Have we been singing ourselves to death?

There have been many complaints about the government’s insistence that we should not sing in church.

My youngest daughter is in one of the Cambridge college choirs, and it really isn’t the same hearing them do Evensong on Zoom. There’s nothing quite like choral harmony, or listening to the Gettys doing ‘O Church Arise’ at full volume on YouTube. But hearing my family screech and strain our way through a song with the online church service as the background on Sunday is not the most inspiring thing. I miss congregational singing with our church family.

Crowding out the word?

Yet, I do wonder sometimes if evangelicals today put too much emphasis on this. The fashion in many churches, both high and low, whether Anglican or not, seems to be to spend more time singing or listening to music than attending to God’s word read and preached. If the words of our songs and anthems are Scriptural, the damage may be mitigated, but not entirely avoided.