Backstory

The Christian Thread

Institutionalized Christianity has been going through a massive shaking these past years. Escapism has been put to the challenge by realism. Sacred vs Secular dualism by a more integrated approach to life. Status quo by social activism. Judgmentalism by compassion. Exclusion by inclusion. Patriarchy by gender equality. Hierarchy by egalitarianism. Racism by the flourishing of BIPOC leadership. Colonization by the rise of former colonies, both geographic and spiritual. The building and the leveraging of ‘spiritual brands’ for mass-influence by a call to return to the way of Jesus, the way of servanthood.

On the opposite end of the spectrum we are witnessing the brash doubling down of White Christian Nationalism, its misrepresentation of the teachings of Jesus, its rabid pursuit of political power, and the polarity that it has created in our world. In all of this, an emerging generation of forward-thinking songwriters, artists and thought leaders have been experiencing an increasing disconnect from the religious industrial complex, the ‘overground’, and been finding respite in what we call the ‘spiritual underground’. They’ve concluded that it is not going to be possible to rewrite the narrative using the existing operating system, and have been digging deep in search of a theological imagination that could prevent Empire from being replaced with yet another version of Empire. Despite the challenges, their voices are crucial, with the potential to help us grab a hold of the future and drag it into the present.

Virtual Library

With all of this in mind, Common Hymnal was created as a virtual library to help people navigate these uncertain times and find safe passage into the future by loading them up with insightful content from the spiritual underground. It was the first entity in what has since grown into a constellation of partner ventures under the ‘common’ brand.

History shows that the future is forged at the margins. So we set out to treasure-hunt the periphery of the Christian world, gathering displaced creatives and stocking this library with their songs, stories, and ideas, exposing the broader community to content that is coming out of the conversations and philosophical shifts happening on the fringe. We branded the project a hymnal because songs were central to the plan, but the rich cross-pollination that started happening among artists, songwriters, and thinkers made it essential to blog their reflections as well. As a result, we have been able to curate a catalog that centers life, justice, and spirituality; embodies love, joy, dignity, honesty, and empathy; carries both praise and protest; comforts the disheartened and emboldens the courageous.

A brief clarification: when we refer to protest, we mean a love-driven act that exposes and disrupts injustice - not the petty hostility seen in mean-spirited social media attacks. True justice work demands maturity and seeks transformation and dignity for everyone, including those who cause harm

Our contributors are alive to the work of justice, restoration and reparation. They engage deeply with the issues and produce meaningful content. They recognize that social activism aims for a world where people can flourish, rather than one where they must constantly fight for their existence. Thus, celebrating joy, hope, and love is equally vital to this anthology.

We started with a blank slate and invited a group of songwriters and thought leaders to a series of songwriting camps to gauge the emerging voices and foster connections. From these gatherings, we amassed a few hundred songs, ultimately refining them for our first album. This beautifully awkward process of curation involves casting a wide net and carefully sifting through to find the gems.

This site serves as the anchor for our content, which we began aggregating before the formation of Common Exchange, our record label. Through this label, we distribute our work across various platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Live Events and our Patreon. We’ve also curated a few Spotify playlists: Worship, Justice, Black Lives Matter, Hip Hop and Everything On Our Label.

Spiritual Underground

To grasp the spiritual underground, it’s useful to first envision the overground: the prominent network of churches, ministries, and institutions that define the public face of Christianity. In contrast, the underground occupies the margins - less visible, less formal - where unconventional and unlikely collaborators live and serve together, finding common ground outside the mainstream.

Historically, these misfits have been pioneers - champions of authenticity, honesty, and original thought. Though their efforts often seemed scrappy, they have been remarkably consequential, sparking new ideas and initiatives that have consistently driven positive reformations in the overground.

In recent history, ‘underground’ has described the unregistered church in China, where believers must choose between joining the state-sanctioned church or building community outside its closely monitored system to avoid constant compromise. Essentially, the distinction between overground and underground often hinges on how one negotiates with power.

For two thousand years, overground communities were shaped primarily by theological beliefs. In a surprising turn in the modern age, theology has taken a back seat - to personality and production.

Conversely, the underground is shaped more by sociology than theology, with relationship as the primary draw. In recent years, informal friendship circles have grown into movements as friends share skills and gather around shared passions. The result feels increasingly like the collaborative “kingdom of priests” Moses once imagined.

Similar to athletics - where you can run track or play team sports - creativity can be solo or collaborative. In the underground’s cooperative culture, most of our contributors are team players, fostering a vibrant community and an infectious, irrepressible ‘party spirit.’

As in all things, few matters are purely black and white - nuance, contradiction, and compromise abound. Many who live and serve in the overground also identify with the underground, and they are welcome here. That said, their involvement carries a potential vulnerability: with all the goodwill in the world, we cannot risk being drawn into a tug of war with them if their involvement with us creates problems for them at home base.

While renewing the institution is not our mission, we remain open to serving the overground when the opportunity arises. Love-driven work is rarely linear; it unfolds with nuance and surprise. We aim to stay flexible in response.

Construct And Culture

From the start, we intentionally conceived and branded this project as a hymnal - and have done our best to stay true to that vision. Although we were birthed in underground spirituality, we are not a church with a flagship worship collective, and we do not operate under an ecclesiastical governing body. In full transparency, our content comes from people whose life experience, art, and interpretations of the Bible don’t always fit within mainstream Christianity.

A great deal of thought has gone into building this enterprise, and it usually takes time, proximity, and curiosity to grasp our culture. We’ve spelled out as much as we can on this backstory page, but some things are simply better ‘felt than telt.’ Hence our commitment to moving and growing slowly and carefully.

Although Common Hymnal was not founded as a worship collective, we receive invitations to send teams to events, including to lead worship. Live events were never part of the original idea, but they have become a vital part of our work. From a song publisher’s perspective, there is no better way to share music than in live settings.

Our first contact with an artist usually comes through a piece of content, often before we know their philosophical or theological leanings. We learn more as the relationship deepens. Contributors are at different points in their faith journeys, lifestyles, and efforts to address the world’s injustices. This being said, the ideation of this project dates back to the 1980s in the South African anti-apartheid struggle, making anti-racism and anti-colonialism central to our work. But our contributors also confront a wider range of harms: xenophobia, homophobia, sexual abuse, war, gun violence, institutional oppression, exploitative capitalism, mass incarceration, capital punishment, and environmental destruction.

That said, our role as an aggregator is deliberately blurry. We ask that you approach us like any other curator in your life- your favorite coffee bar hosting a weekly open mic, your local library with a monthly book reading, or a tastemaker compiling your favorite playlist.

The margins, too, are blurry, and often messy - just like life itself. We do our best to embrace broken people while holding hope for health and goodness. We won’t always get it right, but as learners, we remain hopeful that relational clumsiness can be resolved when journeying alongside other learners.

In any initiative like this, certain styles, genres, and emphases naturally rise to the top. Inevitably, we develop our own personality and subculture, shaped by our journeys, shared experiences, and collective taste. A quick browse of this site will make clear the kind of art we value.

Just as live performances were never part of the original plan, neither was starting a record label. But this project has had a mind of its own, and we’ve found ourselves ‘following the yellow brick road’ into an ever growing family of ‘common’-branded imprints - with Common Exchange as our record label.

Ethnology

It will quickly become clear that Common Hymnal is multiethnic. This, against a backdrop where racial diversity is trending in mainstream Christianity. This interest in multiculturalism is a fairly recent development, and it is all-too-often happening in communities that are led by white people or built on the algorithm of a white frame of reference. Truth be told, a disproportionate number of these entities have sketchy histories when it comes to racial justice, and are very often led by people who have loudly and publicly supported politicians with racist histories, racist rhetoric and racist policies.

When Jesus commissioned his followers to ‘disciple ethnicities,’ the expectation was to do so from the bottom up, in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. Yet historically, the spread of the gospel was often tied to empire and colonialism - from the top down. Against this backdrop, the teachings of Jesus reveal an inseparable link between proclaiming the good news and honoring the world’s many ethnicities, which the prophetic psalms describe as his inheritance.

The 1960s gave rise to two American movements: the Civil Rights movement and the Contemporary Worship movement. Both spread globally, yet for the most part, they ran on parallel tracks. Common Hymnal was born from the conviction that worship and justice are inseparable - hence our slogan: Praise and Protest.

When unity and diversity are promoted without a commitment to confronting systemic racial injustice, it creates unbearable dissonance for congregants and discredits Christianity. That’s why people of color are increasingly speaking out against white supremacy. You will probably never hear us throw around words like diversity or unity. We are not merely pursuing a multicultural aesthetic, but a just society.

One consequence of white privilege - and its disregard for the history of racial injustice - is that people of color are often forced to compromise deeply held convictions to access financially rewarding opportunities within white led organizations. We are committed to seeking spaces where we can thrive without bending to white access. Specifically, we are not seeking to work with white collaborators who lack the self-awareness or compassion to reckon with the real consequences of their indifference to the experiences of people of color.

Trajectory

We are not pursuing influence in the Christian bubble, nor are we seeking to recycle familiar practices with new packaging. Neither are we revolting against the ‘overground’. We are simply drawn to what we see happening outside the current structures, and are committed to chronicling some of the creative expression that we are discovering in these spaces. We are also aware of the growing demographic of Christ followers who no longer live in the echo chamber. Some have made their way to the outskirts because of prophetic insight, some because of unfortunate experiences in the system that have caused them to search out a place of safety. With regard the latter, we are fully aware of the risks involved in working with people who are still in pain from church trauma. Nevertheless, the example of Jesus compels us to journey with them at the speed of their healing.

Underground believers are less swayed by trends, including the narrow framing of communal worship as an emotional song set where every song is ‘spiritually valiant’, theatrical production is assumed, and the set list mirrors the priority songs being promoted by well-branded church movements. Their commitment to thoughtfulness, honesty, and originality prevents them from functioning as a metaphorical Xerox machine for a karaoke franchise, especially when engaging something as weighty as engagement with God. This hymnal, then, is less about promoting a genre and more about documenting an evolving culture - one that embraces a wide spectrum of ideas, values, convictions, disciplines, expressions, styles, anomalies, quirks, and production sensibilities.