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In their deliberations, the bishops identified for the first time in Christian history, an actual ministry of song. This lecture will build on this foundational moment in Christian musical history.
At best, a family is united by children, love, partnership; at worst it has the death of love, divorce, and parents feuding over money and children. But what of the situation when the dispute is not between The State and The Family?
Like many others in the first and second centuries, the governor thought the Christians very strange. So they were in many respects, but they were not so strange that they repudiated the use of ritual song. We begin our survey with the music of the first Christian communities.
Even after the abolition of the death penalty, life and death decisions still have to be made by judges, such as whether a very seriously mentally disabled baby should be allowed to die rather than be force-fed.
This final lecture of the series, given in the church whose bells are commemorated in nursery rhyme as the ‘bells of the Old Bailey’, will explore the place of the bell tower and its inhabitants in the medieval imagination.