"Take Me to Church" — worship as metaphor

What the work does

Andrew Hozier-Byrne, recording as Hozier, released Take Me to Church as a single in September 2013, originally as part of an EP of the same name. The song was included on his self-titled debut album in October 2014. It became one of the most-streamed songs of the mid-2010s, with an accompanying music video (released October 2013) that depicted a Russian gay couple targeted in a homophobic attack. The video’s content sharpened the song’s reception as engaging questions about religious authority and sexuality.

Hozier has been consistent in interviews about the song’s subject. The most direct statements (in The Irish Times, NME, and several long-form interviews of 2013-14) identified the specific target as the Catholic Church’s historical position on sexuality in Ireland — particularly with reference to the Magdalene Laundries (institutions in Catholic Ireland from the 18th century to the late 20th century in which “fallen women” were detained for forced labour, with the last institution closing in 1996; a 2013 Irish state apology and inquiry brought new public attention to the scandal). The song was written in this context.

The lyrics are under copyright. The song repurposes the vocabulary of religious devotion — church, worship, lover, altar, ritual, high priest — applying it to romantic relationship within a critique of institutional religious authority over private life. This entry documents the biblical vocabulary of worship the song operates with.

The biblical vocabulary of worship

The New Testament has two principal Greek verbs translated worship in English versions, with overlapping but distinct semantic ranges.

proskuneō

proskuneō (προσκυνέω) is the most common worship verb in the New Testament. BDAG s.v. proskuneō: “to express in attitude or gesture one’s complete dependence on or submission to a high authority figure: to (fall down and) worship, do obeisance to, prostrate oneself before, do reverence to, welcome respectfully.”

The verb is built from pros (toward) + kyneō (kiss). The image is of one who approaches another and kisses the ground in front of them — the gesture of complete subordination in ancient Mediterranean culture.

The verb appears across the New Testament in three main contexts:

Of worship to God. John 4:24 in the discourse with the Samaritan woman:

“God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24, BSB)

The verb here is proskuneō. The whole discourse (John 4:21-24) reframes worship away from a specific location — the Samaritan mountain or the Jerusalem temple — toward spirit and truth.

Of worship to Christ. The Magi worship the child Jesus (Matthew 2:11); the disciples worship the risen Christ (Matthew 28:9, 17). The verb is proskuneō.

Of worship refused. When John attempts to worship the angel in Revelation 19:10, the angel refuses:

“Do not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God.” (Revelation 19:10, BSB)

The verb in the refusal — proskuneō — is the same verb the act would have used. The angel refuses the act because proskuneō belongs to God alone.

latreia / latreuō

latreia (λατρεία) and the verb latreuō (λατρεύω) are the second cluster. BDAG s.v. latreia: “service, religious service, devotion.”

The vocabulary cluster is from a root meaning to work for hire, to serve. The biblical use is for cultic service — the priestly service of the temple, the priestly service of the tabernacle, by extension the worship one renders to God. The vocabulary is more directly cultic than proskuneō; it specifies the service rather than the gesture.

Romans 12:1 contains one of the most-cited uses:

“Therefore I urge you, brothers, on account of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” (Romans 12:1, BSB)

The Greek closing phrase — tēn logikēn latreian hymōn — is your reasonable / rational / spiritual service of worship. The translation is debated (KJV’s reasonable service; NIV/ESV’s spiritual worship; NJPS-style renderings of your appropriate cult). The vocabulary takes the cultic-service register and applies it to the whole life of the body offered as the substance of devotion.

What the song repurposes

Take Me to Church operates with this vocabulary in mind. The song’s argument depends on the religious-devotion language having weight: the rhetorical force comes from taking words that name what one owes to God and applying them to what one owes to the lover.

The move is not new in Western literature — the medieval troubadour tradition, the Petrarchan sonnet tradition, the metaphysical poets all play with the convertibility between divine and romantic devotional language. John Donne’s Holy Sonnets and Songs and Sonnets operate in adjacent territory. What is distinctive in the Hozier track is the political sharpening: the redirection is staged not as private metaphor but as critique of institutional authority that has, in the song’s argument, mismanaged the devotional category by taking it for itself and ruling against the lover.

The song’s specific Irish context is significant. The Magdalene Laundries — institutions of forced labour for “fallen women” in Catholic Ireland from the 18th century to the late 20th century — were the subject of a 2009 Irish Human Rights Commission report, a 2013 McAleese Inquiry report, and a 2013 state apology by Taoiseach Enda Kenny. The scandal was active in Irish public discussion in 2013 when Hozier wrote the song. His critique was specific to a specific institutional history; the song’s wider reception extended the critique to other contexts (the 2013 Russian gay propaganda law was the subject of the music video).

What the entry does not argue

This entry does not engage the song’s theological position or argue for or against its critique of institutional Catholicism. It documents that the biblical vocabulary of worship the song repurposes — proskuneō, latreia — has a developed New Testament theology that the song uses without quoting. The song’s rhetorical power depends on the religious vocabulary having theological weight; the redirection of that vocabulary to romantic devotion is the song’s specific move.

For the related treatment of grace within the broader Pauline theology, see Grace — meaning. For the Hebrew vocabulary of spirit (the ruach of Genesis 1:2, related to the pneuma of John 4:24’s spirit and truth), see Ruach — Hebrew for spirit.

To read the biblical worship passages in other translations:

• John 4:1-30 — NIV →
• Romans 12:1-2 — NIV →
• Revelation 22:8-9 — NIV →