Social activism carols

The Telegraph reports on efforts of anti-Israel activists in London to protest the country’s Palestinian policies. Their Nov. 26 protest service will include this parody:

Once in royal David's city
Stood a big apartheid wall;
People entering and leaving
Had to pass a checkpoint hall.
Bethlehem was strangulated,
And her children segregated.

Telegraph correspondent Damien Thompson asks

I wonder if the Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, has given his permission for it and, if not, whether he will do anything to stop it. If the gay wedding fiasco at St Bartholemew's is anything to go by, his grip on his diocese is rather shaky these days.

This “carol” is not terribly subtle and is unlikely to gain widespread adoption. But it’s yet another reminder than words have consequences in shaping the views of the faithful and faithless alike.

So give three cheers

Although best known as the composing half of 19th century Britain’s dominant light opera partnership, Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan began his career as a church organist, and composed a series of hymn tunes in the 1860s and 1870s, the best known being St. Gertrude (“Onward Christian Soliders.”).

Hymnal 1940 lists Sir Arthur as the composer or arranger of 12 of its 600 hymns (double-counting the tune Hanford); if I had TEH (1906), I would expect to find even more. Three of the 12 are Easter hymns, including this week’s Easter processional, St. Kevin (Hymn 94, 2nd tune).

While the music for Hymn 94 is 19th century operetta, the words of this hymn can be traced back (via translation) to an 8th century text by St. John of Damascus:

Come, ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness;
God has brought his Israel into joy from sadness
Loose from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke Jacob’s sons and daughters;
Led them with unmoistened foot through the Red Sea waters.

Even if not an ancient hymn, this medieval sentiment is certainly one of the oldest extant hymns in the church today.

But, of course, in the TEC the need to “modernize” and “improve” the theology of worship continues unabated. At his blog The Continuum, Fr. Robert Hart this week offers an alternate Easter setting for St. Kevin, one more suited to contemporary TEC theology. Here are the first two of four verses:

Episcopalians, hide those eggs!
Display that branch a-greenin'
But remember, as you do,
The season's truer meaning!
No, I don't mean Jesus Christ,
Or even resurrection,
But what we preach to take His place:
Environmental protection!

Jews and Christians are at fault
For all the world's pollution,
By their foolish rejection of
The Caananite solution!
Fertility goddesses, and the Baals,
And Love Children of the '60s,
Were right instead -- but don't despair...
We've got your new B.C.P.s!

It seems hard to imagine that any sentiment so narrowly focused on contemporary issues — whether satirized or merely self-satirizing — would survive for use by Christians 13 centuries from now.

Better music, better faith

In looking up last week’s news on the global Anglican soap opera, I found an interesting musical commentary entitled “Does Simple Music Form Simple Faith?” by NY Times classical music columnist Bernard Holland. Reacting to contemporary worship music, Holland writes

With its hand-clapping, inspirational, just-folks character, how different this music is from a tradition that ran from plainchant through Josquin and Palestrina to Mozart and Beethoven, and finally to Messiaen and Britten. Without the church to inspire -- not to mention finance -- great composers, how diminished the history of music might seem to us.

After citing the Verdi Requiem as an example of both musical and religious power, Holland recalls the tension between poetry and effective evangelism with (to me) a very familiar recollection of childhood past:

The church has reason to fear great beauty … from the mesmerizing graces of the Latin Mass or the splendid poetry of the Anglican Church's Book of Common Prayer. I am one small example, having spent the Sunday mornings of my youth in the Episcopal Church allowing Thomas Cranmer's magical imagery and liquid liturgical responses to roll off my tongue without a thought to God at all.

As a confirmed 1928 BCP ritualist who discovered Christianity as an adult, to that I say “Amen, brother!”

Still, Holland holds out hope that those of us seeking to preserve the music of traditional liturgical worship may someday be vindicated:

Ritual-driven, beauty-ridden Catholics, Episcopalians and Lutherans may not be doing as well right now as they would like, but history keeps turning in circles, and they may have their day again.

Meanwhile grab that guitar. Clap those hands.

The church’s unfoundation

If the Lutheran Church’s greatest contribution to hymnal theology is “A mighty fortress is our God,” then certainly one of the greatest of the 19th century Church of England is Samuel Stone’s “The Church’s one foundation” (set to the tune of Aurelia by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, grand-nephew of Methodist Church founder Charles Wesley).

London Times religion reporter Ruth Gledhill feels guilty about reprinting the satirical take on the TEC (PECUSA) modernism that is expressed as a satire of the Stone-Wesley hymn. It culminates in this final stanza:

Our church has no foundation
And Christ is not her Lord.
She is our new creation
By our own mighty word.
The Bible's too oppressive,
And morals leave us bored.
Who then is our salvation?
It's our own selves - adored.

Perhaps she'd be even more reticent if she knew it was posted to David Virtue’s website more than a year ago. The Wayback Machine seems to be malfunctioning, but my e-mail archives show that I forwarded these same lyrics (quoting Virtue) to friends back in August 2006.

Postscript: One of Gledhill’s readers added this one from the early days of the women’s ordination debate, sung to Bill Joel’s “She’s always a woman”:

She can reverence in style, genuflect with a flair
She can keep you entranced with a flick of her hair
Then she'll hold up the elements so you can see
She looks like a priest but she's always a woman to me

Oh I consider it fine
If she takes bread and wine
In her kitchen at home
But if she starts that round here
Then I'm sorry my dear
I'll be heading for Rome