Orthodox churches sing without instruments. That’s what a cappella means, just human voices offering the prayers and hymns of the liturgy.
Walk into St. Michael’s on a Sunday morning and you won’t find a piano or guitar. You’ll hear chanters and choir singing the responses, the hymns, the psalms. Just voices. It’s been this way since the beginning.
The Voice Alone
The Orthodox Church inherited this practice from the synagogue. Early Christians sang psalms and hymns without accompaniment, continuing what they’d always known. When St. Paul wrote about singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, he meant singing them. The disciples sang a hymn after the Last Supper. No mention of pulling out a lyre first.
The Eastern churches never changed this. While Western Christianity gradually introduced organs in the medieval period, the Byzantine tradition kept singing as it had always been, voices only. It wasn’t a decision so much as a continuity.
The theological reason runs deeper than just “we’ve always done it this way.” Orthodox worship understands music as prayer, not performance. The words matter most. When you sing “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us,” you’re praying those words. The melody serves the text, helps you pray it, gets it into your bones. Instruments can obscure that. They can turn music into something you listen to rather than something you offer.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote extensively about how liturgy is the Church’s participation in Christ’s own offering to the Father. Everything we do in worship is meant to unite us to that. Singing does this in a particular way. Your voice is your body, your breath, yourself. When the whole congregation sings the Creed together, that’s not background music, that’s the Body of Christ confessing the faith with one voice.
Angelic Worship
There’s another dimension here. Orthodox liturgical texts constantly reference the angels. “Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim sing the thrice-holy hymn.” We believe that in the liturgy, heaven and earth meet. The angels are present, worshiping with us. And how do angels worship? They sing. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” No harps mentioned, just voices crying out.
This isn’t mystical poetry, it’s how we understand what’s actually happening in church. The human voice, more than any instrument, participates in that angelic song. It’s the most natural form of praise, the one that requires nothing but yourself.
What About Exceptions?
Is this practice universal? Mostly. You’ll find a cappella singing normative across Orthodox jurisdictions, Greek, Russian, Antiochian, OCA, all of them. Some parishes in America have experimented with organs or other instruments, usually in diaspora contexts where people expected them. But these are exceptions, not the rule.
The Antiochian Archdiocese has consistently emphasized vocal music. The late Metropolitan Philip worked to restore congregational singing in American parishes, encouraging people to learn the responses and participate rather than just listen to a choir. That vision assumes voices, not instruments. Our tradition is Byzantine chant, which developed entirely as vocal music.
If you visit an Antiochian parish in Lebanon or Syria, you’ll hear the same thing you hear at St. Michael’s, voices. The melodies might differ slightly, the language changes, but the principle holds. We sing.
Getting Used to It
For folks coming from Baptist or non-denominational backgrounds here in Southeast Texas, this can feel strange at first. You’re used to a worship band, maybe a piano at minimum. The absence of instruments might seem sparse or old-fashioned.
Give it time. There’s something powerful about hearing fifty people sing “Lord have mercy” together without anything mediating that sound. It’s direct. It’s human. And after a few months, you might find that instruments would actually feel like an intrusion, something getting between you and the prayer.
The human voice is the first instrument God made. It’s enough.
