When you find yourself singing along to a worship-song with meagre spiritual lyrics, employ the Westlife Test. Replace the name of God with a girl's name and ask yourself if the pop-group Westlife could have sung it as a love-song. If this proves possible then you have been singing a Christian song without content.

The danger for contemporary Christianity is that, overawed by the prevailing secular hegemony, we cede ground to irreligious culture at every available moment. Examining the discourse employed in churches, it is clear that intellectually barren sermons are too frequently delivered and that banal worship-songs often replace hymns and psalms. What we now possess is Christianity Lite - majoring on emotions but ignoring the rational, appealing to the heart but avoiding intellect. Nowhere is the flight from reason more apparent than hymnology.

In fact, the word 'hymn' is redundant as a term for what gets sung. Hymns, for all their faults, are written with as much care devoted to lyrics as to melody. The skilled hymn writer composes poetry which scans, rhymes and possesses good imagery. Traditionally there was kinship between the hymn-writer and great poets such as Wordsworth and Tennyson, a fact made clear by the careful and attractive book-binding and printing of the traditional hymnal. There were also close relationships between certain hymn-writers and famous poets - as in the case of the friendship between the poet, William Cowper and John Newton, the author of 'Amazing Grace'.

What must be noted is how the best hymns have always sought to instruct Christians in the truths of faith. Wesley knew that in the absence of literacy among converts, the songs which they sang could offer a didactic function. By contrast, the model for the contemporary 'worship-song' is that of pop-music, where the words are banal and everything hinges on the instantly 'sing-able' melodic line. Lyrics for worship-songs are filled with lame and clichéd fragments of spiritual acclamation but still rendered successful by dint of catchy tunes or harmonious guitar chords. The repetitious words take on the characteristics of a mantra rather than a poetic text. The churchgoer in this context is engaged in praise but ignorant as to the reasons for it. Heart without head has been employed.

Today's books of hymns are more likely to have spiral binding than a cover of gold-embossed leather. Too many of the songs within are phrased in pick-and-mix pseudo-biblical language, with overused verbs such as 'exalt', 'magnify', and 'bless' and overused nouns like 'fortress', 'tower' and 'garments'. Clichéd imagery supplants clear expression and includes such substitutions as 'silver and gold' instead of 'wealth', and 'every tribe and nation' instead of 'all the people of the earth'. Behind such seemingly biblical phraseology lies virtually no theological hinterland to be explored.

Theologian Walter Brueggemann speaks of how our 'consumer culture is organised against history. There is a depreciation of memory and a ridicule of hope …everything must be held in the now'. By entering the eternal now of the contemporary worship-song and turning its back on the tradition of carefully crafted hymnology, the modern church is in danger of heading further down the road of spiritual and intellectual disempowerment.

Philip Orr

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