At the start of the year we’ve been focussing as a church on the importance of godliness. It’s a much-needed tonic after Christmas. We’ve been learning that Jesus is our perfect model, but he’s also our source of godliness as well as being the reason we strive for purity.
For some reason though, musicians often seem to miss their calling to godliness. Newspaper stories about organists going off with vicars’ wives have dried up, not because organists no longer go off with vicars’ wives, but because it’s no longer news — it happens all the time. Musicians and godliness don’t often go hand in hand. Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623), whose anthems are regularly sung in cathedrals throughout the land, was a drunk, as well as being a ‘notorious swearer and blasphemer’.
He was eventually sacked from his job at Chichester Cathedral because (allegedly) he urinated out of the organ loft onto the Dean’s head. Only today I was told of an evangelical minister who won’t employ a music leader ‘because they sleep with their girlfriends’. I winced at the generalisation and I winced for the Dean of Chichester, but the ability of musicians to get themselves into all sorts of ungodly scrapes definitely needs some attention. Why is it that Christian musicians are so prone to disobedience?
