By: Jim Taylor

Mutterings of discontent


Only sexual misconduct causes as much dissension in a church congregation as music.

        For 15 years, I edited a quarterly journal for clergy. For 15 years, the editorial board tried to get someone to write an article about this source of conflict. No one dared.

        Clergy complained about music directors who considered anything less than Bach and Handel an act of blasphemy. Music directors bemoaned clergy whose musical tastes ranged the gamut from Meatloaf to Led Zeppelin. But no one would write about it, in anything less than the blandest of generalities.

        Congregation members, for their part, tend to indulge in little circles of discontent.

        Locally, I’ve had people assert, with absolute certainty, that the choir picks the hymns. And they don’t like it.

        Others insist, with equal certainty, that the minister picks all the hymns. And they don’t like it.

        They’re both wrong. I know. Because I picked those hymns, along with a small group willing to spend hours sifting through literally hundreds of possible pieces that would fit the theme of that service.

        But it’s futile to reason with these critics – because music is not rational.

        Like art, touch, taste, and love, music bypasses our rational minds and goes straight to our emotions. We experience music; we don’t verbalize it.

        Music is more than words, more than black squiggles on white paper. It’s a visceral reaction, as primal as a mother’s heartbeat.

        No one ever cites minor chords, awkward intervals, or difficult syncopation as their reasons for disliking some pieces.

        They don’t like it because it doesn’t feel like what they’re accustomed to. They want to soak in a warm bath of familiar words and tunes.



Differing reactions

But what’s comfortable for one person makes someone else uncomfortable.

        One congregation I know starts every service with 15 minutes of “Praise” choruses to attract younger worshippers. My friends make sure they arrive 15 minutes late.

        When David Martyn was minister of First United Church in Kelowna, he had the congregation sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” one Sunday.

        After it finished, he said, “You had three distinct reactions.

        “One group was offended by a hymn that glorifies war and violence.

        “Another group was delighted to sing a grand old hymn again.

        “And the third group wondered where this unfamiliar new song had come from.”

        Every time I gather lists of favourite songs from random members of a congregation, at least a third aren’t great old hymns at all. They weren’t written until the 1980s; they didn’t become familiar until the last decade or so.

        Old does not necessarily equal great. Charles Wesley wrote over 6,000 hymns. A few are still sung today. Others deserve to be forgotten.

        I cannot imagine any modern congregation singing all 26 verses of the 1580 hymn “Jerusalem, my happy home,” by a writer known only as F.B.P.

        But I’m sure churchgoers in his era also grumbled about being forced to sing music they considered inappropriate for worship.

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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