Singing Sacred Harp? Thank a Quaker!

Paul L. from Minneapolis and I were interviewed at the Friends General Conference Gathering about Sacred Harp singing by Matthew Streib (scroll down to the July 5th podcast to hear it). Matthew is taking a few months to bicycle around the United States for his American Pilgrimage project, in which he visits unusual and uniquely American religious communities and experiences. Matthew used my favorite parts from our interview, but I will say that we must have inadvertently led him a little astray... He credits the revival of Sacred Harp singing to Quakers. While there are many social movements that evidence God's grace in the world for which Quakers could rightly claim leadership despite very small numbers (e. g., abolition of slavery and women's suffrage), I really don't think we can count the Sacred Harp revival as one of them. Still, it's a fun little interview that includes a clip of us singing 40 Lenox.