Matthew Arnold, the Victorian educationalist, did the idea of culture no favours. His defence of “high culture” as the cultivated reflection upon all that is excellent within a society contains — to many modern ears, at least — a worrying elision of high culture and social class. He called it “a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world”. Culture is an unashamedly elite activity for people with enough leisure time (ie money) and intelligence, as Roger Scruton, following Arnold, argued. Posh people go to the opera, learn Latin, read TS Eliot and long, improving novels.
It’s a change — indeed, quite a radical one — from the older idea that posh people must own a grouse moor and have families that date back to the Norman invasion. But nonetheless, Arnold’s celebration of elite culture is readily interpreted in class terms. Which is why a critic like Raymond Williams, who saw culture everywhere, in comics and pop music, was so immediately appealing to a Sixties generation who wished to affirm a much more democratic and egalitarian social order.
This Arnold vs Williams divide is the original culture war. And is why recent events at Sheffield Cathedral have touched such a nerve. Covid has accelerated all sorts of changes in the church, and as such has revealed intentions that slower developments might have obscured. Sheffield Cathedral has sacked its choir, citing demographic changes in the city and the need for a new choir to develop an inclusive and more broadly based repertoire. Basically, the unspoken suggestion is that a traditional Anglican choir singing Stanford in C at Choral Evensong is just a bit too elitist for a working class city like Sheffield. And that is why Evensong has become so poorly attended. Why not get a band in, play a few choruses, bring in the punters?
The reason the Sheffield Cathedral choir story has sparked the interest it has, with editorials in national newspapers and debates on the radio, has little to do with a highly religious northern public clamouring for the glories of the Anglican choral tradition of an evening, after they have done their bit of weekly shopping. Rather, what concerns many is the threat to high culture itself. Didn’t Arnold have a point, however much we might disagree with him politically? Culture should have a higher purpose than mere entertainment. And isn’t it the job of the Church to hold onto that higher purpose, notwithstanding the vagaries of cultural fashion?
Those who are suspicious of high culture within the church make the not unreasonable point that it is not — at least, no longer — the principle function of the church to be a patron of the higher arts. Among other things, we don’t have the money. No, the musical, visual and theatrical culture of the church must bend to one aim only: promoting the message of the Gospel. And if gospel music, or worship songs inspired by popular music does that better, then so be it. We are not renaissance impresarios. Cultural snobs in cassocks must be shown their place. There is a prevailing mood in the Anglican church — often issuing from the top — that feels a little bit like this.
It was Arnold who introduced the insult “philistine” into English from the German where it had been first used in the 17th century by students in a town/gown dispute in the University of Jena. The poor old Philistines of the ancient world were hardly uncultured. They were just the traditional enemies of the people of Israel, and so their name became a common by-word for “the baddies”. Arnold simply re-tooled this insult to suit his argument about culture and, for some reason, it stuck. But what is so wrong with being philistine in Arnold’s sense?
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