Atheism and classic vocal music

I recently realised that I have a problem that has been disturbing me for quite a while even though I was not concious of this problem. I just had a queer feeling that something was not right.

It is all connected to the fact that I was really excited about singing old music, mostly renaissance and baroque. For anyone who know anything about these genres, also knows that a majority of the music in these genres is sacral in nature. For me, as an atheist, that poses a problem. Let me explain you why.

There are two different parts. Firstly, I do not believe in Jahve, so singing "I love god." is phony. I feel phony. A significant part of singing is the feeling - you have to feel the thing that you are saying. Singing without feeling is a technical executions that has nothing to do with music. I admit that I am unable to feel the feeling "I love god". I did not become a very good singer.

The obvious counter-argument is acting. Actors regularly act feelings that they would not normally feel. So why could I not just act as if I would, in fact, "love god"? Which brings us to the second part. Singing "I love god" in a Christian context is a whole other thing as singing "I love god" in an ancient Viking or Greek context, where god would, respectively, refer to Thor or Zeus. Namely, while Viking and ancient Greek religions have fallen into history, Christianity is (still) alive and kicking. In other words, whether the religions are alive or (practically) dead makes for a big difference, since for the living superstitions, we have to consider our actions in relation to those people who posses that particular faith. We are thus active actors in their faith.

Our active part can be made obvious by an example. Consider a scenario where person A sings "I love god" for a person B. If person A sings it with good level of passion, that is, if he sings it well, then person B can believe that person A actually believes in what he says. Suppose person B is religious, whereby the declaration "I love god" of person A, supports the belief of person B. Yet another person declares that he believes in god, which confirms his belief in god. Thus, when I sing "I love god", I support a superstition that I believe is false. I am actually supporting peoples' delusions. I am cheating them. Swindle is in many other cases an offence punishable by law, but in this case it is only ethically wrong. The responsibility of avoiding this offence remains thus on the conscience of each one of us.

Personally, I would feel quite ok if I would/could just act and that'd be the end of it. However, I have become stuck with this feeling of leading people astray. Simultaneously, I strongly believe that we must follow our own values. Therefore I will no more participate in performances of sacral music.

This result is, from an artistic view point, very unfortunate. Renaissance and baroque music is beautiful! To abstain altogether would keep me from a lot of beautiful music. Still, in a literal sense, all consumption of music has an active role (buying tickets, CDs, scores etc.), which I have been unable to circumvent. Let me know if you have any good counter arguments!