Oresta

I'm an atheist, I grew up in an non-religious family, but I wouldn't exchange my high school experience of singing "The Halleluia Chorus" for all the money in the world. It was an aesthetic high, not a religious one.

GaryP

I agree. But how is that message sent to students in most public schools? Do most music teachers give a lecture to their kids that make points such as ;
1)not all people are religious,

2)these lyrics may be about a fictional character

3) the church was (and is) rich and therefore the composers were writing for their sponsors

4) this is not a christian country.

A recent instrumental concert at my son's HS included work by a composer who was inspired when he was on a ship in a storm. The music director spoke to the audience beforehand and went on and on about how the composer had a deep faith in god.

At my elementary school, the music teacher always has religious songs at the Xmas program, about half usually.

Before he practices "Little town of Bethlehem" he asks the kids if they know where Jesus was born. Similar things happen at almost every practice and these are first graders thru 3rd graders.

And our local HS choir has sung at churches and even the local christian TV station, the same one that carries Robertson, Falwell, Hinn,et al.

IMO, it is too easy to cross that line especially when the vast majority of teachers are christians.

Perhaps a school district could prepare a written statement about separation of church and state and have it written in the program for public school concerts.

RichardMorey

Unfortunately, it often isn't. I dealt with my share of Establishment Clause violations in High School. I wish I had said more; but I often drew the line. I refused to sing with my high school choir in churches or for religious functions. My choir director planned them on Sundays and Wednesdays at various churches, and made them optional. This was not acceptible. I should have said more.

sigh, I've been there too. The thing that annoyed me was that as the leader of the ensemble, she was basically speaking for me to the audience.

There's no excuse for assuming that everyone is Christian.

I wonder if instances like this can be litigated?

I have been thinking of writing a statement about religious music in schools that I think most secularists could agree on. We may even get Christian choir directors in on it. Perhaps the secular musicians and music educators on infidels would be willing to work together on this?

GaryP

Richard--

That is a good idea.

As to whether the choir singing at churches could be legally challenged, I don't think so.

I wrote to Americans United about the issue. A lawyer told me that legal precedence would not favor a prohibition of this type, at least in Ohio.

She stated that as long as it was not billed as a worship service it would be OK.

The interesting thing about the last concert, the church's website DID call it a worship service, and I think any rational being there that night would have agreed.

4th Generation Atheist

I agree with you there concerning the good religious pieces. I too grew up in a freethinking family, and we had much of the better religious music in our collection (on, um, vinyl. ) We celebrated Xmas as a secular holiday, but we still played a lot of this music (Handel, madrigal type Yuletide music &c.) I'd take that over "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" any day of the week.

'Specially since, given who liked to play dress-up in my family, Mom was far more likely than Dad to be Santa Claus!

DMB

I do agree. For me, the sublime thing was singing the whole Messaiah while sitting in the beautiful mediaeval choir stalls of 12th-century Tewkesbury Abbey. (This was during my teaching career and I was singing in the choir of the school at which I taught.)

I think the Messaiah is a wonderful work and it is an intense aesthetic experience to sing in it. I no more care about the mythology behind it than I do about the Graeco-Roman mythology behind so much Renaissance painting and sculpture.

I do, however, strongly agree that the connections between beliefs/mythology and art need to be explained and explored as part of a decent education. The various meanings of "culture" are interconnected. Art is always produced as part of a culture and knowledge of that culture helps in its interpretation. I am saddened by the lack of historical perspective displayed nowadays by so many children and adults. Do, say, Southern Baptists understand that their faith evolved from mediaeval catholicism, without which their faith would not even exist now?

I feel that it is not enough to criticise schools for including religious material; they should also be questioned on how they attempt to give children a wider perspective than just a snapshot of the US in the first few years of the 21st century.

Oresta

I agree. Furthermore, the arts and literature are a wondrous avenue to explore and thereby catch the spirit as well as the intent of the eras of history (unfortuately taught exclusively through the political grid usually deemed essential to children's education). I once taught junior high "core" classes wherein several of us from various departments went at American History through my Social Studies class as well as the kids' art and music classes. But then, what the hell did we know? We were that bunch of progressives who were the reason Johnny couldn't read. Jeeze, like Molly Ivens says, Don't get me Stahhhted!"

ksagnostic

For the most part, I agree with Richard Morey and captainpabst (nice to know there is an agnostic choir director out there). I think, however, that school choirs do occupy a grey area when it comes to religion in schools, by teachers and students both. I think the reason for this is that there is a selection pressure. Many people learn to sing in choirs in church, and those who sing in choirs tend to be active in church. I have seen several choir directors edge towards using their choirs for the advancement of religious purposes.

In my own experience, I didn't sing, but I was the drummer for our "pops" choir (in a sad commentary on our school, being a musician for our pops choir had higher status than being in the jazz band). The choir director was very conservative religiously, and his wife even more so. What I found stunning, however, was how much conservative Christianity was pervasive in the choir. Our second performance was at a county fair, and consisted of a gospel melody (our only religious song, to be sure, but the one that was performed the most by the choir) being performed for a church group. The bass player and I, the two non-religious members, felt like we'd been conned. When at the state fair we stayed at a church, and the price was to perform at a church. Since the director knew that the bass player and I were likely to refuse to perform, we were excused from the concert (I attended one performance our of four out of politeness to the host, the bass player refused to attend at all, I think his was the correct response). Towards the end of the school year, the pops choir performances fell off. By that time, I had all my credits for High School, and was going to the university mid day. The director told me to "go home" when I showed up back at the high school for pops choir class, because he was using the time as an extra hour for his chamber choir practice (they had a gig in Mexico for the summer). Of course, they performed more music of a religious nature, but that was appropriate for a chamber choir. What was not appropriate was what I heard later about what had happened while they were down in Mexico. The choir director's minister, and father of two of the members of the choir, performed an evangelical service on top of one of the Mayan pyramids for the choir.

A number of the people who were in that choir (or the pops choir, and pretty much everyone who sang in one sang in the other) who were not overtly religious in High School ended up being heavily involved in very evangelical groups in college. It was sad really. While there were a large number of students in the choirs who were quite religious, there were also a number who were not, and who ended up in campus christian groups (the most benign of which was Campus Crusade for Christ, which is saying a lot). It actually became something of a scandal, particularly when one set of parents had their daughter kidnapped by "deprogrammers" to get her out of a campus group that was commonly identified as a cult. The choir director resigned at the same time. He was prone to fits of temper, and he had gotten into some hot water over his treatment of some students.

In sum, and in my experience based opinion, this choir director was willing to push the envelope on religion, but had the good sense to back off when people challanged him (on the other hand, the two people who did were instrumental musicians, not singers-I wonder what his response would have been to a singer opting out. One of them did kind of comment on the gospel melody, and the church based performances which focused on it, in a skeptical sense. On the other hand, when I saw this same student in college all he talked about was his Bible Study group, and about how the service in Mexico was "awesome" (which was a word he threw around during that conversation). All this was twenty three, twenty four years ago now.

Well, that turned out to be a ramble.

[ August 27, 2002: Message edited by: ksagnostic ]

[ August 27, 2002: Message edited by: ksagnostic ]</p>