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Pleased to introduce you to my new project, “Evensong as a battlefield in the culture war”, or “the response to the news from Sheffield cathedral: it’s bad, folks”
THREAD
CW racism, islamophobia
THREAD
CW racism, islamophobia
I don’t want to get into the nuances of what is actually happening at Sheffield cathedral, because neither do any of the people who’re making these comments. Far more important for our purposes is its framing as “dismantling tradition” driven by “inclusivity”
...as this is how it has been reported by the guardian, times, telegraph, mail, spectator, etc, based on the deeply nebulous press release from the dean and chapter
We’re all familiar with the following type of comments, from even the most moderate of commentators: the choir will be replaced by some form of “happy clappy” worship band
These seem innocuous enough, if a bit close minded about the merits of alternate worship styles
But then there are the ones that claim to have the same “concerns”...but voice them in a much more dog-whitle-y way. Which musics are going to “replace” the choir? Traditionally non-white ones, of course!
there are a lot of these
what’s being replaced here, in the minds of these commenters? White music, by coded “non-white” culture. So it’s only a small leap to
...simply saying straight up that this is part of a plot to destroy “white culture”, tied into the “great replacement theory”, etc
are you seeing a pattern here
why do we have to defend the “English choral tradition” in these people’s minds? Because otherwise Enoch Powell will be proved right. And who are the invaders?
Muslims!
Oh boy do these people have an axe to grind
Anyone hoping to “diversify” anything perceived as “white” must be a Muslim 5th columnist, intent on supplanting Christianity for good
Don’t worry, though, because there’s a healthy dose of straight up racism too
Lots of it
I promise you this is a really small sample of the cesspit of comments I’ve read about this
Is Sheffield doing what it’s doing “because of diversity”? Who knows. Does cathedral music in general need to be diversified? YES. IT REALLY DOES. And it is possible to diversify while still keeping a choral tradition.
But we need to be careful about the language we use in “defending the institution of choral music”. Because there’s a slippery slope into a deep, dark, cesspit that culture war types would really, really love to use. And it’s very nasty and very dangerous.
P.S. just to be clear I took every single one of these screenshots from comments on Facebook, Twitter, or articles on newspapers’ websites about the Sheffield cath choir issue from the last 48 hours. Nothing else was inserted as “an example of what it leads to”: this *is* it.
bingo
