Take me to church!

Saturday 4th July: Take me to church?
Continuing my Glastonbury carpet picnic by watching BBC2’s festival highlights programme.
Again struck at the way that the crowd knew and sang along with the songs performed by in (in my eyes!) even the most obscure bands. One song that always brings rapturous joining-in is by Hozier (who we can no longer call obscure) an award winning Irish singer-songwriter.
His ‘Take me to church’ has won plaudits and enormous popularity and is a great song.
A very selective reading of the lyrics suggest that the tens of thousands joining in with Hozier are in fact worshipping God ‘Offer me my deathless death, Good God, let me give you my life’ but this is fallacious

The song compares the liberation found in sexual union with the experience of repression which the writer presumably found within his native Catholic Church. In a magazine article he comments: ‘An act of sex is one of the most human things. But an organisation, like the church, say, through its doctrine would undermine humanity by successfully teaching shame about sexual orientation – that it is sinful, that it offends God’
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=32921

Whilst going out of his way to assert that he is not attacking faith per se, he is drawing out conclusions about the teaching of the church which are at the heart of so much opposition to organised religion today. The song is offered as an antidote: ‘it is about asserting yourself and reclaiming your humanity through an act of love.’

Hang on, doesn’t this sum up the Gospel?

Another line states ‘I was born sick but I love it/command me to be well’ like many who seek to explore secular spirituality, Hozier suggests that such spirituality is concerned with improving life in  the here and now whereas religious spiritualty is focussed on what happens after death. Overly simplistic, yes - but isn’t it true that the men (yes they were/are men) who sought and seek to use religion to control the masses chose to use this argument for their own ends? Wasn’t Jesus concerned about healing (command me to be well), making whole and bringing abundant life? Didn’t he say more about the abuse of money, secular and religious power than he did about sex? Wasn’t he fully human and completely God? How can we get this message to the multitudes that only see repression and control where we see love and freedom?

I suspect this is a theme I shall return to again and again!