News broke last week of a new invention. The Hymnal-Plus is a karaoke-like machine “with a repertoire of more than 3,000 hymns and psalms”, which can replace a church organist in any church with a three-pin plug socket and a weather-eye to the future. As well as traditional hymns, the Hymnal-Plus has a disco version of
Amazing Grace and a jazzed-up pop at
The Lord Is My Shepherd for those days that you want the rod, the staff and the bongo.
Churches are reportedly eager to snap up the £1,900 machine, as there has been a dearth of young organ-players training to replace the country’s ageing organists. Little wonder, really, given that playing one is like trying to rub your belly, pat your head and land a Boeing 737 at the same time, all while missing Countryfile to boot. Of course, we know what’s really going on: first, it’s musical fidelity and a couple of beats for the Church, then they’ll get in a choir who can make All Things Bright and Beautiful last for 45 wigged-out minutes, and, before you know it, the entire congregation of Newton Poppleford will be making like Sister Act 2 and screaming “Oh sweet Lord!”
As steps towards both modernising and popularising the C of E go, it’s not a bad one, not least for the considerable impact that gospel karaoke will have on entry-standard quality on X Factor, which still tends to look like Batley Working Men’s Club compared with the ululating, you-go-girl diva-whooping on American Idol. And providing both MIDI and MP3 facilities — so that people can bring in their favourite hymns, to share with the rest of the congregation — is a sweet idea. After all, why rely on the musical whims of the vicar who, God bless him, is hardly likely to be combing iTunes for John Barryesque arrangements of Hills of the North, Rejoice?
However much you tinker with the stereo, the fact remains that the old religions still look hopelessly under-researched and mono-sourced compared with every other aspect of our lives. The idea of trusting not only this life, but also the next, to just one book seems ludicrously limited — particularly in a culture in which constant cross-referencing, second-opinioning and hybridising is the currency of progress. In this country everything else — our food, clothes, music, television, language, houses, cars, friends, lovers, families — are a mixture of tens, sometimes hundreds, of different cultures and ideas. So it’s not that, as a country, we’ve become less religious; we’ve simply got more religions and beliefs, and kind of fused them all together into a big meze of faith.
Talk to people under 50 and they all, by and large, have a religion: a consistent, recognisable set of beliefs. It’s just that it doesn’t have a name yet. It usually consists of a selection of the following: doing yoga; believing in reincarnation and karma, but also heaven, so long as Nan and your dogs are there, too; watching Carols from King’s at Christmas; using recycled loo roll; intending to read the Koran at some point; knowing quite a lot of the score of Jesus Christ Superstar; a vague affinity with dolphins; trying not to use the word “spaz” any more; reading The Road Less Travelled; buying joss-sticks; considering colonic irrigation and/or fasting; looking for symbols of the rose on churches since reading The Da Vinci Code; buying make-up that is not tested on animals (apart from Touche Eclat, because Boots Naturals just don’t do an equivalent); getting a bicycle; buying Fairtrade; occasionally wishing you were Jewish; never going to McDonald’s; sponsoring a child in the Third World; listening to The Best of Cat Stevens; liking Shaker-style quilts; and not believing in a man up there with a white beard, but definitely believing that there’s some kind of global conscience, yeah.
If I were a savvy, witchy latter-day L. Ron Hubbard — Old Mother Hubbard, maybe — I’d make my fortune by giving this loose cluster of vaguely affiliated spiritual urges a name, getting Lindsay Lohan interested in it and charging all my acolytes 5 per cent of their earnings. But then, one of the nicest things about this religion is that it doesn’t have a name, exists without buildings or pastors, and is extremely unlikely to start a war with the battle-cry “Death to the infidels who are against reflexology, always buying The Big Issue, and drinking two litres of water a day!” It’s just about various, practical, non-hysterical strategies for selfimprovement, social responsibility and spiritual release. It isn’t, in a nutshell, branded. If the Church really wants to modernise, the Hymnal-Plus is a start. After all, in an age in which anyone with a half-decent laptop can recreate the Ring Cycle, it does seem odd for any audience to rely on cranking up an instrument that’s half-bagpipe, half-rotovator.
Dismiss the bores, embrace the beloved
More inventions: I note that an “internet hugging jacket” has just been invented that allows those “in meetings all day” to hug their loved ones via a robotic jacket installed in the loved ones’ houses. Next year a jacket designed especially to hug babies and pets will be launched, too.
It has taken nearly ten years and some $15 million (£8 million) to perfect these items. Surely it would take less effort — and considerably less time — simply to fire the world’s office bores. They do, after all, waste millions of man-hours every week, with their poor impressions, shoddy anecdotes, half-hearted football banter and coughing. With the time thus saved, employers could send every employee in the world home an hour early every Friday, to give their partners, children and pets a real hug.
PC politiques
Vexed by the populace’s constant carping about the state of the economy, Jean-François Cope, France’s Budget Minister, will invite citizens to log on to a new game, Cyberbudget, to see whether they can balance the budget themselves. Quite aside from the fact that this seems to evolve the Gallic shrug into something more pointed, it does look like a brilliant idea.
Indeed, I think that an expanded game, Cybergovernment, should be a compulsory part of schooling. After all, every four years we decide who’s going to run the country, despite none of us having a danny about where Iran is, how a public-private finance initiative works or, if we’re frank, how to pronounce “Menzies”. And aside from educating us, it could well be that a single mum from Wallasey actually has a better idea about how to rectify the pensions deficit than anyone in Whitehall.
www.timesonline.co.uk/caitlinmoran
