There is a mission field that I’ve always struggled to know how to reach with the gospel. It’s made up of what I call ‘choral atheists’.
These are people who belong to church choirs or choral societies, they sing Christ-centred works like Bach’s Matthew Passion or Handel’s Messiah, and yet they don’t believe a word of what they sing. To be honest, I find that choral atheists are more hardened to the gospel than anyone else I meet. Just as hardened are the non-believers who like to listen to this music, which, though I don’t like the definition, I’ll refer to as sacred music.
On the verge
I was prompted to write about this after reading an article someone gave me from the Spectator. The article was written by Stephen Pettitt, who describes himself as a ‘committed agnostic on the verge of fully-fledged atheism’. He wonders why he is so attracted to sacred music despite being a ‘fully paid-up member of the Richard Dawkins tendency’.
