Twentieth-century English musicologist and minister Erik Routley gets at the business of why singing is so impactful to the culture around us:
“But hymn-singing is, as a matter of fact, the most insistent and clamorous of all the ways in which the Christian faith and worship makes impact on the world around it. The reason is very simple. You can close our eyes; you can stay away from the church and so neither taste nor see that the Lord is good. But you cannot close your ears, and if a group of Christian people chose to sing a hymn under your windows you are defenseless.”1
For this reason, he goes on to say that “Hymns are the folk-song of the church militant.” Let’s all remember that as we carol out in public during this Advent and Christmas season.
Routley, Erik. Hymns and Human Life. United Kingdom: John Murray, 1959, 2–3.