This is worth a read too.

Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, delivered this lecture at Seattle Pacific University. I plan to assign it to my Music Philosophy students as their first reading.

The main task in the arts (at least in these here parts of the world) is to get away from the raw pragmatism of folk evangelicalism. In this way of thinking, the only thing that matters is sending the maximum quantity of souls to heaven (sort of like power selling on eBay).

Thus, any method that draws a crowd is good, and the best methods are those discovered by the geniuses of mass marketing. So the Christian gospel becomes one more irritating piece of email spam.

In the case of music, all other considerations are abandonned in favor of instant accessibility and gratification, superficial appeal, and above all, mass marketability.

Tom Wright’s lecture is a needed corrective.