| From Paul Richards………. Women……:
A Response I am
writing in response to an article in the January 2006 Community
by Mr John Fowler. For those of you who didn’t read
it, Mr Fowler expressed in detail his concerns about the
role of women in our parish and specifically the lack of
young female parishioners. During a
recent Sunday morning Eucharist, while the rest of us
were singing the hymns or listening to the sermon, it
seems Mr Fowler was taking care to tally up the number of
youngsters in the congregation, and was disgusted to
notice that only two of the seventeen children in
attendance, including the boys in the choir, were female.
Mr Fowler sees this as no surprise as, “since all
the importance rests with the boys, there is nothing to
attract the girls to church.” It is here, I feel
that John has missed the point. All
Saints Church has a male voice choir, which is an
important tradition that sadly, despite desperate
efforts, many places are unable to uphold and whether you
agree or not, tradition is an extremely important part of
the church. The most well attended services of the year
are weddings, funerals and the Christmas ‘concert
style’ carol service. I hasten to inform you
that this has little to do with religion. The role of the
choir is to perform and to provide beautiful music to
enhance the worship of those in attendance, regardless of
what gender they may be. It is not some way of recruiting
local boys to adopt a faith. The argument that boys’
voices are more pure than those belonging to girls may be
up for debate but it is scientific fact that they sound
different and that they mature at different times. It’s
not as though girls have been forgotten; it’s
certainly nothing personal and the choir at St Phillip’s
Church has admitted girls for as many years as I can
remember. A mixed choir at All Saints however would not
work and instead of the intended troop of school girls
ready to embark on a new life with Christ, we would end
up with a gaggle of mature women making a valiant attempt
to warble out the high notes. I think you’d find
that all current members of the choir, me
included, would leave. What I
think many people fail to realise is that many members of
the choir attend specifically for the music and not for
their faith. Where else can I go to regularly perform
some of the greatest music ever written? I am a firm
believer that religion is something that should be chosen
by an individual and not something that should be forced
upon someone. I certainly don’t think we should be
setting up organisations to coax people in with the
ulterior motive of moulding them into the next generation
of clergy and theology students. If girls want to attend
services, there is nothing stopping them doing so. If
they want to go to a church where they have a girls’
choir there is nothing stopping them doing that either.
What spiritual advantages does John think the boys are
receiving over the girls by being members of this
particular choir? I wonder what the statistics would show
if John performed his Sunday morning head count during
August when the choir are on holiday. At the
last Choral Evensong, a service that I can only assume Mr
Fowler chooses not to attend because the opportunity for
everyone to have a sing is limited to the hymns, over 87%
of the congregation were female. In
a world that sees Registry offices having to remove
pictures of embracing heterosexual couples and people
being offended by Christmas trees, I think it’s safe
to say we’re taking the ‘politically correct’
thing a little too far. At the moment, Mr Fowler is upset
that we are sexually discriminating against the girls; I
wonder if he has also written letters to King’s
College Cambridge and to the famous Welsh male-voice
choirs asking them to change their ways. Why stop at
girls? Why not let tone-deaf people join so as to make
sure we don’t upset those that cannot sing? Maybe we
could encourage the vicar to Rap the Sursum Corda to be
‘down with the kids.’ We should be proud that
we are one of the few local churches that still hold true
to the way things have always been done and we should
cherish the musical tradition of the church which is
truly what makes it great. The carol service from Fundamentally,
church is a place for individuals to come and worship. I’m
not sure how the ratio of males to females in the
congregation affects Mr Fowler’s ability to do this. Paul
Richards |