Growing up, I went to a church that was fairly conservative (musically speaking). There was an organist or a pianist, and the whole congregation sang four-part hymns out of hymnals. This is one of my earliest memories of reading. Though my parents never professed to be musically gifted, my sister and I were encouraged from an early age with lessons on various instruments and myriad performing opportunities. Music was an integral part of my childhood, and thus the songs I was exposed to every Sunday shaped me.
As I grew older and studied music theory, I was educated in the structure of hymns like How Great Thou Art, Crown Him With Many Crowns, and It Is Well with My Soul. Perfect authentic, deceptive, and plagal cadences were the building-blocks of these songs that gave me so much comfort and I learned to read their code. Though I soon moved on in my studies to advanced concepts of atonality and arguing the existence of the harmonic minor, I always felt myself drawn to these lush harmonies.
They were, and are, a part of me. I instinctively feel the lead of the the notes and know where they will go, even separate from the mechanical knowledge I have. I love them, and I’ll still sing them occasionally when I’m alone in my car.
This presents an interesting dilemma as an atheist. These songs feed me intellectually and emotionally, but I feel no comfort in the lyrics that glorify and supplicate a god I no longer believe in. Luckily for me, my experiences within the church didn’t sour me to the point of having negative associations with these songs… rather, it’s akin to (as a heterosexual woman) singing a love song about another woman: it just doesn’t apply to me.
I found myself wondering if the parts of the music that I loved could be separated from the parts I no longer wanted. Would a hymn still comfort if it wasn’t about god?
It is interesting to look at the origin of these songs we know so well. There has long been an urban legend that many popular hymns, such as A Mighty Fortress is our God, were originally adapted from regional drinking songs of the period, however there is no evidence to support this claim. In fact, there are few examples of hymns adapted from secular melodies in general.
Some hymns have rather complex genealogies however, such as Paul Gerhardt’s famous Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded, which was adapted from an 11th-century German poem by Bernard of Clairvaux in 1601. Nearly half a century later, the lyrics were set to a love song by Hans Leo Hassler entitled My Heart Is Distracted by a Gentle Maid; in 1729 Bach harmonised the melody and we now know it as the famous Passion Chorale.
Whether or not these hymns originated from specific melodies in the taverns of Germany and Prussia, one can reasonably argue that hymns written as late as the 19th and early 20th century borrowed heavily from the popular music of the day, including parlour ballads, marches, waltzes and operetta. In fact, the trend of adapting secular musical styles to religious music in general is as popular as ever in genres now known as Contemporary Christian Music.
The lure of tradition is strong though, and in Western culture the traditional hymn-structure survives in the church, as well as national anthems and football clubs. While there don’t appear to be any specifically atheist hymns, there’s no reason why the genre can’t be used for less spiritual pursuits.
There are examples of well-known songs with hymn-like structures that don’t reference god overtly, such as Rogers and Hammerstein’s You’ll Never Walk Alone, Josh Groban’s You Raise Me Up, and of course, Leonard Cohen’s haunting Hallelujah (as well as Dudley Moore’s lyrically profane but musically traditional Jump You F*cker Jump).
As an experiment, I set out to write something I considered to be an ‘atheist hymn’. Defining ‘atheist music’ is a large undertaking in itself and will be left for another day (or most likely several), but I determined a few criteria for the purposes of this exercise. The song would need to specifically reference A) a lack of religion, and B) a foundation of reason. Additional goals for this song included a desire to make it a positive message (refraining from mocking or attacking religion), and as far as possible, using similar language and phrasing to what is found in most religious hymns. Here are the lyrics to the song I wrote:
How Firm a Foundation
As the sun goes down each night I know I mustn’t fear
For no monsters, ghosts, nor spirits will appear
There’s no need to be afraid of nonsense and lies
When the truth is what I see with my own eyes
How firm a foundation is the truth
A bedrock to build my life upon
As I put away the follies of my youth
I find my guilt and my fear is gone
No stories I’ve been told shall hold my mind in sway
The demons I have feared have gone away
No threat of hell or fire will force me to believe
In fairytales that contradict what I perceive
How firm a foundation is the truth
A bedrock to build my life upon
As I put away the follies of my youth
I find my guilt and my fear is gone
A Godless Song 