'Group singing by worshippers'

This Lord’s Day, God’s people at Salem will not be formally singing praise. We may be next week, but not this Sunday. The government’s guidelines state:

There should be no group singing by worshippers.

It would be quite easy to by-pass this. Should not does mean must; the document itself makes this clear in its preliminary sections. It also says that one must not sing or chant over foodstuffs (eg communion elements) which evidently anticipates the possibility of some singing. There are two points at stake here:

The extent to which we obey the state

Whether singing is an essential part of every act of Christian worship

To what extent do we obey the state? We must always obey the state except when its commands are a direct contravention of scriptural command. In freedom-loving democracies with our enjoyment of protest and public criticism of political figures, we forget the New Testament’s clear admonition to obey the government:

Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. 4 For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. 5 Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. 7 Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honour to whom honour. (Romans 13)

The state is not to be obeyed just when we approve of it. When Paul wrote these words, Nero Caesar occupied the imperial throne. He was a vial cur, a very antichrist. Yet see how the apostle still calls him ‘God’s minister’. God appointed human government after the Fall to represent His own authority and to enforce a general morality on our fallen race. It often errs, but that’s not the point. Likewise, its laws must be obeyed regardless of whether we agree with them. I think it ludicrous that I must have a TV license in order to watch television, but ignoring that law is not an option. Get a license, or don’t watch TV. Simple. Likewise, the law should be obeyed in spirit as well as letter. Offering to pay a tradesman cash in the hope he’ll offer a reduction on account of unpaid tax would be wrong, but not technically illegal. On the other hand, laws which are contrary to God’s revealed command must be ignored and resisted. When Peter was commanded not to preach the gospel by the Sanhedrin, he said he must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29). On themother hand, laws of which we no not merely approve, like or support must be obeyed. When the red light shows, I stop my car and wait, even though it is 1am and I can clearly see there are no cars coming the other way. The law must be obeyed.

Notwithstanding the fact that there is no law against singing, there is strongly worded guidance with a vague threat of enforcement. I will now consider whether singing is an indispensable part of Christian worship. If is, then we may feel free, nay duty-bound, to ignore it. We evangelicals have a vast array of fine hymns and songs, and it has been our practice since the days of Isaac Watts to sing hymns and the days of the Reformation to sing psalms. Common practice, however, will not prove sufficient. It is to the Bible we must turn.

Scripture is awash with God’s people singing His praise. In Exodus 15:21, Miriam declares:

Sing to the Lord, For He has triumphed gloriously! The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea!

2 Chronicles 20:21 suggests that singing may be done by some rather than all:

And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed those who should sing to the Lord, and who should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army and were saying: “Praise the Lord, For His mercy endures forever.”

Psalm 13:6 suggests that worshipful singing my be a solitary, rather than corporate, activity:

I will sing to the Lord, Because He has dealt bountifully with me.

Psalm 30:4, with many others, urges God’s people to sing together:

Sing praise to the Lord, you saints of His,

And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name.

For some, this verse alone would stiffen the sinews in the face of Boris’ inspectors and enforcers. Singing is the usual way of expressing our worship to God. Is it essential in worship.? Could a period of time be described as worship if no singing were heard? One of the people who criticised our singing in recent weeks pointed out that we are not some vast charismatic church with worship bands and professional singers, for whom the melody is the primary focus of the meeting. As evangelicals, our focus is on the word and prayer. We can worship without song, though I’d argue we could not worship without prayer and the Bible. Though we spend time at a prayer meeting without necessarily reading from our Bibles, scriptural language and teaching still ought to saturate the hour.

The New Testament has fewer references to how people worshipped than the Old, but texts are to be found. We know, for example, that Paul and Silas sang hymns awaiting their release at Phillipi. Ephesians 5:19 is translated:

Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; (AV)

addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart (ESV)

speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, (NIV)

speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, (NKJV)

Most translations indicate the apostle allows for the ‘speaking’ of psalms, hymns and songs and for the music to take place within the heart. In other words, I can read a psalm and a hymn within corporate worship; I need not only sing it. The simplest interpretation is that the speaking here means the pronunciation of the words during song, but it certainly allows for plain speech. Singing God’s praise is normal and part of the saint’s inner fibre. Yet I do not think it must happen every time we worship.

Israelite reverence often involved shouting (2 Samuel 6:15, Ezra 3:11). I count seven commands to shout God’s praise in the Psalms and Isaiah. Of course, shouting would stoke the ire of the current British state as much as song, but even in the halcyon pre-Covid days, excessive shouting God’s praise at Martin Top might have had you shown the door. Just as we do not feel the need to shout God’s praise every Sunday at church, so there is not a mandatory requirement to sing.

Too often, we admire a tune, we like a pleasing rhyme, we appreciate the intermission of stretching our legs and sounding forth- but are we worshipping? I hope we are. Am I admiring the hymn or the Lord of whom the hymn speaks? With a pianist and a hymn book, it’s harder to be swept away in the ambience of a meeting. In a large charismatic congregation, however, with well-used dimmer switches, stage lighting, a worship band and soul singers, the concert-like pleasure we derive may be confuses with true worship. I wonder if a period of silence and Bible reading is worth more than 25 minutes of well-rehearsed song.

Richard Baxter, the great English puritan addresses some interesting issues in The Practical Works. A few sites are seeing fit to quote him at this time. He’s really talking about the closure of churches- an issue of relevance to us in 2020. Baxter spent time in prison for his faith, so his admonitions to obey the state are not spoken glibly. Still, the principles here I find apply to singing in our situation:

Question 109: May we omit church assemblies on the Lord’s day if the magistrate forbid them?

Answer 1. It is one thing to forbid them for a time upon some special cause as infection by pestilence fire war &c and another to forbid them statedly or profanely.

2. It is one thing to omit them for a time, and another to do it ordinarily.

3. It is one thing to omit them in formal obedience to the law; and another thing to omit them in prudence, or for necessity, because we cannot keep them.

4. The assembly and the circumstances of the assembly must be distinguished:

“(1.) If the magistrate for a greater good, (as the common safety,) forbid church assemblies in a time of pestilence, assault of enemies, or fire, or the like necessity, it is a duty to obey him. 1. Because positive duties give place to those great natural duties which are their end: so Christ justified himself and his disciples violation of the external rest of the sabbath. ‘For the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath.’ 2. Because affirmatives bind not ‘ad semper,’ and out-of-season duties become sins. 3. Because one Lord’s day or assembly is not to be preferred before many, which by the omission of that one are like to be obtained.

“(2.) If princes profanely forbid holy assemblies and public worship, either statedly, or as a renunciation of Christ and our religion; it is not lawful formally to obey them.

(3.) But it is lawful prudently to do that secretly for the present necessity, which we cannot do publicly, and to do that with smaller numbers, which we cannot do with greater assemblies, yea, and to omit some assemblies for a time, that we may thereby have opportunity for more: which is not formal but only material obedience.

“(4.) But if it be only some circumstances of assembling that are forbidden us, that is the next case to be resolved.

“Question 110: Must we obey the magistrate if he only forbid us worshipping God in such a place or country or in such numbers or the like?

“Answer: We must distinguish between such a determination of circumstances, modes, or accidents, as plainly destroy the worship or the end, and such as do not.

“For instance,  1. He that saith, You shall never assemble but once a year, or never but at midnight; or never above six or seven minutes at once, &c. doth but determine the circumstance of time: but he doth it so as to destroy the worship, which cannot so be done, in consistency with its ends. But he that shall say, You shall not meet till nine o’clock nor stay in the night, &c. doth no such thing.

“So 2. He that saith, You shall not assemble but at forty miles distance one from another; or you shall meet only in a room that will hold but the twentieth part of the church; or you shall never preach in any city or populous place, but in a wilderness far from the inhabitants, &c. doth but determine the circumstance of place. But he so doth it as tends to destroy or frustrate the work which God commandeth us. But so doth not he that only boundeth churches by parish bounds, or forbiddeth inconvenient places.

“3. So he that saith, You shall never meet under a hundred thousand together, or never above five or six, doth but determine the accident of number. But he so doth it as to destroy the work and end. For the first will be impossible and in the second way they must keep church-assemblies without ministers, when there is not so many as for every such little number to have one. But so doth not he that only saith, You shall not meet above ten thousand, nor under ten.

4. So he that saith, You shall not hear a Trinitarian, but an Arian; or you shall hear only one that cannot preach the essentials of religion, or that cries down godliness itself; or you shall hear none but such as were ordained at Jerusalem or Rome, or none but such as subscribe the council of Trent, &c. doth but determine what person we shall hear. But he so doth it as to destroy the work and end. But so doth not he that only saith, You shall hear only this able minister, rather than that.

“I need not stand on the application. In the latter case we owe formal obedience. In the former we must suffer, and not obey.

“For if it be meet so to obey, it is meet in obedience to give over God’s worship. Christ said, ‘When they persecute you in one city, flee to another:’ but he never said, ‘If they forbid you preaching in any city, or populous place, obey them.’ He that said, ‘Preach the Gospel to every creature, and to all nations, and all the world,’ and that ‘would have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,’ doth not allow us to forsake the souls of all that dwell in cities and populous places, and preach only to some few cottagers elsewhere: no more than he will allow us to love, pity, and relieve the bodies only of those few, and take none for our neighbours that dwell in cities, but with priest and Levite to pass them by.

Forgive the lengthy citation. I think Baxter speaks thus:

The state may regulate some aspects of our worship, even closing our churches, if it be for a benign reason and a temporary period. If on the other hand, the state’s aim is to prohibit all worship or regulate it on a permanent basis, then we must not submit.

So is a temporary suspension of singing a ‘circumstance, mode, or accident’ which seeks to destroys true worship, or is itnot? I don’t like these regulations, but I cannot conclude they are a malicious plot to usurp our faith. Doubtless, the government’s Covid guidelines are daft and I don’t approve of them. That we must wear masks and avoid singing is like wearing a belt with braces. I even doubt the threat we face from this virus; I am told common flu is a deadlier killer at this time. I repeat my opening gambit: the state says we shouldn’t sing, which isn’t the same as mustn’t. Yet for the reasons given, we shall not sing this Sunday. The question is this: will we still worship?

 

POSTSCRIPT

So could we worship without congregational song? I believe so. Reading scripture and increased prayer both played their part. Yet it wasn't something I'd seek to repeat. There was a danger that the congregants became mere spectators, observers of a performance. To be led in worship is not to watch some priest perform a ritual, but to partcipate. If the government guidence becomes compulsory, it may be a different matter. Otherwise, I think we shall return to song. Caesar was satisfied this week, and God as also. But what of next?