Godless Heathen

In relation to religion & metaphysical belief, I walk a strange path. On the one hand, I sing in churches a lot, singing a lot of religious music as a chorister & soloist. Not only this, but I also often sing religious music where I have a choice of material, as with my duo Candela.

On the other hand, I'm an avowed atheist. I posted this to the extropian list recently, in response to someone banging on about atheists and how they are believer just like the religious (yes, that old chestnut):

Just to confuse further, check out the original meaning of Agnostic
(here). Thomas Huxley's position was that you shouldn't
claim the truth of something that you can't prove. To take a position
of A-gnosis is to disclaim internal, subjective knowledge in all
areas, including that of God/The supernatural.

The common usage of Agnostic is to mean religious fence sitter, while
an Atheist is one who firmly disavows the existence of god. Looking
more closely at the terms, Atheist means "without theism", much more
like the common usage of Agnostic (ie: don't know, don't care), while
Agnostic in its original form makes a very strong claim that you
cannot know anything about the existence of the metaphysical, a far
more anti-religious stance (ie: can't know, shouldn't care).

I personally call myself an atheist and an agnostic. I accept the
agnostic principle of Huxley (it's trivially logically true), but am
prepared to shave it down a little with Occam's razor, to say that if
you can't in principle know anything about a subject (eg: existence or
non-existence of a God who cannot be measured), you can properly
assume that it doesn't exist (the simplest model), with the
appropriate caveats that unanticipated future evidence could change
your mind (as *should* be the case in all areas of science/knowledge).
I'd say the same about Santa (not the historical figure St Nick); I'm
happy to bet the farm on the position that he doesn't exist, but if I
was presented with extraordinary evidence of his existence, I'd
cheerfully admit I was wrong.

So I myself am without theism (thus the minor claim of being an
Atheist), but I think Huxley was right about the unknowable nature of
the mystical, so am prepared to accept the stronger label of Agnostic,
with the caveat of Occams Razor to allow me to say that I'm as certain
as anyone can be of anything in the empirical realm that there is no
God.

(in my definition of God I assume the usage of God to mean something
external to the individual; if you want to redefine God as some subset
of you and half a dozen of your drinking buddies' group gestalt, and
you find that definition useful, please feel free to go nuts! Whether that definition is useful at all is up for debate, but then we are talking metaphysics here, so I guess questions of utility could be considered beside the point)

So why do I go singing about God & all the christian stuff? The short, easy answer is that it's all about the music. The classical tradition is very much supported by the church, and although there are great swathes of classical music which are wholely secular, the grass roots of classical in Australia is in the majority supported by the Anglicans.

As a classical singer who never had the luxury of going to a Conservatorium (ie: privately trained at my own expense), singing in choirs has been a fabulous way to learn skills in reading music and singing in ensemble. They are also an avenue to solo opportunities, and lead to other things - many people who become well known singers move up through choral singing.

Also, choral music is beautiful. Creating it is beautiful, being a part of the sound is excellent. It can be hard work at times (bloody 20th century composers! OMG!), but it's generally worth the effort. Choral singing has been a defacto musical education for me, because I hadn't really had any considerable experience of classical music until I began with choirs. Now I have more of an idea of what composers wrote what kinds of music, of what I like and dislike, of what I musically aspire to.

But that's the short & easy answer. It still begs the question "but why do you sing about this stuff when you have the choice?". Good question...

On hearing our music, people generally assume that Jodie & I are religious, when I'm an Atheist, and I think she is too (I don't think questions of metaphysics are actually important enough to Jodie for her to label herself quite that strongly, in fact). But we are certainly not Christians, and not church goers. Neither are we hippy-trippy, role-your-own spiritual grab-bag types. For my part, I can't tell you what happens when you die (no information, sorry, and Occam doesn't really cut it there), and I don't have any sense of the "spiritual", in terms of supernatural or mystical experience.

What I can relate to is the shared humanity of believers & non-believers. I feel that the primary truth about music is it is a mechanism for emotional communication. That is, by creating music we can make others feel something. And it's a sophisticated mechanism; the flow and combination of feeling evoked by music is something that anyone should be able to attest to.

Christian music (not insipid camp leaders with badly tuned guitars, I mean the music of the church over the last few hundred years) has a few points going for it.

Firstly, they were the only avenue for high music for large swathes of Western history, and for much of the rest they were the major supporter. So by dint of this a lot of the best music has been church supported, and so ultimately at least superficially religious in nature.

Secondly, and probably most crucially, religious people spend a lot of time thinking about the emotional aspects of life, the larger questions of existence, and the difficulties of the human condition. The great music made in a religious context gives voice to this, to often quite sophisticated positions on the elation, tradgedy, and everything in between that is human existence.

Of course, you can find these themes in secular music too. I sing a lot of secular music along these lines, as a result. I feel attracted to religious music, though, because it is more unabashedly about the great phrasing of human life, about the interplay between the individual and the group, etc. OTOH, in secular music you spend a lot of time wading through simpering love songs and bland whining diatribes about lovers' betrayal and ensuing heartbreak. I've just never been all that excited by songs about romantic love.

There is such wonderful emotion in many very religious songs. "O Come Emanuel" is a great example, a christmas carol (and thus quite often totally ruined in performance), that is a cry for help and expression of despair from a people who have almost lost hope; incredibly moving when done well. Or Handel's "Messiah", which runs the gamut from an introspective combined thankfulness, sadness and guilt in "Behold the lamb of god", through to the victorious anthems (Halellujah & the Amen chorus), with many variations in between.

Or take the Mass. You go first to the Kyrie, which I interpret as a plea, perhaps even quite fearful ('Christ have Mercy, Lord have Mercy', how else do you interpret such words?). Then we have the Gloria, which is triumphant and even defiant. Next we go through to the Credo (I'm probably missing some stuff here), which is extremely interesting, a very personal and unambiguous statement of belief made in the context of the believing group; a powerful affirmation for the individual on the one hand and perhaps a an act required of the individual by the group, on the other, and so interpretable as anything from a strong personal statement through to an act of submission. Then Santus & Benedictus give us more anthemic exultation of the Lord (and a chance to play with themes, work into them a bit, find some subtleties). Finally, Agnus Dei ('Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world'), almost universally a reflective, beautiful ending, I've always felt it as at once grateful, celebratory, and regretful.

On a different tack, you can find real meaning in even so seemingly superficial and empty a song as Kumbayah (and here's Candela's recording here). This is the classic terrible guitar and voices round the campfire Christian cringe song, but look at the meaning...

(from this website)
"It means "come by here". The song "Kumbaya" originated in South Carolina as a Gullah spiritual, sometime around the 1920's. Gullah is a blend of English and African languages that developed among the slave communities on the islands off the South Carolina coast near Charleston. The phrase "kumbaya" in Gullah is really just a heavily accented version of the English phrase "come by here". American missionaries took the song to Africa in the 1930's, where it was later "rediscovered" in Angola in the 1950's, leading many to believe that the song had its origins in Angola."

The song is saying "Come by here, Lord, we need you". It is again a plea, for help and for mercy, by desperate people, people who have almost lost hope. In this vein, we put it into a minor key in Candela, with good results I think. I certainly don't think that a song with lyrics like "Some is crying, Lord, Come By Here" is really made for guitars and tamborines and happy smiling faces.

--

So the answer to question of why an Atheist is so caught up in religious music can be summed up in the simple statement that it speaks to me. The music I choose to sing is profound in some way, deeply exploring one or more human emotions, exploring paradoxes of life and questions about our place in the universe. Religion after all is an expression of the needs of humanity, the search for answers in an uncaring universe, a quest for meaning. That's something I can relate to.