If a fundamentalist church is of any size at all they will inevitably have a choir of consisting of at least fourteen women and no more than six men. It is possible in smaller churches for the choir to outnumber the rest of the congregation.

Most fundamentalist choirs don’t have a professional director. The guy with the title Music Director usually spends the bulk of his time teaching 5th grade science at the Christian school and cleaning the church bathrooms. They also lack expensive sound equipment, choir robes, and auditions. All that is required to join the choir is a healthy pair of lung and the desire to make a joyful noise. Professionals who think they know better than the choir director and keep whining about things like musical pitch and meter need not apply.

In addition to singing at weekly services the Fundamental Baptist choir is also responsible for the yearly Christmas cantata, Easter cantata, God and Country Sunday, and special music at revivals. The miracle is that they do it all on thirty minutes of practice before the Sunday evening service. It’s a good thing that fundamentalists don’t believe in singing too much new music.

Break out the song books and fire up the organ. As they say in southern churches, “Y’all pray for us now, we ain’t practiced much.”