Hyper-atomised singing?

As 2023 drew to a close, I had the substantial pleasure of being hooked on Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson’s podcast ‘Post- Christianity?’, tracing the roots of our contemporary Western Post-Christian culture, and what it means to live for Jesus in this context.

While I could wax lyrical on all that I loved and learned from these eight conversations, there were a few moments that made me, as a Christian musician, pause and ponder. By way of starting a conversation, let me share some of what I’ve been thinking about.

Episode 6 features historian and theologian Carl Trueman as a guest. After masterfully unpacking the intellectual ancestry of our Post-Christian moment, he is asked if he thinks there are ways that the church has been complicit with the culture in moving away from God. With little hesitation, the first place he alights on is Christian singing: ‘the prominence we give to the first person in our church life particularly in our worship [is] problematic. … We are vulnerable to treating the church as we might treat a squash club or a golf club[:] … the thing that we join that connects with us.’

Now notice that this critique is not the same as the Jesus-is-my-boyfriend-esque critiques of some of the Christian music of recent decades. He is not opposed outright to the use of the first person in song lyrics. Instead, we could sum up what he is saying with this question: ‘When was the last time you sang a Christian song (other than O church arise) that explicitly acknowledged that following Jesus involves other Christians?’

One of the things that I really valued about this podcast series was its focus on the church together as one of the most potent witnesses to our hyper-atomised consumerist individualist post-Christian world. As Glen Scrivener put it in the final episode of the series: ‘Sometimes the greatest appeal you can make to somebody is to show someone Christian worship.’ But if we are inviting our neighbours to behold a crowd singing of their own personal relationship with Jesus, apparently oblivious to everyone else in the room, are we not inviting them to behold a rather peculiar inconsistency? Are we just reinforcing our culture’s perception that faith is good for you, but cannot have any impact on anyone beyond you?

If you are a gifted wordsmith, please consider this a commission to help pad out a relatively under-filled theme in Christian hymnody. Those of you who keep an eye on what your church sings, keep songs that proclaim our shared identity in Christ as part of the balanced diet (EMU Music’s We Declare is a good place to start if you need a new song). Finally, all of us, let’s not stop holding out the preview of a better family in a better world that God has given us in one another.