Opinion

Should Christian music be “meat and two veg”?

Ian Boughton shares his thoughts on Christian music, old and new, and feels that it is not all bright and beautiful!

It is not very often that I find myself agreeing with an archbishop. 
 
In this case, the cleric in question is Lord Williams of Oystermouth who, as Rowan Williams, used to be Archbishop of Canterbury, and indeed later honorary president of the Hymn Society. That is relevant, because he recently stirred things up in an interview with one of the classy newspapers by having a go at familiar hymns sung at weddings and funerals, including ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, which he reportedly dismissed as ‘baby food’. 
 
Heavens, that caused a rumpus! To be fair, he didn’t start it - Lord Lisvane, once clerk to the House of Commons and still a church organist, got it all going when he wrote to The Times complaining that the same hymn, chosen at half of the weddings he plays for, is 'saccharine doggerel with a jingly tune... deeply depressing’.
 
In support, Lord Williams said that “people in today’s secular society lack a knowledge of hymns and tend to draw upon those they sang as children. The unfortunate effect is that we have hymns that work at a primary school level.”  Instead, he said, good hymns should nourish the spirit, and as an example he recommended ‘Love Divine, All Loves Excelling’.
 
Now, while I disagree with him about the lyrical content of both of those hymns, and you could hardly find two more different styles of Christian songwriting, I do accept that he has a point – there is a lot of ‘baby food’ around.
 
I have long argued that a percentage of new songs written under the banner of ‘contemporary Christian music’ are utter drivel. Sure, he best new songs are terrific, without a doubt – but some songwriters seem to believe they can get a reputation for great piety with lyrics of airy-fairy wordiness and pompous semi-churchy psychobabble that they would never ever use in everyday talk. It seems to be believed that if you deliver these with an expression of pure rapture on your face, congregations will think you’re being deeply meaningful, whatever tosh your lyrics may be.
 
The very best parody of this came from the Rev Gerald Ambulance, a character created by Stephen Tomkins for the satirical Christian website Ship of Fools (‘the magazine of Christian unrest’), in his song 'O God, You're Really Lord'. The words go something like this:
“Oh God, You’re really God, Yes, you are.
I love you, God, Because you’re God, You’re really God.
Oh yes, You really are, Because you’re God. Oh God…”
 
That is a pin-sharp satire on certain modern Christian lyrics!  Baby food, or what?
 
Beside this, there is also an odd idea that the slower you deliver such words, the more meaningful they appear in a faith context… as if ‘slow’ worship music equates with ‘deeply contemplative and sincere’.  And a quick reference to the contemporary Christian music charts (there are several, and they rarely agree) reveals a horrifying preponderance of slow, weighty, tortured and agonising singer-songwriter lyrics, delivered as heart-rending searing honesty and loyalty to the Almighty.
 
But, to quote the retired Archbishop, they could be considered baby food.

(Of course, similar plodding slowness does exist in traditional hymns. An equally sharp satire about this came from Richard Stilgoe and Peter Skellern in their superb song ‘Sign of Peace’, which opens with the lines: “Mrs. Beamish stands in church, expression calm and holy, and when the organ plays, she mumbles hymns... extremely slowly.”)
 
I always find it difficult to get enthused by slow, dreary wordiness. I think it was the minister who served in East Anglia in the 1980s and wrote a super book about bringing two parish churches into revival, who remarked that his years as a curate had shown him that the Church of England ‘had done a good job of taking the joy out of worship’.   
 
Clearly, baby-food lyrics and dreary music does none of us any good. What I would like to hear is less wordy, but genuinely meaningful, lyrics which can be delivered and sung in an enthusiastic manner… making a joyful noise, as it were.
 
Maybe it is time we had another modern hymn-writing contest!
 

Ian Boughton is a musician and author and retired journalist who lives in Dilham in Norfolk. 

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