No more Issues

Regular readers know that I’ve enjoyed quoting interesting interviews run on the KFUO radio show Issues Etc. Particularly interesting to me have been the ones by Terry Mattingly on the pop culture-ization of American worship.

This morning I caught on to Tuesday’s story that Issues Etc. has been cancelled and the staff fired, with the St. Patrick’s Day episode being the last. The KFUO website (which appears sluggish due to unusually high traffic) says

For programmatic and business reasons, the decision was made this week to discontinue the "Issues, Etc." program on KFUO-AM. We look forward to bringing you new programming in this time slot in the near future. Also, we thank "Issues" host Rev. Todd Wilken and producer Mr. Jeff Schwarz for their years of service on behalf of the station. Those interested may still download past "Issues, Etc." programs from the "Issues" archive on this website. Thank you sincerely for your continued support of KFUO's radio ministry.

I tried to find more of an explanation but apparently nobody’s talking.

However, dozens of LCMS bloggers and other former listeners have been critical of the decision, led by LCMS Pastor William Weedon, who called the act “Holy Tuesday Treachery”. Rev. Weedon has compiled a long list of listener testimonials.

Some station donors are angry and are instead donating money to the ex-employee financial support fund. There’s the obligatory online petition which has 1200 signatures. There’s even a brand new blog “Bring Back Issues Etc.”

I don’t know the issues and not being in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, it’s not my fight. I hadn’t listened to the show recently (because I was upset over the ignorance displayed by a guest they had for an hour in February), but one mistake does not negate all the good work they’ve done since 2003.

Appropriately, the next to last episode (on Sunday) was about a hymn. (Alas, it’s about a modern hymn with sappy music, but...) As far as I know, there’s no radio show anywhere on the Internet that has spent so much time on liturgical music, so the loss is a great one.

Water from a stone

And the LORD said to Moses ... “Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” Exodus 17:6 [ESV]

When I was a kid, the phrase “you can’t get water from a stone” was the definition of impossibility. (Today, “blood from a turnip” seems more common). The metaphor was obviously informed by if not drawn from the story of Moses leading the Israelites in the desert, and finding water at Meribah.

This is the reference to water that was quoted by Augustus Toplady in his famous hymn:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure;
Save from wrath and make me pure.

The linkage was explained to me in a wonderful article by Christopher Howse in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph (via Titus OneNine). Howse (or his editors) titled the article “Rock of Ages and the rebel pilgrims.” Howse explains how this hymn appears across a wide range of Christian hymnals:

Toplady was a thoroughgoing Calvinist. In an article for the Gospel Magazine he calculated that the number of sins committed during the average lifetime amounted to 2,522,880,000. Later stanzas of the hymn make it clear that neither the work of his hands nor his tears, even if they flowed for ever, could atone for sin - and with this opinion, his great doctrinal opponent John Wesley would have agreed, as far as it went, as would any Christian, from St Augustine to the Pope of Rome.

... what Toplady was referring to, as any of his Bible-reading congregation would have known, was the striking of the rock by Moses in the desert, when the people were grumbling that they were thirsty, "and the water came out abundantly".

More importantly, for Toplady's verses, the water flowing from the rock was a type or foreshadowing of the water that flowed, together with blood, from the side of Christ when he was pierced by a spear as he hung on the cross.

This is the hymn that Dr. John Julian (in Vol. 2 of his 1898 Dictionary of Hymnology) praised by saying

No other English hymn can be named which has laid so broad and firm a grasp upon the English-speaking world

The song has enduring popularity — even to the modern generation of praise music — having been recorded by (among others) soul singer Al Green, ex-gospel singer Amy Grant in a duet with husband Vince Gill, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

However, over the past centuries there have been considerable variations in the treatment of the words and music, even for the famous first stanza. The version listed above is #150 from the 1870 Hymns and Ancient and Modern, the oldest source I have, but still almost a hundred years after Toplady published his poem at the end of a March 1776 article in The Gospel Magazine, of which he was the editor — the same article that Howse references.

Since Toplady was an English Calvinist, perhaps a more relevant version would be #406 of 1900 The Church Hymnary, created by the Church of Scotland and other Presbyterian churches of the British Isles. It turns out that these words exactly match The English Hymnal (#477), the 1906 hymnal fondly remembered by two generations of English worshipers (and Prof. Osborne’s blog). This is also the version quoted by Howse.

In 1940, the editors of my favorite hymnal chose these words for hymn #471:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy side, a healing flood,
Be of sin the double cure;
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

which adopts the same closing phrase as TEH, but tries to make a better rhyme with “blood”. (In one of its rare redeeming choices, Hymnal 1982 restores the TEH wording.)

Across these same four editions — two English, one Scottish, one American — the last stanza has many small variations, but the meaning seems more similar (”mine eyelids close in death” vs. “mine eyes are closed in death.”)

Its lasting popularity has meant it has been set to at least six different hymn tunes:

• Petra aka Gethesemane aka Redhead No. 76 (1853). By Richard Redhead, the only tune listed in all four hymnals and apparently the most popular in British Isles.
• Toplady (1830). Listed as the final choice in the 1900 Scottish and 1940 Episcopal hymnals — and the only choice in Hymnal 1982 — this tune by the American Thomas Hastings is the one familiar to all of us on this side of the pond.
• Pascal (c. 1780) From the Katholisches Gesangbuch of Vienna, it’s listed as the 2nd tune in the companion to the 1927 (Presbyterian) The Church Hymnary.
• Pressburg (1714) The tune attributed to Freylinghausen is listed as the alternate tune in TEH.
• Rousseau’s Dream. After Petra and Toplady, the third tune mentioned by Dr. Ian Bradley in his wonderful Book of Hymns — apparently the tune popular during an 1875 British revival movement. As best I can tell, the same tune known as Greenville (1752) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
• Cuyler (1907) by John H. Brewer, listed as the third choice in the CyberHymnal. and apparently popular in its home parish in Brooklyn for nearly a century.

Some might consider the hymn too popular — to the point of being cliché. I recall a funeral (perhaps my uncle’s) where it was rejected for this reason. However, the CyberHymnal says it was sung at Gladstone’s funeral, while Julian says it gave great comfort to a dying Prince Albert (Victoria’s consort).

That’s good enough for me: I have it listed as the sequence hymn for my funeral (hopefully not any time soon). That’s where it was sung at the 2006 funeral of my wife’s aunt. My mom also wants it played at her funeral — one of the few cases where we agree about something involving Anglican worship.

(Anglo) Catholic

Most Anglo-Catholics have mixed feelings about the word Catholic. On the one hand, we love many of the forms and rituals that we took with us in 1533 when Henry VIII created a new church because he wanted a divorce. On the other hand, like Cardinal Newman, we tend to assume that “Catholic” (without modifiers) is synonymous with “Roman Catholic Church.”

Christians since 381 have been saying

εἰς μίαν, ἁγίαν, καθολικὴν καὶ ἀποστολικὴν ἐκκλησίαν

which in Latin became

Et unam, sanctam, cathólicam et apostólicam Ecclésiam.

In 1549 Anglicans translated this as

And I believe one Catholick and Apostolick Church.

(In 1549, the “clerk” recites the creed, so it’s not clear when the laity began the regular recitation. Of course communion and the Nicene Creed were not weekly events in the 16th or 17th centuries).

Anglican blogger Rev. Robert Hart has a great posting about how "Catholic" is really a generic term referring to Christ’s church, and how the RCC has unduly claimed a monopoly on it. One excerpt:

From the usage of the word "Catholic" in ancient times we see that it speaks, above all, of the Church and of the Faith of that Church (namely, its doctrine). This word is used by everybody in Christianity, and is the property of no one denomination.

The whole post is well worth reading by any (Anglo) Catholic.

At the other extreme, the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod seems to think the word “Catholic” smacks of papism. Unlike the 1549 BCP, 1662 BCP, 1928 BCP or even the 1979 prayer book, in the LCMS liturgy the “C” word has been censored:

And I believe in one holy Christian and apostolic Church.
I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins,
and I look for the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

What's the smudge?

When I was in college I acquired two albums of Christian musicals. Godspell was better Gospel and (IMHO) better music. The more successful (but less enjoyable) musical succeeded as spectacle — but today Jesus Christ Superstar is perhaps best remembered as the third work (and first megahit) of the 20th century genius, Baron Lloyd-Webber. One of his more bombastic songs was “What’s the buzz”.

I was reminded of the song when three times this afternoon I was asked (in effect) “what’s the smudge” on my forehead. I decided beforehand to just say “Ash Wednesday”. I would have been unprepared to answer, if I hadn’t read (LCMS member) Mollie Hemingway’s post last night:

At my last newspaper job, my colleagues loved celebrating Mardi Gras (aka Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, last day before (Western) Lent). A favorite co-worker, from New Orleans, of course, would bring in a King Cake and we would feast. Some people would wear beads, etc. And then the next day when I came to work with ashes on my forehead, dozens of people would ask me what that was for. I never quite understood celebrating Mardi Gras or Shrove Tuesday without Ash Wednesday being the next day.

Among those who didn’t ask (and so presumably knew what was going on) were those with Italian or Irish names, who I thus assume either were Catholic or had Catholic relatives. This got me to thinking.

I’ve gone to Ash Wednesday services at Catholic, Episcopal and Lutheran churches. (Of course, it’s also observed at continuing Anglican parishes). My Orthodox friends, of course, observe Ash Wednesday — even if not on the same calendar.

But who else observes the day? The fasting? The imposition of ashes? Among liturgical Christians (as Mrs. Hemingway calls us), there may not be that many others. It’s controversial among Presbyterians. Ironically, after being part of the 1662 BCP praised by John Wesley was restored to (U.S.) Methodist liturgy through their postmodern prayer book.

Will Ash Wednesday survive in Protestant worship? It’s clearly there in the 1662 BCP and thus presumably in AMiA’s 21st century update. But interestingly, it makes not mention of the imposition of ashes (because it’s assumed, or because it’s a rejection of the Catholic church)?

Still, ashes and midweek devotionals seem like an Anglo-Catholic thing. I guess next year I need to got to an AMiA or other “low church” Anglican to see what they do.

We didn’t have hymns at today’s noontime service. But one of those called out for today is my favorite Lent hymn — the first Lenten hymn in the 1940 Hymnal, #55:

Forty days and forty nights
Thou wast fasting in the wild;
Forty days and forty nights
Tempted, and yet undefiled

The 17th century tune from Nürnbergisches Gesangbuch is even better than the 19th century words.

BTW: Easter is early this year (March 23); according my 1928 BCP (p. liii), only one year in the past 200 years had an earlier Easter: March 22, 1818. However, Ash Wednesday that year was Feb. 4 (because Ash Wednesday is a day later on Leap Years).

Update: On Wednesday, the LCMS radio show Issues Etc. had a very interesting discussion in the last half of the first hour of the show. Host Todd Wilken talked about the origins of Lent, Ash Wednesday and the imposition of ashes with Dr. Paul Grime, a new faculty member at the LCMS seminary in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

An extended (but parallel) exposition of the meaning of Ash Wednesday can be found in Touchstone magazine, which reprints a March 2004 column by editor David Mills. (H/T: The Continuum).

A 17th century Rite II

As I mentioned Monday, the Prayer Book Society and the Anglican Mission in the Americas are producing a new edition of the 1662 BCP. Monday afternoon, PBS president Peter Toon gave more details:

It is a regrettable fact that most of the forms of service designed for use since the late 1960s in western Anglicanism have sought to set aside the pattern and doctrine within the historic Book of Common Prayer, and replace them with a shape and theology that is a mixture of ancient structure and modern doctrine. Even where some of the historic content has been preserved, as in Rite One services of the 1979 Prayer Book of The Episcopal Church, it is made to fit into the “shape” of the modern Rite Two.

Therefore, there is a real need in contemporary Anglicanism for the availability of classic Common Prayer in a way that is acceptable and usable by those who currently use Rite Two, or the Canadian 1985 Book, or the like. There is an open space developing for use of traditional services in contemporary English, where the doctrine and devotion of the historic Anglican Way are present, known and received.

Thus, the project is oriented at AMiA (low church) parishes — many of which switched to the Rite II 1982 prayer book before fleeing ECUSA in this decade.

I guess there was no reason for the PBS/AMiA to worry about the Anglo-Catholics, who can read the original edition online in 17th century language not that different from the 1928 BCP. Here is the collect for Sexagesima (two days ago)

LORD God, who seest that we put not our trust in any thing that we do; Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Still, there is a big question of how far the PBS/AMiA went towards Rite II — in particular, did it follow the modern mainline Protestant (and Catholic) ICET translations of the original Latin? For many, the key test is the first response of the Sursum Corda.

	Latin	1662 BCP	ICET
Priest	Dominus Vobiscum	The Lord be with you	The Lord be with you
People	Et cum spiritu tuo	And with thy spirit	And also with you

The older translation is more literal, and the two translations are not the same. Update: The Toonian 1662 BCP says “And with your spirit,” which preserves the meaning while dropping the thees and thous.

Of course, there are other innumerable other differences between the 1662/1928 renditions and the ICET. Some are inconsequential, such as “thy” vs. “your”; but others have doctrinal implications, such as “I believe” rather than “We believe.” Will the new PB modernize the Lord’s Prayer? Almost every Rite II parish I’ve attended still says “Our Father, who art in heaven.”

The whole point of the ICET was to unify English translations in modern language. If the PBS/AMiA project adopts the ICET, it can use the musical settings of Hymnal 1982, but it also adopts what many consider to be doctrinal errors.

If this project is not to be bound by ICET, then will this AMiA liturgy use responses unique in the English language? Or is there an opportunity to develop a contemporary, orthodox liturgy? The LCMS is the only remotely orthodox Protestant group in the current CCT, but perhaps Pope Benedict XVI could bring the US Catholic bishops to the table.

Either way, will this mean new musical settings to go with the new words? Rite II parishes abandoned Hymnal 1940 (in small part) to be able to sing “And also with you” and “Lord have mercy”.