Capturing the sublime

As quoted in today’s sermon:

These are only hints and guesses
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.

--T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages, 1941

It seems to me that this captures the essence of what we’re trying to do every Sunday: convey some small measure of His glory. Or as Paul admonished the church in Colassae:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. — Colossians 3:16

Blessed is He

One of the Lutheran blogs I follow is Brothers of John the Steadfast, the organization that worked hardest to save Issues. Etc. Tuesday’s post is entitled “Note on Liturgy #17 — Sanctus.” I spotted an interested difference in worship, specifically regarding the Benedictus.

I grew up on 1928 Book of Common Prayer, and now (usually) attend a 1928 BCP parish. On my p. 77 of my first prayer book the Preface and Sanctus are rendered as

Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name; evermore praising thee, and saying

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts, Heaven and earth are full of thy Glory: Glory be to thee, O Lord Most High.

Rite I of the 1979 PECUSA prayer book has this, and also adds the Benedictus

Here may be added
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

Because of the 1928 BCP, in Hymnal 1940 the Sanctus doesn’t include the Benedictus until the 2nd Supplement (1981), which adds a new version of the Santcus (Hymns #796-801) with the Benedictus for all 8 communion services.

Among the LCMS hymnals, The Lutheran Hymnal (1941) is the oldest in my collection. Page 26 reports “The Sanctus” complete with the Benedictus:

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth
Heav’n and earth are full of Thy glory;
Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is He, Blessed is He,
Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest.

Lutheran Worship (1982), as with PECUSA’s 1979 prayer book, offers old and new words. Divine Service I is similar to TLH, except “thy” becomes “your” and the refrain is “Blessed is he” not “He” — hopefully signifying a change in style, rather than in theology.

Rite II in PECUSA has the new words

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

and sure enough, Divine Service II of LW is the same, except it says “pow’r”.

However, “God of power and might” will be gone under the newly approved Catholic version of the Sanctus, reverting to a more faithful translation of the Latin text returning to original English text with this text:

Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of Hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

The 1928 BCP (sans Bendictus) matches the 1662 COE prayer book — lacking the Benedictus found in the 1549 BCP. Although both the 1549 and 1552 prayer books were edited by Archbishop Cranmer, the Benedictus was removed in the 1552 BCP and apparently not restored until the 20th century.

Last year my Lenten discipline was reading about the history of the English prayer book. From that, I gathered that the four revisions of the prayer book during this turbulent century-plus (1549, 1552, 1559 and then 1662 after the Puritans were deposed) all centered on the inherent contradiction of how the Church of England was first defined: “Catholic and Reformed.” Henry, Edward and especially Elizabeth sought compromises that pleased everyone and no one to hold the church (and the country) together.

Dropping the Benedictus in 1552 was obviously a win for the Reformed (Calvinist) side. In his seminal The Story of the Prayer Book (1933: 71), Percy Dearmer (editor of The English Hymnal) notes that the Holy Communion service of the American BCP combines both the 1549 and 1552 approaches. He then wrote (p. 71) approvingly of the 1552 change to the Sanctus:

Proud are we of the First Model [1549], there is no less cause for pride in the Second, when we remember that its purpose is to provide a liturgy that is Apostolic rather than Patristic. The omission of the Introits, the Benedictus, and the Agnus is an advantage in which the First Model in its present use now shares (for they are no longer anywhere compulsory.). It was a good change; and even those who like to use these forms in the place of anthems or hymns, as is generally allowed to be legitimate, would not desire to have them all made compulsory again.

Somehow I never thought of the Lutherans as patristic, so I'd be curious to learn more about why they used the Benedictus during all these years that many (most?) Anglicans did not.

Beyond praise in Praise Music

Like an anthropologist studying Southeast Asian aborigines (or the workings of a large corporation), I'm occasionally leaving my ’28 Prayer Book parish for a rock band ACN parish. Each time, I think about what’s similar and different to Anglo-Catholic worship, for two reasons. First is to better understand this tenuous compromise that is ACN (now Common Cause, soon to be a new province). The second is to help identify what portions of Anglo-Catholic worship are essential to preserve, and to be able to better articulate those arguments both to the Evangelicals and the High Church Progressives.

Today (as with a few months ago) I want to focus on the theology of the hymnody — i.e. the concept of Christianity contained within the lyrics. So a Sanctus accompanied by a rhythm guitar (or even a drum set) may not be my cup of tea — or timeless Christianity — but that’s for another time.

This morning, the rock band (3 singers, 2 guitars, ukulele, bass, drum, keyboard) played the service music and six songs. Five of the songs were in the bulletin; I don’t have the lyrics to the sixth, but the one line I remember (“Praising my savior all the day long”) suggests it was Frances Crosby’s 19th century hymn Blessed Assurance, albeit with an updated tune and/or arrangement.

Several things jumped out at me. All of these songs were essentially about praising God. Representative is “Shout to the Lord,“ composed in 1993:

My Jesus, my Savior, Lord, there is none like You;
All of my days I want to praise the wonders of Your mighty love.
My comfort, my shelter, tower of refuge and strength;
Let ev'ry breath, all that I am, never cease to worship You.

Some of the songs had an element of faith — usually promises to continue to worshiping, adoring or loving (but not obeying) God.

The other thing that the songs were was highly egocentric and emotionalistic: in 5 of the 6 (including Crosby’s hymn), the word “I” or “my” appears in the very first line of the song, and repeatedly after that. The song is about how I (interestingly, not “we”) feel about God — seemingly an outgrowth of the personal savior theology of evangelical Protestants combined with the narcissism of the Baby Boomers, “me” generation and Millennials. This may be a good sales strategy for the contemporary culture, but is it Christianity?

So the hymns are about me and my feelings (more precisely, the songwriter’s feelings). What is remarkable from reading and listening to these praise songs is how little we learn about God. Yes, he’s a great God, a comforting God, sometimes a powerful God, but what is he beyond that? If the point of liturgy or sacred music is to instruct (NB: Handel’s Messiah) or reinforce belief, what good do these songs do?

For that matter, except for the occasional reference to “your Son,” it’s hard to recognize the God of praise songs as being a Christian God, let along a Trinitarian one. Again, this fits today’s American civil religion — or even a generic New Age deity — but is it God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost?

It goes without saying that if the faith is (as Lutherans argue) is a combination of both law and gospel, praise music is all gospel love and no obedience or submission to the law. Of course, it’s possible to include repentance in the emotional expression of the first person: Exhibit A is Amazing Grace, which also testifies to the specific sola gratia promise of our benevolent God.

The juxtaposition this morning was striking, when the sermon of repentance was followed by the Rite II confession of sin — surrounded by sin-free, confession-free, obedience-free praise songs. When I asked the rector about the contradiction, he conceded that it was a known weakness of CCM — and then said I should talk to the “Worship Leader” (band director) because he chose the hymns. I used to resent rectors/pastors who interfered with the music director’s hymn selection — but at least hymns come from within a doctrinally approved hymnal. Now, it’s clear to me that any rector who doesn’t set parameters for hymn lyrics (either by picking a hymnal or approving specific songs) is abdicating his responsibility for the religious instruction of his flock.

The other thing that was notably absent was the Bible, the inspiration for so many timeless hymns. Alongside Hymnal 1982, in the pews this morning was another hymnbook: Renew!: Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship from Hope Publishing; inside, hymns 98-135 were listed as “Biblical Songs.” But today’s praise songs could not be traced back to any particular event or passage of Holy Scripture.

As an aspiring musician, it seems like there’s an opportunity here. Start with an eternal Christian message from the Hebrew or Patristic scripture — or maybe one of the many great medieval hymns. Give it a modernized paraphrase comparable to the TEV or Living Bible. Then set it to a four chord progression, add base line and drums, and then typeset it using a standard music scoring package. Voilà! We’d have hymns for all those Rite II ACN/Common Cause types who feel bad about dispensing sugary sentimentality no vitamins in their weekly praise music.

New home for CyberHymnal

One of my goals here is not just to provide information on hymns, but where to find such information. On the righthand side of the blog I've been listing links to some well known resources.

In response to my post earlier this month on the TEC/Continuing Anglican property fight, hymn blogger Leland Bryant Ross posted a (slightly off-topic) comment about the current dispute over CyberHymnal. (Last month I linked to Ross’s blog post about Christmas carols, but I don’t link to his blog on the right side because we generally have divergent goals, in opposite corners of the church music 2x2.)

In his comment early this morning, Ross wrote

It is my hope that you will see the parallel between the unfairness of the court's decision, in this matter, and the unfairness of the ISP's hijacking of cyberhymnal.org, and that you will change your links to The Cyber Hymnal™ to point to its true current location at http://www.hymntime.com/tch/ rather than, as you currently have it, pointing to the ISP that stole the domain name from the actual hymnalist.

Actually, I don’t see much of a parallel, but that doesn’t mean that I’d want to see important content hijacked.

From what I can find right now, this looks to be one of those he said, she said conflicts. The new home doesn’t say much about the conflict

Many have asked what will hap­pen to the do­main name “cyberhymnal.org.” the le­gal owner (Word.Net) is un­will­ing re­lin­quish it, so we can’t use the old URL. In ad­di­tion, our site search fea­ture will not be ful­ly func­tion­al un­til search en­gines have had time to re-in­dex the site at its new URL.

Please spread the word about the new URL & ask Web sites to up­date their links! God bless…

The most detailed discussion I could find of the dispute was in a series of reader comments to a Dec. 26 posting to the Reformed Angler, which includes a few readers who say they’ve corresponded with the anonymous (pseudonymous) CyberHymnal founder.

Taking the discussion as face value, it appears that some company at CyberHymnal.org will have the old content (perhaps with new organization), and another company (possibly aided by the original founder) will have the old content and newer content at HymnTime.com. Of course, the former will get all the website traffic and links for many years. The latter is calling itself TheCyberHymnal™ to create a new brand distinct from CyberHymnal.

I don’t know much beyond that: perhaps the full story will come out over time. Given that CyberHymnal.org is offline for now and TheCyberHymnal is developing new content, at Leland’s suggestion I’ve changed the link to the latter.

Bp. Iker on the future of Anglo-Catholicism

The last few decades have raised questions about the definition and future of Anglo-Catholic worship. On Friday, the man who effectively is the leading spokesman for American Anglo-Catholics, Bishop Jack Iker of the Diocese of Ft. Worth, gave a talk that paints a troubling portrait (at best). Bp. Iker was speaking at the Mere Anglicanism conference in Charleston, South Carolina.

Bp. Iker’s talk is posted at Virtuosity Online. He sets the stage by noting the history of the Anglican Communion:

For three centuries, the Anglican Church knew relative peace and concord through an arrangement known as the Elizabethan settlement or, as the more cynically minded might prefer to call it, the Elizabethan compromise. Dating from the time of Queen Elizabeth I, Anglicanism was marked by a common ordained ministry, common creeds, and a Book of Common Prayer that provided for a good amount of freedom in belief and practice, within those boundaries. High church and low church, anglo-catholics and evangelicals saw many things differently and worshipped in very different ways, but nonetheless they were members of the same church, a national church, under the ultimate governance of the monarch and the ultimate authority of the Holy Scriptures.

As the British empire grew and expanded around the world, so did the Church of England. As colonies were established in America, and Africa, and Asia, so were colonial churches established, each with a common spiritual and liturgical heritage. As one writer has observed, "The ingredients of colonial Anglicanism were the same everywhere: Crown, Parliament, episcopacy, Prayer Book, English law, English theology."

He then traces the history of the ad hoc and relatively weak governance mechanisms of the communion, contrasting those with alternatives (notably conciliarism) that have yet to be adopted.

The speech had three new points — all about women’s ordination — that I had not previously seen raised in the Continuing Anglican saga. First, as a then-PECUSA bishop attending Lambeth last summer, at three different times (including a plenary talk) Bp. Iker raised the issue of the declining tolerance of clergy opposed to women’s ordination, but his comments in these forums were censored from the official record of the conference. Second, while he praises Bishop Duncan and the Common Cause Partnership, he notes that the ordination of women is, in effect, the elephant in the room of the new North American province and will need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Finally, he notes the gap between Anglican thought on the subject and the remainder of Christendom:

It must give due consideration to the reality that the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, which together comprise over 80% of the world's Christians, have already spoken on this issue [WO] and that unilateral actions on our part have already seriously damaged ecumenical relations for the future. Are we willing to submit to the mind of the whole church? Are we really committed to abiding by common consent as determined by general councils?

In my reading, Bp. Iker is saying that the future of Anglo-Catholics may not lie as a province in communion with Canterbury, but as Anglican Rite Catholics. On the one hand, this is an opportunity, to borrow and collaborate in developing sacred music with church musicians representing some 50? 70? million Catholics in the U.S. (plus millions more English-speaking Catholics in the rest of the world).

On the other hand, since Vatican II, Catholic worship in the US has drifted away from the traditional liturgy. The dominant supplier of Catholic church music in the US, Oregon Catholic Press, has the same goal of modernized worship through annual (or more frequent) release of liturgy books such as Today’s Missal.

For centuries, Protestants have borrowed hymns from each other and from Catholics as well. So the challenge may not be writing the hymns, but establishing a large enough, coherent audience for Anglo-Catholic worship that justifies compiling a new hymnal that emphasizes timeless liturgical worship, rather than trendy lyrics and music.