The more the Church has sought to make its services more "inclusive" and "relevant", the more Christians have converted to other denominations where they think things are done properly (notably Roman Catholicism), and the more those curious about Christianity have avoided the C of E.

Confirmation of this absurd situation arrived yesterday in new guidance for faith schools from the Church, preposterously named a statement of "entitlement and expectation".

No, this does not refer to David Cameron's catastrophic attempts to build a post-Downing Street business career, but what hymns should be chosen for singing in assemblies.

The diktat has it that strongly "confessional" hymns are to be avoided because they may make children and teachers alike feel uncomfortable.

They are said not to be sufficiently "invitational", which seems to equate Anglican worship with a cheese and wine party.

Those of us (and I speak as an atheist) who thought one of the purposes of religion was to make people feel guilty about having done things frowned upon by the Bible, and to expect God to be both unhappy about our behaviour but to forgive us our trespasses, will wonder what is wrong with a little discomfort.

Apparently, the halfwits who run the Church of England (and are running it into the ground) feel it is dangerous because "there should be no assumption of Christian faith in those present."

It is all, of course, about diversity: and the increasingly toxic idea that causing someone the mildest offence (such as assuming that someone in a Christian school might actually subscribe to Christianity) is equivalent in gravity to gratuitously amputating one of their limbs without permission or anaesthetic.

In a Church of England school, it is surely a reasonable assumption that the children are there because their parents subscribe to the basic tenets of the Church of England and the Christian faith; and that the teachers are grown up enough to know what to expect when they sign up for such a job.

The children, like generations before them, can like it or lump it until they reach the age where the law says they are masters of their own destiny.

The teachers, having reached that age, if they feel the institution insufficiently diverse, should go and work somewhere else.

Millions of us who found the Christian story somewhat far-fetched nonetheless went through our educational careers being culturally enhanced by the magnificent tunes that many of our hymns featured.

The doctrine, except for the precociously devout, were neither here nor there.

One obvious casualty of this bonkers pronouncement will be one of the most ravishing hymn tunes ever written, Repton - recognisable immediately from its opening lines:

Dear Lord and Father of mankind
Forgive our foolish ways!

One can almost hear the squeals of anguish from the Church's imbeciles-in-chief.

Can we really be expected to tolerate being told that some of our ways might be foolish?

And even if they were, why would it be God's place to forgive them?

That magnificent tune comes from Sir Hubert Parry's oratorio Judith.

In these culturally benighted times, when the nearest most children come to being inculcated with an idea of beauty is being force-fed pop music and the inanities of CBeebies, when otherwise would they have a chance not just to hear, but to participate in, the music of a composer so great as Parry?

One must also doubt that they are encouraged to sing another of his majestic tunes, Jerusalem - which although not a hymn appears in most hymn books - given the entirely erroneous associations made for it with English nationalism and, therefore, colonialism, fascism, imperialism, white supremacy and all the rest of the largely imaginary components of our growing litany of cultural self-hatred.

It is suggested, instead, that other favourites such as Kumbaya and Lord of the Dance - neither of which one could pretend has the slightest association with a high aesthetic or cultural enrichment - are perfectly safe, because they do not entail undue grovelling to the Almighty for real or imagined wickedness.

It does not seem to occur to the those advocating this censorship that few take any notice of the words anyway, and that in life we all have to put up with things - including aspects of the Church of England - that we find tedious or that we disagree with; but that in putting up with them we are provoked to think, mature, and eventually form our own conclusions.

The Church of England has done its best to desecrate - and I choose that verb carefully - its cultural heritage.

Worshippers have been driven away by having to endure the Princess Margaret Bible and the Rocky Horror Prayer Book. Organs have been replaced by guitars and tambourines. Continue reading

• Simon Heffer writes a weekly column in the Sunday Telegraph

Biden lost Beau, an Iraq war veteran who had served as Delaware's attorney general, in 2015 to a brain tumour at the age of 46. Read more

A world-wide lack of organists and pianists is partly to blame for the shift to guitar-backed music, but churches are also changing to appeal to newer tastes.

Retired Nelson church organist and teacher Alan K Gray said churches were struggling to attract younger people with traditional music and many were shifting to more modern songs of worship.

"The hymn book is dying out and getting replaced by a band."

Royal School of Church Music president Paul Ellis said churches were struggling to attract trained organists.

"I think it [band music] is the fashion. People think that by having different music you might attract more people to the church."

Electric keyboards are used widely in churches now as many struggle to find organists.

Ellis said that new worship music was more suited to pianos rather than traditional instruments, like the organ, although older congregations preferred the traditional style.

Auckland Organist Association organist co-ordinator Walter Nicholls said the ageing population of organists was a serious crisis and that a lack of younger musicians to replace them could spell the end for the organ in church music.

"Small suburban churches may have a pipe organ but no one to play it, or if they do they're 70. We have incredibly good organists but they tend to get to a point around finishing school where they decide not to continue."

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• Image:haydenvillechurch.org

Grand Rapids residents, Dan and Carrie Elzinga discovered Beer and Hymns two years ago when they were attending a religious festival in North Carolina.

"After the close of each day's agenda, the people would gather and drink beer and sing only hymns," said Carrie. "Hundreds of people would stand shoulder to shoulder and belt out these deeply meaningful old songs while drinking beer." Read more

The last new episode of the Christian choral show actually screened in late 2015, while the 2016 season - funded to the tune of $388,000 by NZ On Air - consisted of previously aired hymns compiled from Praise Be's back catalogue. Currently screened episodes are repeats. Continue reading

I listened to hundreds of hymns on Spotify; I interviewed a bunch of hymn experts.

What, I asked them, was the most successful contemporary hymn—the modern successor to "Morning Has Broken" or "Amazing Grace"?

Some cited recently written traditional church hymns; others mentioned songs by popular Christian musicians.

But one scholar pointed in a different direction: "If you're willing to construe the term ‘hymn' liberally, then the most heard, most successful hymn of the last few decades could be ‘I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For,' by U2."

Most people think of U2 as a wildly popular rock band.

Actually, they're a wildly popular, semi-secretly Christian rock band.

In some ways, this seems obvious: a song on one recent album was called "Yahweh," and where else would the streets have no name?

But even critics and fans who say that they know about U2's Christianity often underestimate how important it is to the band's music, and to the U2 phenomenon.

The result has been a divide that's unusual in pop culture.

While secular listeners tend to think of U2's religiosity as preachy window dressing, religious listeners see faith as central to the band's identity.

To some people, Bono's lyrics are treacly platitudes, verging on nonsense; to others, they're thoughtful, searching, and profound meditations on faith. Continue reading

Source

• Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker

Joshua Rothman is The New Yorker's archive editor.