Dr. Mark Porter

Mark Porter is a lecturer, musician, and researcher currently working at the University of Erfurt in Germany and Paris Lodron University of Salzburg in Austria. 

His work is driven by a desire to engage with the diversity of musical practices and experiences in Christianity and beyond and he seeks to understand their significance for individuals, for particular communities, and within wider constellations of groups, networks, and ecologies. 

Mark is author of Contemporary Worship and Everyday Musical Lives, Ecologies of Resonance in Christian Musicking, and For the Warming of the Earth: Music, Faith, and Ecological Crisis. He is co-editor of the edited collection Ethics and Christian Musicking and programme chair of the biennial Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives conference. His writing has appeared in the Church Music Quarterly, Ecclesial Practices, Liturgy, the Journal of Contemporary Religion, the Hymn, and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, among others. 

He has taught and presented at numerous universities around the world, as well as maintaining a practical strand to his work through engaging with communities, offering workshops, and collaborating on a range of creative projects and performances. 

Diversity, Interaction, and Experience in Christian Musicking

This habilitation project is rooted in the idea that dimensions of interaction and relationship stand at the heart of religious musical practice, and that there is no single guiding logic according to which these dimensions operate, but rather that they are negotiated differently in different traditions, as communities respond to the changing world around them, and as these communities come into different relationships with each-other. 

The research is built on an understanding that religious experience and models of community are often closely bound up with musical interactions and that, whilst music studies and religious studies scholarship have often occupied very different and separate realms of scholarly enquiry, there are good reasons to bring them back much closer together. A focus on interaction, and on the significance that music has for participants in worshipping communities can be one way of achieving this. 

The project draws together a wide range of fieldwork and case studies, from work focussed on evangelical and post-evangelical communities through to work on the role of music in environmental protest movements, forest church gatherings and performances of requiems for lost species. Together, these form a portfolio for a cumulative habilitation.

Books

• Porter, Mark (2024). For the Warming of the Earth: Music, Faith, and Ecological Crisis. London: SCM Press.
• Porter, Mark and Nathan Myrick (Eds.) (2021). Ethics and Christian Musicking. Abingdon: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003001485
• Porter, Mark (2020). Ecologies of Resonance in Christian Musicking. Monograph manuscript published in the American Academy of Religion’s Religion, Culture, and History series by Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197534106.001.0001
• Porter, Mark (2016). Contemporary worship music and everyday musical lives. Abingdon: Routledge.DOI: 10.4324/9781315451299

Shorter Writings

• Porter, Mark (Forthcoming) ‘Amazing Grace in Virtual Space: Two Pandemic Performances on YouTube’. In: Amazing Grace at 250: Global Heritage and Contested Legacies.
• Porter, Mark (2025) ‘Resonant relationships and ecological crisis’. Invited contribution for Theology. DOI: 10.1177/0040571X241307354
• Porter, Mark (2024) ‘Singing the climate crisis’. A series of four columns for The Hymn.
• Porter, Mark (2024) ‘Encountering, exploring, and teaching ecomusicology – a personal journey’. Invited contribution to a special issue of Alltag - Kultur - Wissenschaft.
• Porter, Mark (2023). ‘Christian Musical Innovation and Changing Ecological Relationships’ in: Journal of Contemporary Religion. DOI: 10.1080/13537903.2022.2153477
• Porter, Mark (forthcoming 2025). ‘The intersectional ecologies of civic musical spaces’. Invited chapter for the Oxford Handbook of Music and Christian Theology.
• Porter, Mark (2021). Contribution to an online installation for The Christian Nation Project: A Multimedia Installation Exploring Christian nationalism looking at diversity in the 2020 Irish Blessing YouTube video.
• Porter, Mark (2020). ‘Fleeing the Resonance Machine: Music and sound in “emerging church” communities’ in: Journal of Contemporary Religion. DOI: 10.1080/13537903.2020.1816306
• Porter, Mark (2020) ‘How (Ethno)musicological is God? Ethnomusicology, Theology, and the Dynamics of Interdisciplinary Dialogues’. In: “Religion – Musik – Macht. Ed. by Wolfgang Müller and Franc Wagner. Basel: Schwabe Verlag. DOI: 10.24894/978-3-7965-4220-6
• Porter, Mark (2020) ‘(Almost) a decade of congregational music studies’. Invited article for The Hymn.
• Porter, Mark (2017) ‘Charismatic worship and cosmopolitan movement(s)’ in: Liturgy. DOI: 10.1080/0458063x.2018.1449512
• Porter, Mark (2017) ‘Singing beyond territory: Hillsong and church planting in Oxford, UK’. In: “You call me out upon the waters”: Critical Perspectives on the Hillsong movement. Ed. by Tanya Riches and Tom Wagner. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-59656-3_9
• Porter, Mark (2016). ‘Sounding back and forth: directions and dimensions of resonance in congregational musicking’ in: Journal of the American Academy of Religion. DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfw078
• Porter, Mark (2016). ‘Marginal spaces at St Aldates, Oxford’ in: Journal of Contemporary Religion 31.2, pp. 239–253. DOI: 10.1080/13537903.2016.1152680
• Porter, Mark (2014). ‘The Developing Field of Christian Congregational Music Studies’ in: Ecclesial Practices 1.2, pp. 149–166. DOI: 10.1163/22144471-00102004
• Porter, Mark (2013). ‘Moving between musical worlds: Worship music, significance and ethics in the lives of contemporary worshippers’. In: Christian congregational music: performance, identity, and experience. Ed. by Monique M Ingalls, Carolyn Landau and Tom Wagner. Aldershot: Ashgate. DOI: 10.4324/9781315571850
• Porter, Mark (2013). ‘Contemporary worship music: different perspectives’. In: Church Music Quarterly March 2013, pp. 16–18.

http://markporter.co.uk