From the very earliest days of Christianity, believers sang, and as the early church organized itself, the codification of approved Church modes and ways of singing grew apace.
The birth of Christian music is lost in time, and the ambivalence some church figures feel about music, as a possibly seductive distraction from the pure worship of God, has an equally strong line in human thought, from Plato to the Ayatollah Khomeini. But although Luther was an especially fervent proponent of the bonds between God and song, he was hardly the firstreligious leader to countenance and encourage music as part of religious ceremony. Choral singing is an integral part of our modem‐day concert life, rooted deeply in the congregational singing of the Protestant Reformation.
