It’s a song about “reclaiming your humanity through an act of love.”
Unless you’re into the Irish bluesy, indie rock scene, chances are it’s only been in recent months that you’ve heard Hozier’s “Take Me to Church.” The song, the lead track on Hozier’s self-titled album released in September, is thick with metaphor, as the catchy refrain goes,
Take me to church
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
According to Hozier himself, musician Andrew Hozier-Byrne, in case it isn’t clear enough in the song, the meaning is about sex and oppressive institutions—which means, at least in our day, that the song has something to say about homosexual practice and those groups that espouse traditional sex ethics. Hozier explains in one interview,
Sexuality, and sexual orientation—regardless of orientation—is just natural. An act of sex is one of the most human things. But an organization like the church, say, through its doctrine, would undermine humanity by successfully teaching shame about sexual orientation—that it is sinful, or that it offends God. The song is about asserting yourself and reclaiming your humanity through an act of love. Turning your back on the theoretical thing, something that’s not tangible, and choosing to worship or love something that is tangible and real—something that can be experienced. (The Cut)
The music video for the song spells out what we might otherwise miss. Not wanting to specifically target the church (which happens enough in the song’s lyrics), Hozier says the video references anti-gay events in Russia. Two men are involved in a physical homosexual relationship; a mob of masked vigilantes bust into a house and drag away one of the men, knife to his throat, until they reach a crackling bonfire, circle around the man and start violently kicking him. The video has been viewed 23 million times over the past year.
Those Oppressive Institutions
There is much about the song, and Hozier’s comments, that do not cohere. For one, it’s sad that he would lump Russia and the Christian worldview into this same category of “oppressive institution,” and then to pretend that they share a violent approach against gay rights. That’s simply not true.
It also appears in Hozier’s comments that he makes no distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual practice, something a growing number in the church are careful to do. An orientation, he says, is natural and good, and if anyone says it shouldn’t be pursued, they are “undermin[ing] humanity.”
But then he says that God is theoretical, that if you are to assert yourself and reclaim your humanity through an act of love, you must turn “your back on the theoretical thing, something that’s not tangible, and choosing to worship or love something that is tangible and real—something that can be experienced.”
In his view, the love between human individuals and their sex is more real than God, and in fact, that is what we should worship. And as the music video suggests, those who think differently might as well be part of the mob wearing masks, carrying bottle torches and knives, dragging gay men through the woods and beating them profusely. But that’s unfair, Hozier, and too easy.
