Article
Art
Faith
Music
5 min read

Music and religion belong together

The connections between music and faith and the mystery within.

After 15 years as a lawyer in London, Oliver is currently doing a DPhil at the University of Oxford.

A pianist plays in the foreground and a seated singer gestures with eyes closed behind
Rachel Chaplin accompanies Evi Dobner.

J.S. Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Bruckner, Elgar. The list could go on and on. That is – a list of composers and musicians who wrote music for and played music within the Church. The roots of Western classical music are in the church, as Jeremy Begbie shows in his book Resounding Truth. In fact, it was only relatively recently that ‘popular music’ meant music outside of the Church. The Church has been a great sponsor of the arts throughout modern history, not least in the great Michaelangelo. It is time for that sponsorship of human creativity, in all its forms, to return (see the Renaissance project of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, for a new initiative on precisely this).

Why is it, though, that music and religion can sit so closely alongside one another? And why, in this day and age, might it be time for the two to reconnect?

For all its form and structural devices, there will always remain a horizon of mystery about music. Roland Barthes called music a field of signifying and not a system of signs. In other words, even in its most programmatic examples, music-as-sound has a kaleidoscopic range, which refuses to be pinned down to one meaning or another. This is why Friedrich Schleiermacher in the nineteenth century found music so useful in the elaboration of his religious idea of Gefühl – an inward yearning and feeling, or, as he also called it, the intuition of the universal. And it is for this same reason that Karl Barth in the twentieth century, a passionate listener to Mozart, was so cautious of using music constructively within his theological system.

Even in its most programmatic examples, music-as-sound has a kaleidoscopic range, which refuses to be pinned down to one meaning or another.

In that sense, music is well placed to carry the new wave of Christian apologists like Elizabeth Oldfield, James K.A. Smith, or even this website, seeking a new direction away from rationalism and clever abstract truth-claims. God is both more real, and more mysterious than that. Music, in fact, can lead the way for language itself. To release language from the captivity of pointing to apparently clear and obvious truth is a distinctly Christian move. After all, we remember that truth is not what a rationalist, or an empiricist, or a logical positivist would want, but is a person, Jesus Christ. And language, like music, can embrace such a mystery. The word ‘God’, as the theologian Gerhard Ebeling once wrote, brings to utterance the mystery of reality. To refer to God is the most pure possibility of language. It affirms the presence of what is completely hidden. “To speak about God”, Ebeling continued, “means to speak about reality as a whole and therefore to speak about humanity, who is exposed to reality as a whole. Conversely, to speak about God is to deny that one can speak about the world as a whole as such, by speaking only about the world, or that one can speak about humanity as such at all by speaking about nothing other than humanity.”

Whilst music without words, then, has often been assumed to be the most numinous, there is no reason why music with words should be any less numinous. Language paired with music knows a not-just-of-this-world reality. Even the most didactic settings in church hymn books engage right-brain activity, shape the memory, and therefore contribute to life formation. Ignoring that function in the shrunken assumption that the goal is simple mathematical truth is a form of sub-human, less-than-creation, folk-lore.

The word ‘God’, as the theologian Gerhard Ebeling once wrote, brings to utterance the mystery of reality. To refer to God is the most pure possibility of language. It affirms the presence of what is completely hidden.

We must celebrate, then, a whole new generation of composers who have written glorious music for Church choirs setting texts from the Bible, amongst them, Sir James MacMillan, Judith Weir, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Arvo Pärt, Alexander and Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, and Deborah Pritchard.

And to their number, we can also now add a professional oboist, Rachel Chaplin, whose beautiful new album ‘Music from an Inner Space’, seeks to guide the listener into religious contemplation. This is an account where words and music both contribute to create a space for contemplation and prayer.

The words are most often taken from the Psalms, given stunning new accounts in these compositions for strings, trumpet, piano and soprano voice, but also in the composer’s own settings such as the remarkably poignant See Him. Psalm 51 is rendered with a bubbling brook of cleansing water rather than the deathly painfulness of Henry Purcell’s setting. A short verse from Psalm 23, ‘he leads me beside quiet waters’, manages both to be consoling and to feel unsettling, urging the listener into a new and uncomfortable space. Like a tree gives Psalm 1 one of its best-ever accounts, with a confidence, a liveliness, and a sense of purpose normally missed.

The simplicity of the vocal settings, combined with the immense skill of the accompanying players, promises for this music to be heard more widely, and reconstructed in different contexts, private and public, within and without the church. What’s more, the care of the musical curation is matched by the composer’s sourcing of paper for the liner notes, artwork for the album cover, and accompanying beeswax candle, specially designed for the album. Listening should not just be on the go. Listening should go with what Charles Taylor would call attention: stopping, lighting a candle, and breathing, still, for more than the length of time it takes to boil a kettle.

Many of us enjoy listening to music of all kinds. Most of us recognise feelings and emotions which appear to go beyond the data and push notifications which the world loudly proclaims to us. Choosing contemplation and prayer over production and wealth-creation can usher us into a form of life which is more human. Music and religious feeling were made for each other.

You can catch Rachel and the group performing the album at the Greenbelt Festival on 24 August 2024.
More details at www.rachelchaplinmusic.com

Column
Culture
Football
Leading
Sport
7 min read

Referees and stupidity

What one referee’s foul-mouthed rant tells us about the nature of sport, and authority.
A striker is about kick a football towards a goal, a red beach ball sits between him and the goalkeeper.
Darren Bent and the beach ball goal.
Sky.

Picture the scene: 

You have a monthly column writing about football from a Christian perspective. You’ve just finished this month’s piece and are about to send it off to your editor.

Before you do, you go to make a coffee. You open Twitter, only to find your timeline filled with videos of a Premier League referee openly slagging off a Premier League club and manager in some of the most obscene ways imaginable. You sigh, trudge back to your laptop, and begin re-writing your column.  

Deary, deary me.  

It is difficult to even begin quantifying the amount of trouble Premier League referee David Coote is in, following the emergence of videos in which he (allegedly?!) calls Liverpool Football Club “s***” and former manager Jürgen Klopp a “German c***”. It’s not clear when the video was filmed but given Coote (allegedly?!) mocks social distancing regulations, it may well be from a few years back.  

There is also a second video in which Coote says: “just to be clear, that f***ing last video can’t go anywhere. Seriously.” The person next to him chimes in: “He’s a premier league referee. Let’s not … let’s not ruin his career,” seeming to confirm that Coote is the person in the video. This second person then goes on to say: “let’s face it: we’re good blokes” seemingly oblivious to having said in the previous video: “Liverpool are all f***ing b******s, and we hate scousers.”  

The marks perhaps a new low point in the relationship (if that’s not too generous a term) between fans and referees. I talked last month about the prominence of conspiracy theories amongst (some) football fans; we might forgive some Liverpool fans for thinking this particular referee had it in for them … 

My wife and I were at Anfield last Saturday for Liverpool vs Aston Villa. David Coote was the referee. We’re lucky enough to sit in the front row at Anfield, and David Coote and his linesmen were warming up directly in front of us. Even before kick-off, some people in the crowd were making sure Coote knew what they thought of him.  

In the first half, Villa winger Leon Bailey brought down Mo Salah as he was seemingly through on goal. Normally this would be a red-card offense for denial of a goal-scoring opportunity; in this instance there was not even a foul awarded. It’s safe to say that the people sat near us think even less of David Coote than David Coote thinks of Jürgen Klopp.  

In the grand scheme of things, David Coote will be fine. He’ll probably end up as a pundit somewhere, earning more than he does currently for telling viewers why any given refereeing decision in any given match was the right one.  

According to a statement by PGMOL (the body responsible for Premier League officiating), Coote has been “suspended with immediate effect pending a full investigation.” But you never know, if any institution can contrive to find a way for someone to keep their job after this, it’s PGMOL. He might be back not-brandishing red cards straight after the current international break. In April 2023, assistant referee Constantine Hatzidakis was caught – on camera – allegedly elbowing Liverpool full-back Andrew Robertson in the face. After a PGMOL investigation, he was cleared of any wrongdoing.   

But for some Liverpool fans the leaking of this video is nothing other than vindication. “We knew he [and, by extension, other refs] were corrupt. This is just proof!” 

But this is, I fear, only bad news for the sport. There is already a widespread ‘us and them’ mentality when it comes to the footballing establishment. It often feels as though football happens despite referees, not because of them. 

The footballing media don’t help this. Most post-match analysis now centres on the referees. Did they make the right decision? Should that person have been sent off? Were there too many yellow cards? Were there not enough yellow cards? 

I am, frankly, bored of talking about referees. I watch football to see Mo Salah be the best player in the world, or to see Virgil Van Dijk be the most imperious human being that’s ever walked on the earth. Not to see some wannabe police officer have a power trip. Look, I wouldn’t want to be a ref. They’re subject to horrific abuse, both in person and online. And yet, the increasing centrality of referees and refereeing to football discourse is unhealthy for the sport.  

Only those secure in their authority and competence can operate with the vulnerability necessary to have that authority and competence questioned. 

The breathtakingly arrogant assumption of authority that oozes from every fibre of Coote’s being in the videos is, I think, somewhat indicative of the way authority has been wielded in this country in recent years.  

Such heavy-handed wielding of authority – whether it’s Boris Johnson’s incessant disbelief that anyone would have the gall to question his decision to party during lockdown, or the apparent ease with which David Coote seems to imagine himself the most important person on the football pitch – all ultimately stem, I think, from insecurity.  

We have just seen the re-election of convicted felon Donald Trump as President of the United States of America. What a sentence that is.  

Perhaps more than anyone else, Trump typifies the desperate kind of insecure man who craves authority. A man of deeply fragile ego, Trump’s attempted coup of January 6th 2021 – for what else can we say it was? – was the violent manifestation of an infant’s inarticulate magpie mentality, denied their most recent ‘shiny thing’. 

A toddler with nuclear codes. 

Only those secure in their authority and competence can operate with the vulnerability necessary to have that authority and competence questioned. In a move straight out of the Johnson/Trump playbook, Coote initially denied the videos were real, and then claimed not to remember their content, as thought that in any way served as mitigation. (Imagine: “Yes, your honour, that video certainly does show me killing the victim, but I can't remember doing so!”) 

This is not a man whose authority is based on vulnerability or transparency. 

Sadly, our politicians seem increasingly unwilling to display such vulnerability, and so do our referees. The latter might seem less important than the former, but they both speak to a broader culture of insecurity that leads the authority being wielded by the unfit.  

And sport is uniquely placed to combat such insecure seriousness of authority. Because sport is, ultimately, really, really stupid.  

In 2009, a Liverpool fan threw a beach ball onto the pitch in a match against Sunderland. As Sunderland striker Darren Bent took a shot, it ricocheted off the beach ball sending it one way, while the football went another. Liverpool keeper Pepe Reina dived after the beach ball, leaving the football to cross the line for a goal.  

Sunderland won 1-0.  

It was an unbelievably stupid moment. It was the pinnacle of sport as far as I’m concerned; exactly the kind of stupid nonsense I watch sport for.  

I want my stupid sport back. The kind of stupid sport that people don’t feel strongly enough about to record videos as unbelievably arrogant as Coote’s. All sport is a gift from God, football included. It is simply a gift to be enjoyed; nothing more, nothing less. It is profoundly unserious in this respect. 

There’s an episode of The Simpsons I think about a lot. Lots of advertising billboards come to life and begin harassing the residents of Springfield. The solution? Just don’t look. The billboards thrive on the attention; it’s what keeps them alive. Without it, they die.  

Men like David Coote, Boris Johnson, and Donald Trump thrive on authority; on being taken seriously. They are human billboards, advertising nothing but themselves. This makes them immensely unsuited to the very authority they crave. 

Coote might have said “that f***ing last video can’t go anywhere. Seriously.” But the very fact that he recorded it in the first place, that he voiced such thoughts in the first place, displays exactly the kind of insecurity and temperament of character that leads to people absolutely buckling under the weight of authority. 

What is football to learn from the David Coote incident? Just don’t look. The endless, austere-faced analysis of the minutiae of refereeing leads only to a culture that attracts people like Coote to the job in the first place. The sooner we stop talking football so seriously, the sooner we will be rid of the Very Serious MenTM ruining the sport.  

Indeed, ‘looking’ at the world’s Boris Johnsons and Donald Trumps – them and the people that prop them up, like failed-author-cum-politician Nadine Dorries, or the inexplicably daft Elon Musk – is to give them precisely what they want: attention. They are attention black holes; you do not reason with black holes, and no good can come from playing around with them. 

No, only Pepe Reina’s beach ball can save us from the David Cootes of this world.