Article

Art

Faith

Music

14 August 2024

5 min read

Music and religion belong together

The connections between music and faith and the mystery within.

Oliver Wright

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

Article

Character

Culture

Leading

Virtues

19 September 2024

6 min read

What is Putin thinking? And how would you know?

The self-centeredness of modern culture is antithetical to strategic thinking.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson writes on geopolitics. He is also a business executive and holds a doctorate in theology.

Preisdent Putin stands behind a lectern with a gold door and Russian flag behind him.

What is Putin thinking?

In a world of Google Maps when walking on city streets, or of Waze when driving, it is difficult to ever become lost.

The AI algorithm provides us with the shortest route to our destination, adjusting whenever we make the wrong turn. We do not need to think for ourselves, technology instead showing the way forward.

But there are times where it is possible to get lost. This happens less in a city with its clearly set-out streets, and more so when taking the wrong turn in open expanses: hiking in the mountains, traversing farmers’ fields or while navigating at sea. In each of these situations, a miscalculation may lead to peril.

It is in these situations that we must carefully think through our steps, determining how to proceed, or whether to turn back. Often, these situations are ambiguous, the right way forward unclear.

Much of life – perhaps more than we wish to acknowledge – is like this, more akin to a walk across an open field with multiple possible routes forward, than a technology-enabled walk through a city.

When making important decisions, our grasp of a given situation, of others’ intentions and motives, and the networks facilitating and constraining action, are less evident than we may initially think.

This acknowledgement of uncertainty is no reason for delay, but rather a basis for careful deliberation in determining what to do, and how to proceed. It is necessary if we are to pursue what we believe is right, in a manner that may produce positive results.

In a recent interview with the BBC Newscast podcast, University of Durham Chancellor Dr Fiona Hill – who previously served as White House National Security Council Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs, and currently as Co-Lead of the UK’s Strategic Defence Review – provides listeners with a powerful reminder on how to proceed within ambiguous situations, especially in navigating the choppy seas, or rocky terrains, of human relationships.

Strategic empathy requires self-restraint when natural impulses urge a person to make rapid conclusions about the reality of a given situation – the default human tendency.

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Dr Hill uses the term “strategic empathy” to consider how the political West might proceed in its relationship with Russia, and specifically with Vladimir Putin.

Strategic empathy is a serious commitment to understanding how another person thinks, considering their worldview, their key sources of information (in other words, their main three or four advisors, who have a person’s ear), and other emotional considerations that underpin decision-making.

It is much more than just putting oneself in other’s shoes, as is often said about empathy. The approach is one of realism, suspending judgment based on self-protective or self-aggrandising illusions, in favour of what is actually the case.

In the case of Putin, Dr Hill helpfully reminds listeners that his worldview is drastically different than that of Westerners, and that significant intellectual effort (and specifically, intellectual humility in setting aside one’s own default frames of reference) is necessary to consider decisions from Putin’s perspective, and so make the right decisions from ours.

Technology is here an assistant but not a cure-all. Whereas AI might – based on a gathering of all possible publicly available information written by and about a particular person – help to predict a person’s next move, this prediction is imperfect at best.

There are underlying factors – perhaps a deeply engrained sense of historical grievance and resentment in the case of Putin – that shapes another’s action and that can scarcely be picked up through initial conversation. These factors may not make sense from our perspectives, or be logical, but they exist and must be treated seriously.

This empathy is strategic, because effective strategy is the “How?” of any mission. Whereas a person’s or organisation’s mission, vocation or purpose (all words that can be used relatively interchangeably) is the “Why?” of a pursuit, strategy is the “How?” which itself consists of the questions “Who?” “What?” “When?” and “Where?”

To understand how to act strategically requires a prior effective assessment of reality. This requires going beyond what others say, our initial perception of a situation, any haughty beliefs that we simply know what is happening, or even the assessments of supposedly well-connected and expert contacts.

Dr Hill’s strategic empathy is an appeal to listeners to ask questions – digging as much as possible – to arrive at an assessment that approximates reality to the greatest degree possible. This exercise might be aided by AI, but it is at its heart a human endeavour.

Strategic empathy requires self-restraint when natural impulses urge a person to make rapid conclusions about the reality of a given situation – the default human tendency. The persistent asking of questions is difficult – requiring mental, emotional and intellectual endurance.

There is considerable wisdom in Dr Hill’s reflections on strategic empathy, which extend well beyond the fields of intelligence, geopolitics or defence. The idea of strategic empathy helps show us that in much of modern culture – which glorifies the self, individuals putting their wants, needs and desires before those of others – developing strategy is very difficult.

The key then, when deliberating on potential right courses of action in ambiguous situations, is to not begin believing that the right way is clear. It rarely is.

Why is this the case? When popular culture favours phrases such as “You do you,” the you becomes a barrier to asking questions, with some aloofness to the situation, necessary for understanding how another thinks. People are encouraged to focus on themselves at the expense of others, and so fail to understand others’ worldviews and ways of operating.

Simply put, the self-centeredness of modern culture is antithetical to strategy. It impedes deliberation, which involves patience in the gradual formation of purpose for action. It wages war against the considered politics or statesmanship that many want to see return. In place of this is crisis or catastrophe, in which self-focus leads to clashes with others that could otherwise be avoided or worked through carefully.

The Biblical story of the serpent in the garden is another vantage point for the idea of strategic empathy. Soon after Adam and Eve eat the apple in the garden and become “like gods, knowing good and evil,” God searches for them and asks “Where are you?”

It is right after individuals try to become the judges of good and evil – “like gods,” that Adam and Eve find themselves lost: God’s “Where are you?”

Put differently, when a person is convinced they are right, but without asking questions, they make mistakes, they likely suffer unnecessarily because of this, and then become anchorless – the “Where are you?”

This applies to countries as much as it does to people: the more they moralize, seeking to become the judges of good and evil in a complex geopolitical landscape, the more they drift from their sense of purpose.

The key then, when deliberating on potential right courses of action in ambiguous situations, is to not begin believing that the right way is clear. It rarely is. A belief in evident rightness often leads to error, whereas the ability to suspend such judgment helps reveal – often gradually – the right path forward.

The strategic empathy approach requires both assertiveness – in asking good questions and maintaining persistence in doing so – and self-restraint in the face of believing that the right answer is clear.

The glue between assertiveness on the one hand and restraint on the other is faith, which helps a person to move forward in a trusting manner, but without exerting oneself so much so that they become the centre of the situation.

So, while Google Maps, Waze or other technologies might be at our disposal in our travels, both real and metaphorical, these technologies only get us so far.

The right way forward is seldom initially clear when navigating ambiguous situations, the frequency and stakes of which increase as we embark boldly – with faith – on the adventure of life.

Dr Hill’s strategic empathy – asking questions, listening carefully, suspending a self of sense, seriously considering diverging worldviews, and adjusting as necessary – helps us to achieve the understanding and direction we need.

Indeed, this approach is fundamental to a more effective and resilient political West. It is necessary for sounder deliberation, better strategy and statesmanship, in an increasingly ambiguous world.