Clement believed that music could build (or destroy) character. The pagans of his day sang at banquets and at domestic dinner tables. In the years before “church music” was invented, music had a place in the Christian home—as a way to welcome guests, to unite husband and wife in the same melodies, and to improve the character of the whole household.

Earlier this year, NPR told the story of Teresa MacBain, a United Methodist pastor who had stopped believing in God. In March, when she just couldn’t keep it to herself anymore, she told the American Atheists Convention that she was one of them.

Coming out as an atheist felt good. But when she got home to Tallahassee, Florida, she discovered that a video of her coming-out speech had gone viral. Her church and community shunned her.  

I was saddened but not surprised. Many people attend seminary because they are seeking answers to serious questions about the faith. When they do pastoral care, those questions become sharper.  

What really caught my attention about MacBain’s story was this: “I miss the music,” she told NPR. “Some of the hymns, I still catch myself singing them,” she said. “I mean, they’re beautiful pieces of music.”  

After I posted a Facebook comment about the way hymns sneak up on this born-again atheist, a friend reminded me of comedian Steve Martin’s comic tune, “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs.” At the New Orleans Jazz Festival, Martin waved a single sheet of paper and told the audience, “This is the entire atheist hymnal, right here.”  

Among the song’s more memorable lines: “Romantics play ‘Claire de Lune.’ / Born agains sing, ‘He is risen.’ / But no one ever wrote a tune / for godless existentialism.”  

Martin is clever, but wrong. John Lennon wrote just such a tune in 1971. Lennon’s tune for “Imagine” is indeed inspiring. But Lennon’s text posits an existence with “nothing to live or die for.” With no countries, no possessions, no heaven or hell, no religion, Lennon promised, the world would live as one. Not likely. Perhaps Martin was right to ignore the song.  

Clement of Alexandria said Christian meals should be a ‘thankful revelry.’

Maybe “atheists don’t have no songs,” or perhaps they have two or even ten. But the early Christians didn’t have many songs either. Christians were slow to develop a body of their own songs.    

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