles Williams and J. R. R. Tolkien is that fundamentalists who proclaim their highest regard for an inerrant Scripture should abandon it for fluff that Lawrence Welk would have been embarrassed to play.

You owe it to yourself to read about the place of the Psalter in the history of the Church. If you are a fundamentalist, you may not know where to begin, so I will recommend this. Recent archeological discoveries have shown that David's collection of Psalms was not collected by the Roman Catholic Church or Calvinists who lacked evangelistic zeal.

Do the purveyors of "conservative Christian music" believe the Psalms are "archaic, irrelevant, or even unchristian", or is there some other explanation for this conspicuous wickedness?

I'm certainly grateful for the people who—having the greatest respect for Scripture—had the good sense to tighten the thumbscrews on people with too-long hair and too-short skirts. That was most helpful. And having dealt so prudently with those larger issues, they might now turn their attention to the smaller details of actually introducing the inspired Psalter to their worship.

Please understand: I'm not trying to persuade anyone to my way of thinking on this. This is just a suggestion to consider.