Religion: Unholy Music

Churchgoers would have good reason to be startled and offended if ministers took to reading erotic poetry from the pulpit. Just as jarring to the sensitive, trained ear of Professor Richard T. Gore is much of the music now played and sung in Protestant churches. "Go where you will," he advises in this week's Christian Century, "to the village church or the great metropolitan cathedral . . . most of the music used in our worship services is little better than blasphemy."

A longtime church organist and head of the conservatory of music at the...

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