Applause

I am rather puzzled by the ubiquity of applause nowadays - not, I hasten to add, applause directed at me. When I was a boy, applause in church was almost unknown. Certainly one might clap during choruses to mark the time, rather as with a tambourine or other percussion instrument, but not after a sing so as to applaud the performers. After a solo, there might be murmurs of "Hallelujah" or "Amen" but never applause. The idea was that the singer was performing to the glory of God, not for his or her own glory as performers in a secular theatre or cabaret did.

I do not mean to refer to the practice of a "clap offering" intended in itself to be a form of worship. What I am referring to is the practice of applauding in church in the same kind of way as in a theatre, as a congratulation on the quality of a performance. The loss of the old attitude with its consciousness that only God should be glorified in church does not seem to me to constitute progress.