Lewis's Oxford and grave (he loved cats--especially lions!)

On this day, November 22, 1963, Aldous Huxley died in LA of an LSD overdose, JFK died in Dallas from an assassin's bullet to the head. And on the same day at The Kilns near Oxford, C. S. Lewis's devoted brother Warnie brought a cup of tea to his ailing younger brother. Moments later, Warnie heard a clattering fall. Lewis had tried to get out of bed but had collapsed. He died of kidney failure. "Men must endure their going hence," was the Shakespeare quotation from the calendar on the day Lewis's mother had died many years before when he was nine. Warnie had the words chiseled on his brother's grave marker in Holy Trinity churchyard in Headington Quarry where you can see them today.  Eclipsed by the high-profile deaths of the author of Brave New World and an American president, in the drenching November rain, only a handful of friends showed up for Lewis's funeral and burial. 

In a chapter of God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To), I explore a number of the things C. S. Lewis wrote about congregational singing and hymns, by no means all complimentary. Early in his Christian experience, he thought the things his unsophisticated neighbors tried to sing in church were "fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music." He revised that as he matured spiritually. I conclude that chapter with the following:

LEWIS SINGS NOW

In a thrilling moment in The Magician’s Nephew, Lewis gives us a peek into the irrepressible force of music, perhaps what he truly longed for in singing. He has Aslan utter

"...a long single note; not very loud, but full of power. Polly’s heart jumped in her body when she heard it.

She felt sure that it was a call, and that anyone who heard that call would want to obey it and (what’s

more) would be able to obey it, however many worlds and ages lay between."

We can be pretty certain Lewis and his brother would not be bolting from their pew at the end of the church service and heading for the exit sign during that kind of anthem.

Though Lewis may have been overly opinionated about congregational singing in worship, and wanted “fewer, better, and shorter hymns,” over time he did come to see “the great merit” of the voice of the congregation, untrained, but singing from the heart, voices joining together, making a joyful noise unto the Lord.

Three hundred years before Lewis’s time, another Oxford-trained poet, Thomas Ken, wrote of glorified saints singing in heaven:

And hymns with the supernal choir

Incessant sing and never tire.

We’re safe to assume that C. S. Lewis is doing it as we speak, singing more, the best, and longest hymns, incessant ones, right next to the man in elastic side boots who used to sing out of tune, but now who sings more like how God himself sings.

Douglas Bond is author of Grace Works! (And Ways We Think It Doesn't) and twenty-seven other books of historical fiction, biography, devotion, and practical theology. He is lyricist for New Reformation Hymns, directs the Oxford Creative Writing Master Class, speaks at churches and conferences, and leads Church history tours in Europe. His book God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To), from which this post is an excerpt, is available at bondbooks.net; order today and receive a free Rise and Worship cd.

Solitary Conceit: CS Lewis Sticking His Nose Up at Hymns

A

 generation ago, most mature Christians knew the power of singing psalms and psalm-like hymns in worship, in the home, and around the family table. Experienced Christians knew more of life and of the reality of death; they had knelt at the deathbed of loved ones and friends, and made the connection. A disciplined life of joyful singing was one of the very important ways we prepared ourselves for singing in the hour of death, blessing and encouraging the dying—and ourselves, the bereaved living.

"Solitary conceit," Lewis later called this dislike

Enter one of the great tragic problems for the new generation of Christians who have spent their lives singing happy-clappy songs, with little or nothing about death and dying in those songs, and singing them in a venue that requires the full array of entertainment instruments and soloists to lead us, a venue that is wholly inaccessible at the deathbed. There’ll be no band, no lead vocalist, nor will there be an organ at your loved one’s deathbed—or at yours.

Thoughtful Christians, ones who look down the road, will want to sing in the home and in their churches in ways that can be portable, can be carried on in the hospice bed. Christian, rediscover how to sing, before it’s too late.

The stories are legion of the elderly unable to remember anything and anyone, but able to sing hymns they had learned in their childhood. My father-in-law, suffering with Alzheimer’s, unable to remember his own wife and children, and unable to read the words in front him, sang Christmas carols with us a few short months before his death, all by memory—which he had of nothing else. Ten minutes before my father died, he sang Psalm 23 with us; I believe he was even harmonizing on the bass line, as he had taught me to do in corporate singing as a young man.

But it’s not just the elderly. There’s the 2014 account of eighteen-year-old Lexi Hansen who was pronounced brain dead and on life support after being struck by a car while riding her longboard. The doctors were grim; they said the unresponsive teen had a 5% likelihood of survival. Lexi’s mother gave the account of the family joining hands around her hospital bed, expecting her to die. Then, one of them began singing hymns. The rest of the family joined in. In moments, Lexi’s eyes opened, and she squeezed her family’s hands as they sang.

I remember seeing my aunt who had turned away from her Christian upbringing, now in her eighties, weeping as we stood around the piano singing hymns from her childhood, hymns whose content she no longer claimed to believe. Tears, nevertheless. 

In his Confessions, Augustine credits overhearing Christians singing with preparing his heart for the gospel. “How greatly did I weep in thy hymns and canticles, deeply moved by the voices of thy Church so sweetly singing.”

It would be impossible to overstate the role of corporate singing in the Reformation. John Calvin, cautious about music, nevertheless, knew its power over human hearts. “Music has a secret and almost incredible power to move hearts.” And Luther ranked music, and singing hymns together in worship, next only to the Word of God and theology.

SOLITARY CONCEIT

Though C. S. Lewis did not get everything right, one of the things that compels many of us back to his writing, is that in the things he did get right he wrote and spoke about those things better than just about anyone. But when it comes to singing in corporate worship, Lewis seems unable to break free of some of his early prejudices against corporate singing. Put bluntly, Lewis did not agree with Augustine, Calvin, and Luther about hymns and the power of singing them in worship, at least not initially.

Picture Lewis as a new convert in 1931, knotting his tie and walking from his home The Kilns to attend corporate worship at Holy Trinity parish church for the very first time as a true believer in Christ, in working-class Headington Quarry, only three miles from the exalted spires of his sophisticated life at the oldest university in England, but an intellectual and aesthetic cosmos apart from his life in blue-color Headington Quarry.

In his collection of essays, God in the Dock, Lewis describes his initial impression of his neighbors’ singing, their untrained voices, their unrefined musical tastes.

I disliked very much their hymns, which I

considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate

music. But as I went on, I saw the great merit of it. I

came up against different people of quite different

outlooks and different education, and then gradually

my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the

hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were,

nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit

by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite

pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean

those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.

It is not for me to lay down laws, as I am only a

layman, and I don’t know much.

Notice the development of his opinion about their singing, “the great merit of it.” Whatever his claims about not knowing much, Lewis had finely tuned, refined musical and literary tastes. Literature was his life’s work. He was one of the best-read scholars of his century, and much of that reading was poetry. Yet, he was operating under the cloud of postmodern changes in poetry, the Imagists of the early 20^th century, the fragments of vers libre poets, and the general revolt against conventional poetry, the kind Lewis appreciated, understood, and loved. This may have had an influence on his early rejection of their “fifth-rate hymns.” The literary elites of the 20^th century insisted that poetry with specific theological content was lesser poetry, perhaps not even worthy of being included as poetry. Lewis could not be entirely unaffected by his culture’s secular prejudice.

But observe Lewis’s change, his confession that it was his pride, his “solitary conceit” that led to his early dislike of corporate singing at Holy Trinity.

HYMN TO EVOLUTION

More of a spoof than a true hymn of praise to God, Lewis did set his pen to write a hymn, a tongue-in-cheek lyric to evolution.

Lead us, Evolution, lead us

Up the future’s endless stair;

Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.

For stagnation is despair:

Groping, guessing, yet progressing,

Lead us nobody knows where.

Having fun at evolution’s expense, Lewis continues his playfully derisive verse through several more stanzas. We can’t help applauding his mocking lyric. But Lewis, of course, would not rank this as a proper hymn to be sung in the praise of God in corporate worship.

CORRUPT TEXTS

Nevertheless, hymns and singing not infrequently appear in Lewis’s writing... [excerpt from God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To), available at bondbooks.net]

Douglas Bond is author of Grace Works! (And Ways We Think It Doesn't) and twenty-seven other books of historical fiction, biography, devotion, and practical theology. He is lyricist for New Reformation Hymns, directs the Oxford Creative Writing Master Class, speaks at churches and conferences, and leads Church history tours in Europe. His book God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To), from which this post is an excerpt, is available at bondbooks.net; order today and receive a free Rise and Worship cd.

Music as the Opiate of the Masses: Communicating the Eternal With the Transitory

"...addictive but transitory... numbing, anesthetic, escapist."

[excerpt from God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To)
...many worship songs... were first composed for a solo voice, usually the lead vocalist in a band. In the church service, the worship leader becomes the lead vocalist, usually attempting to make his voice sound like the pop entertainer’s voice who first popularized the new song. This can be difficult, even entirely inaccessible, for untrained voices of the congregation to imitate. Allow me to switch from popular to higher-culture singing to illustrate the point.

Imagine trying to sing like Luciano Pavarotti, the “king of the high C’s” as he was known. Imagine him leading worship. Imagine trying to follow his booming tenor. Though he was one of the greatest tenors of all time, and could do astounding things with his highly trained instrument, his voice, almost nobody in the congregation has the capability to follow his leading. We would be inclined not to sing. We would want to listen, not mess up his performance. What is more, we would be wholly embarrassed to attempt to sing like an opera singer. Our neighbors would think we were putting on an affected manner of singing. They would be correct. Whether we appreciate opera or not, even those of us who do, do not think it would be appropriate to try to make our congregational singing sound like Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites.

But that brings up the question: Why is it that we have wholly embraced the popular entertainer’s voice and ethos but not an opera singer’s ethos? Why would it be inappropriate and unworkable to pattern our corporate worship singing after the music in Handel’s Messiah, or Mendelsohn’s Elijah?

Though pop entertainers are aiming at an entirely different vocal objective, it is, nevertheless, one that is highly specialized, requires a stage full of props, has its required conventions, though these are transient and based on the latest new bands and ever-evolving popular genres. But popular entertainment singing is not singing in the normal human fashion. We must be conditioned by popular entertainers to sing or attempt to sing the way they do. 

CHILDREN SINGING

One of my granddaughters as a two-year-old heard opera and thereafter for months she attempted to use her version of vibrato whenever she sang anything—which was often. It was hilarious. None of us could keep a straight face when she did it.

Children don’t naturally use vibrato or croon and cavort when they sing unless they have been conditioned to do so by loads of screen time watching entertainers do that kind of performance singing. Without the entertainment conditioning, however, children just sing: clear, joyful, unaffected singing. It whelms up from within them as image bearers of God. Their singing often can be full-voice, uninhibited, unaffected singing, like God sings, rejoicing over his children with loud singing (Zephaniah 3:17).

While God’s singing would make Pavarotti sound like a novice, hearing God singing would make us want to sing with him and like him. Far from intimidating us into silence, God, who exults over us with loud singing, made us for singing, calls us to sing back to him, to sing with him, to make a joyful noise unto him with our instrument, our voice.

The overwhelming evidence suggests that the typical worship leader, however well-intentioned, is not even striving to awaken the congregation’s instrument. Keith Getty urges worship leaders to self-assess after worship: “How well did our congregation sing? Our role is simply to be an accompaniment to them as they sing.”

Accompanying the human voice ought to be the principle thing any worship leader is doing. Whatever instruments are used to accompany the singing (not all instruments are as well suited to this role as others), it ought to be the objective of musicians to create an environment whereby the congregation’s voice will be heard above all other sounds in the room. God-honoring worship leaders will be like C. S. Lewis’s London cabby: “Stop your noise,” they will say to any sounds that compete with the voice of the congregation as it teaches and admonitions one another in corporate sung worship.  

But it is not like that in the average contemporary worship service. It is far more the reverse. It sometimes seems as if the band is saying to the congregation, “Stop your noise,” listen to my guitar, this cool riff, this clever bridge, my drums, my keyboard. Murmur along if you’d like to, but what’s most important here, is us and our instrumental music.

Music in many churches has become yet another concert, the gathering of God’s people on the Lord’s Day merely another venue for that concert. The band has been practicing for the concert all week, and hopes you enjoy it. As at many concerts, you may even join in on some of your favorites, but don’t mess up the performance.

Subverted by the entertainment ethos, the chancel becomes a stage on which a performance occurs for the pleasure or amusement of the audience—who are welcome to applaud after we’re done. Whatever other context where this kind of performance might be appropriate, it’s awkwardly conjoined, at best, with the vertical nature of Christian worship.  

FOLK MUSIC FOR FOLKS

If solo entertainment music, pop or classical, are difficult for the congregation to emulate, what genre remains?

Perhaps it’s music composed by folks for folks to sing. Folk music from many different traditions is far more accessible to the normal singing experience of untrained musicians and singers. Perhaps this is why so many of the most enduring hymn tunes have come from German, Scandinavian, English, Welsh, African-American Spiritual, and Irish folk music traditions.

One of the great strengths of Stuart Townend’s 2001 hymn lyric “In Christ Alone” is that it was set to a melody composed by Irishman Keith Getty. “Being brought up [in Ireland],” said Getty, “gave me a sense of melody that is very attuned to congregational singing.”

Whatever our ethnic upbringing, something resonates in the human soul with the ancient Irish folk tune Slane when we sing “Be Thou My Vision.” It needs no tampering. The timeless melody perfectly supports the rich lyric. The music compels us—not merely to clap, sway, and listen—but to sing, really sing, with full heart and voice, and minds wholly engaged.

Not all musical styles can do that. Many were never intended to do so. Is it even possible to begin with pop performance music that was produced for a multi-billion-dollar industry and then expect it to work for congregational singing?

Appetites for music change over time, and the changes are usually driven by philosophical and moral agendas. The musical style that takes center stage in most churches today was produced in the last fifty years as both outgrowth and catalyst to the sexual revolution of what Paul Johnson called “the decadent decade,” the 1960s. I state that not as opinion but as manifest fact. The sexual revolution did not produce polka music; it produced rock and roll, and its derivations, including middle-of-the-road pop music, as employed in most churches.

Though not a fan of T. S. Eliot’s poetry, I find his cultural prognostications uniquely perceptive. As a publicist he was constantly observing cultural changes and had this to say about the shift to what was popular in his day, a world on the cusp of the “decadent decade.”

Pop entertainment is a purely commercial

enterprise, an imitation and perversion of folk

culture. It is addictive but transitory, appealing to

an appetite for novelty and distraction. Pop

entertainment is truly the opiate of the masses in

a leveling society: numbing, anesthetic, escapist.

If Eliot is at all correct, we are forced to ask ourselves: How can the eternal, unchangeable truths of the gospel be communicated in a transitory medium that appeals to listeners’ love of novelty, escapism, and distraction, that numbs them and anesthetizes them? Eliot proceeds to contrast pop entertainment as a perversion of folk culture which “is enduring, noncommercial, and anonymous, and it is perpetuated by families, schools, and clubs. It unifies the members of a local community, living, dead, and not yet born, a source of collective memory.”

He should have added, “and churches.” If Eliot is at all right, which one is most suited to congregational singing in Christian worship? Which one unifies, perpetuates, endures, encourages us collectively to remember? If “Pop entertainment is a purely commercial enterprise,” as Eliot insists, and as a cursory glance at the CCM industry discloses, it becomes ingenuous in the extreme to sing:

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,

Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:

Thou and thou only, first in my heart,

High King of Heaven, my Treasure thou art.

Pre-order today bondbooks.net

Singing these words surrounded by an ethos scripted by the multi-billion-dollar entertainment industry—the stage arrayed with glitz and glitter, high-tech volume pulsing throughout the worship center—may prove to be far more than merely a “perversion of folk culture.”

Douglas Bond is author of Grace Works! (And Ways We Think It Doesn't) and twenty-seven other books of historical fiction, biography, devotion, and practical theology. He is lyricist for New Reformation Hymns, directs the Oxford Creative Writing Master Class, speaks at churches and conferences, and leads Church history tours in Europe. Watch for his forthcoming book God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To), from which this post is an excerpt; pre-order a signed copy of God Sings! at bondbooks.net and receive a free Rise & Worship cd.