As part of a wider project (Theology, Modernity, and the Arts), a group of scholars met in in Cambridge to envision a research project that would demonstrate the ways in which music illuminates the theological currents that have shaped the modern era. In the months that followed, a steering committee was identified, project goals were set, and a central question formulated: How can the study of music contribute to the theological reading of modernity? 

The project’s first full meeting occurred at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music in May of 2016. A cohort of 12 distinguished theologians, musicologists, and music theorists gathered, chaired by DITA Director Dr. Jeremy Begbie and Dr. Markus Rathey of Yale University. Six papers were offered on the intersections of theology, music, and modernity in the period 1740–1850, with special attention to the concept of freedom. 

Several follow-up meetings at Duke and Yale carried forward the project over the next four years, each focusing on a key topic at the intersection of theology, modernity, and music and including live performances with professional musicians and practicing artists.

Theology, Music, and Modernity, the project's major outcome, was published in March 2021. The volume is comprised of sixteen essays composed over the project’s four year period: heroic or “revolutionary” freedom, typified by Beethoven; the shift of sacred music from church to concert hall; the pioneering work of Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; and the way musicians of this period often tried to wrestle free of the constrictions of language in the quest for religious transcendence.