Sacred Music In The Schools

Posted by Chad Criswell Nov 19, 2006

Over the years more and more school districts have started to ban religious music as a part of musical instruction. While this hard line approach to the church versus state argument is not the predominating view in American schools, it is having a ripple effect even in the more right-wing areas of the country. The simple fear of litigation or outcry from atheistic or non-Christian parents has driven many school music, choir, band, and orchestra directors to simply avoid the confrontation alltogether and not program sacred music into their school music programs.

As a high school band director I subconsciously found myself programming increasingly large amounts of secular Christmas music into my "holiday," concerts. It was not until a very religious student of mine came in one day and handed me a copy of a document outlining why it is constitutionally okay to use sacred music in the schools that I realized just how lop-sided I had become. Although I had never been told by anyone that I could not use the sacred music in my holiday program I subconsciously avoided them and in turn I feel now that I was doing my students a disservice.

The simple truth about sacred versus secular music in the public schools is that it is perfectly legal and in many cases preferred to use sacred music to teach students about music. Without the sacred music of our past our repertoire would look and sound quite different today. I discovered a wonderful and very frank article on this subject in the Lansing State Journal yesterday and it started me thinking about this whole messed up topic. Music teachers need to get back to their roots and cast aside their fears. If programmed correctly, and not in a worship setting, sacred music has the right to return to all schools in the United States. Without sacred music we are casting aside a very important part of our musical heritage.