Monthly column on hymns and songs
A recent prayer-circular from some former Christian Union members includes two unconnected entries with a similar concern. For an Anglican friend who has just moved house and church, 'to sing lots of proper hymns again is absolutely fantastic - all that doctrine, all those good tunes!' A former Baptist church secretary reports having to resign his post then leave altogether, 'because, in the absence of a minister, the services were hijacked by a group of musicians playing a variety of loud instruments and singers singing shallow, self-centred songs'. Did you ever hear anything like it?
Christopher Idle
Well, yes. The very same week, I read in print what I have long suspected: that some musicians of the hijacking school see themselves as a new Levitical priesthood raised up by God to take charge of his church. When years ago, I first aired such thoughts, some musicians were self-effacingly quick to deny any such thing. Now, one of them has come clean. Ten years back, I read that God was 'restoring worship to his church' (that is, there were a lot of new songs around); now it seems it is only in the last five that God has actually been at work. This column will be out of date before you read it.
