How important was music to Martin Luther? Drawing on hundreds of liturgical documents, contemporary accounts of services, books on church music, and other sources, Joseph Herl gives readers a vivid sense of what it would have been like to attend a Lutheran church from the 16th to the18th century.

Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism traces the path of music and congregational song in the Lutheran church from the Reformation to 1800, to show how it acquired its reputation as the "singing church."

Dealing with a topic that has become increasingly popular in recent scholarship, this work will prove equally thought-provoking to those with an interest in music and in Reformation history.