Ed Sheeran doesn’t want to be political, but music always has been

Celebrities using their fame to champion causes they care about is not new, says George Luke. Christians shouldn’t hurl hate at those whose views they don’t agree with - you can just choose not to listen

The fallout over Macklemore being dropped from Ed Sheeran’s current US tour has reignited the age-old debate over whether music concerts should ever be used as platforms for political messaging. But it’s a debate worth thinking about, especially coming from a faith tradition in which music concerts have always been used as a platform for getting a certain message across.

So, should pop concerts ever be used for this sort of messaging? My short answer is: yes. Musicians are allowed to have political opinions, and they have every right to express those on stage. The real question is what we define as ‘politics’.

We have been programmed to think of politics only as supporting a specific party or picking a side in a war. But politics isn’t just Ukraine, Palestine, small boats or Trump. As has been said several times over the centuries, and by people much wiser than me, politics is life.