Born in Song!

Born in song! God's people have always been singing!
Born in song! Hearts & voices raise.
So today we worship together.
God alone is worthy to be praised!

The opening of a little-known hymn by Charles Wesley. It is taken by Methodists to summarise an important aspect of our worship and our faith. Charles Wesley's hymns are often essentially a sermon, set to music, a technique which works for two reasons. Firstly, it means that those theological points are more easily remembered and, on the flip side, it means that when Christians are singing such hymns, they are reminding one another of those truths.
A good (& hopefully familiar) example of this is 'And Can It Be', especially verses 3 and 5.

In case it's not clear by now, I come from a Methodist background and there was always music in our house growing up. Usually someone would be singing to themselves, humming, whistling, playing the piano, or listening to a CD or the radio. However, whilst these songs would sometimes be hymns or Christian songs, I'm not sure there are more than a handful of overtly Christian CDs in that house (I own just 2). More often the songs would be of a different nature. Most of the CDs are secular, but a large proportion of the songs sung would be campfire or protest songs. As a child, I attended Woodcraft Folk meetings and camps, and they too have a culture of communal singing and thus I learned many songs from there also.

I was thinking recently of the similarities between the Wesleyan idea of the sermon-to-music and the idea of the protest song. Music is a good way to help people remember the relevant points, and in a society that until relatively recently largely illiterate, this would be extremely important. Also, it's a good way for people to be able to remind one another of important truths, common ground and significant events in history.
A song that particularly springs to mind here is 'The World Turned Upside Down' by Leon Rosselsonn & made famous by Billy Bragg. It tells the story of the Diggers, a group of early socialists, who rose up in rebellion against the enclosure of common land. The lyrics talk of the age-old battle between the poor's desire for equality and the rich's desire to keep what they have. Whilst Enclosure is not really an issue now, that battle still continues.

Whilst musing on these things, I asked my family to list their 3 favourite protest songs. I gave them no further definition, largely to see what definition they would give themselves. They chose 9 different songs between the 3 of them. (topics of songs are given in parentheses)

Mum chose songs that made a specific point (rather than a general rant about the world) and tended towards a more 'traditional' style, but of the 30+ titles she listed for me, these were her top 6, as 3 was too small a sample to do the list full justice. (Her choices also had to have a good tune):

• Send me back to Georgia (anti-war)
• World Turned Upside Down (social injustice) [as mentioned above]
• I wanna be an Engineer (sexism)


• Where have all the flowers gone? (anti-war)
• What have they done to the rain (anti-nuclear)
• One Long Happy Night (social justice)

Dad chose more 'modern' songs. Also, it may be pertinent to mention that when I was younger, he made a set of what became known as his 'angry tapes'. These were compilations of protest songs and similar, which we regularly listened to in the car. I'm sure that those tapes had a significant impact on my current political leanings and also on my knowledge of social history (both British and also on topics such the South African apartheid). Two of the songs he chose are about specific events, as opposed to the more general subject matter of many protest songs.

• Ideology - Billy Bragg (politics)
• Iron Hand - Dire Straits (British miners' strikes)
• Hurricane - Bob Dylan (racism & the arrest of boxer, Rubin Carter)

Tim (my brother) chose, again, more modern songs, but his were even further from the traditional 'ballad-style'. Again, he wanted songs which made a specific, well made point, rather than a general rant about the rubbishness of the world or the futility of everything!:

• War - Edwin Starr (anti-war)
• Bodies - Sex Pistols (abortion/pro-choice)
• Mister Writer - Stereophonics (anti-paparazzi)

So, all of these songs with wildly differing styles are largely for the same purpose - to make a passionate point and to get that point heard, the same as Wesley's gospel-to-a-tune.

Do find that you respond better to a topic if it's presented to music? Do you remember it better? Do you find it easier to share it?

If you got this far, thank you.

The Bible & me

After many years working with and alongside the [Evangelical] Christian Union at university, I have had many discussions and downright arguments as to why I am not a Conservative Evangelical (please note capital letters). I respect the Bible, but many of the interpretations that seem to come automatically as part of Conservatism/Evangelicalism do not make any sense to me.
Many times, my interpretation of a particular passage is at odds with the 'traditional' interpretation, but to me (& I'm sure many others) makes more sense and indeed seems to be more likely to be true. However, I then am told that my interpretation is wrong. Why? Because it's not what the Bible teaches. Apparently.
An example - Women covering their heads in church.
In the times in which these verses were written, it would have been shameful for the women to go without headcovering. To me, this is not a religious regulation, but a guideline on how to interact with local culture. Going out with their head uncovered marked these women as dressed like prostitutes. That is not a good thing for a Christian woman to do. Now, this is not the case! I do not feel the need to cover my head in church or anywhere else. However, if I attended a church which asked me to do so, then I would because that would be culturally appropriate in that church. My interpretation is that it is ok for a women to not cover her head, but it would not be appropriate for her to go out dressed in clothes that make her an sexual object or a prostitute. That would be demonstrating that she had more freedom in Christ than she really did. She is a daughter of God, and as such should have respect for herself and thus should dress appropriately. Covering her head would actually have the opposite effect - that she is somehow not fully worthy of respect and she is somehow a lesser human being compared to her husband or any man. To me this is simply untrue. She and any women on God's green earth are made in his image and are loved by God as his daughters.

But I have said this before and have been accused of not understanding the passage, twisting it for my own ends, of being a Liberal, of being a feminist (meant in a bad way), or simply of having no respect for the Bible. All of these (except maybe the feminism one), I would dispute.
However, I'm not sure that would achieve much here.

Instead, I would like to direct you to this post on Bible Deism. I'd be very interested to hear the thoughts of anyone who reads this post or Peter/qaya's.

God bless.