Communicating, preserving and celebrating the faith

Today’s RCL (Year B) epistle (and the subject of part of the sermon) was James 5:13-20. It touched me, because it bears directly on the purpose of Anglican music — and this blog.

The first verse of the passage by St. James is quite clear:

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.

This really crystalized my thinking about the essential question: why do hymns matter? It’s a question I’ve been trying to answer since I started this blog — I intuitively knew that hymns play a crucial role in worship, but I couldn’t articulate why.

Today, I think I have a clear answer. As with other elements of corporate (shared) liturgy, hymns serve three purposes:

• To communicate the faith. Before Gutenberg, Christians didn’t have personal Bibles and learned the faith from liturgy. Even today, children (and perhaps casual Christians) learn their earliest and perhaps most lasting theological lessons from hymn lyrics (a crucial reason why the words matter.)
• To preserve the faith. Regular readers know of my devotion to timeless hymns and the continuity they provide to the faith across the millennia. Our oldest hymnal dates from the 6th century, with written music perhaps 500 years later. Such continuity is part of conveying an eternal in our eternal Father.
• To celebrate the faith. Ever since I can remember, the part I most enjoy about Sunday — what gets me out of bed and out of the house (usually) on time — is singing the hymns. I go not to listen to a performance, but to be part of the corporate worship.

Borrowing from the Hebrews, clearly hymnody dates back to the church’s beginning. St. Paul wrote to the church at Colossus:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Or, as I sang in college from Mendelssohn’s 2nd Symphony (“Lobgesang” or Hymn of Praise):

All that hath life and breath, sing to the Lord.

Which brings this back to the purpose of this blog. The sermon was (in part) about the final sentence of the passage from St. James:

My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

I now believe that this blog (and the research it represents) will be my own personal ministry as a Christian, perhaps for my remaining days. I didn’t start this blog to win points on Judgement Day (if that’s even possible), but to share what I learn as part of my own search for deeper understanding.

I’ve been terribly gratified by the the observations and feedback from readers over the past 30 months, and hope that this dialog will continue.

About this blog (2009)

Last updated January 10, 2009

The goals and orientation of this blog have evolved since the original plan, so here is an updated statement, with links to illustrative postings.

This weblog is offered in humility by a poor miserable sinner, who often errs and strays like a lost sheep. Corrections, comments and suggestions are always welcome.

The blog is about the preservation of Anglo-Catholic liturgical worship — and its associated music — into the 21st century. The main focus is preserving three aspects of worship:

1. what is best from the past five centuries of Anglicanism (e.g. hymns of Watts, Vaughan Williams);
   
2. what we inherited from Catholicism at the time of the split from Rome (e.g. Gregorian chant and other medieval plainsong), and
   
3. what we have borrowed and shared with other liturgical Christians during those centuries (e.g. the music of Bach and Wesley).
   

The main focus is advocating such Anglo-Catholic music, both in its form (the tunes) and in its content (the lyrics).

However, standing for such principles necessarily means drawing a line of separation against others. A major theme is offering a cogent argument in favor of timeless Christian forms of worship and against attempts to modernize the faith to conform to a postmodern culture, whether that be through CCM (Christian Contemporary Music) or politically correct, “inclusive” lyrics.

The author is a layman, choir member and would-be musicologist who was raised an Episcopalian, but has found that the Episcopal church of his childhood has been eradicated from most parishes within PECUSA (which now calls itself TEC). This blog is thus sympathetic to those Continuing Anglicans of North America, whether the Schism I parishes and provinces inspired by the Congress of St. Louis, or the Anglo-Catholic contingent within the Schism II churches that are forming the North American Anglican Province (née Common Cause Partnership).

Although this blog often cites from PECUSA hymnals such as Hymnal 1940 (my favorite) and the decidedly inferior Hymnal 1982, it also draws on the seminal English language hymnals, especially the two great Church of England hymnals: Hymns Ancient & Modern (1861) and The English Hymnal (1906).

One major goal of this blog is thus to air ideas about what should be done for the New Anglican hymnal (date and title undetermined), which the Schism I and/or Schism II churches will someday create to replace Hymnal 1940 and Hymnal 1982.

Another major goal is to share the ongoing musical education of Anglo-Catholic musician, who hopes to learn by reading a wide range of materials, both primary sources (e.g. Hymns A&M) and commentary. The latter includes books on hymnody (e.g. Dr. Ian Bradley’s Book of Hymns), as well as bloggers who write about liturgical music, such as Dr. Catherine Osborne of the CoE and Vicar Josh Osbun of the LCMS.

About this Blog

Last updated April 7, 2007

This weblog is a set of personal observations about hymns in the Anglican tradition. The author is a layman, choir member and would-be musicologist who was raised an Episcopalian, but (in light of pending TEC/Anglican Communion split) is more likely to end up in a continuing Anglican church. Despite drawing heavily on Episcopal hymnals, the title of the blog is thus “Anglican” rather than “Episcopal” Music.