Worship Music/Institutionalised Homoeroticism

Whether it be the faux-American accents that everyone insists on singing in, the awful singing/harmonising that usually accompanies it, the implicit eroticism with which spiritual themes are addressed, or the psychological manipulation of ecstasy coupled with hard-hitting and unequivocal sermons that usually accompany it – I feel rather uneasy about it.

My personal favourite is ‘Jesus, take me as I am’.

Jesus take me as I am,
I can come no other way.
Take me deeper into You,
Make my flesh life melt away.

Or:

I want to know you,
I want to hear your voice,
I want to know you more.

I want to touch you,
I want to see your face,
I want to know you more.


Or:

And Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii. I’m desperate for you.
And Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii. I’m lost without you.


When Jim Chew referred to much of what happens as (something like) a huge white, middle-class love-up, I don’t think he was very far wrong.

Worship music is so Protestant. It has ticks in all the right boxes:

• No talent required at all (a monkey can learn four chords on a guitar)
• Everyone is invited to participate (ie, sing along)
• Popular, emotive soft-rock ballads become personal salvation drivers

A wonderful South Park episode gets it about right. Cartman sings in a worship band, who perform such tracks as ‘I wasn’t born again yesterday’. One track contains the words:


I wanna get down on my knees and start pleasing Jesus
And feel his salvation all over my face.

Whatever you think of South Park, they certainly know how to parody things.

But I do like good music. I do love listening to choral music, which seems increasingly rare in churches, and least of all in churches that regard themselves as ‘cutting edge’. So what’s the difference?

1. Choral music uses the same words all the time (in a literal sense – worship music does this, of course, but without acknowledging it). The repetition of familiar words with different musical settings encourages one to engage with them in different ways.
2. Choral music is often genuinely difficult to perform, and beautiful to listen to. Engaging with spirituality through excellent music is a good thing.
3. Choral music is based around the liturgies of the Church, and recites actual bits of the Bible! Incredible! Interesting that those adopting a particularly high doctrine of Scripture are often those whose worship involved precisely none of it, whereas choral evensong has the songs of Mary and Simeon, and a WHOLE Psalm! I remember one advocate of worship music advocating Hillsong on the grounds that it had ‘some really biblical lyrics’. This is certainly not the case in every Hillsong tune I have ever heard, and is the case in liturgy that, err, is straight out of the Bible. Simple really: use beautiful language and concepts directly, rather than putting them through the triple beauty/content bypass from which most worship songs have suffered at is a rather good thing.