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.

Finding Hope

Recently I was looking for books on hymns at Amazon.com, hoping to find some of books suggested by The Hymn Society of America available cheaper from a used bookseller. (Sorry, HSA — if I have to pay new prices I’ll buy it from you, but money is tight right now.)

Browsing for these books produced some interesting ads from Christian booksellers and other peddlers of hymn books. The most interesting find was an online database from Hope Publishing (est. 1892), entitled “Hope Hymnody Online”.

Hope is pretty clear about what they’re doing and why. To enter the site, it says

In order to use the Hope Publishing Company online hymnody website you must reside in the United States or Canada. Hope Publishing Company owns or administers the contents in these territories. You may download one copy of any selection for your own personal use. To make any further copies you must get permission from Hope Publishing Company or belong to and report the copying activity to CCLI, LicenSing or OneLicense.net By selecting "I Agree" you are verifying that you reside in the U.S. or Canada and will only legally use the contents accessible on the site.

To download a PDF, it similarly says:

You have selected to download a copy of the hymn. You have permission to print one copy for your personal use. To make any further copies (for your church congregation, church bulletin, an overhead slide or computerized projection,etc...) you must get permission from Hope Publishing Company or belong to and report the copying activity to CCLI, LicenSing or OneLicense.net

In other words, they want you to sample their content and then recommend it for your church to sing (which will generate revenues).

What’s in the database is not all that exciting: hymn texts, their authors and the names of possible tunes to use with them. No authoring dates (they are obscured by a 20th century copyright date), no history, no music. It’s also skewed towards their post-1960 collection, although it does list older Christmas hymns. (PDFs seem available only for the recent ones).

One contemporary composer that I recognized was Carl P. Daw, Jr., an Episcopal priest who served on the Hymnal 1982 committee and has a number of hymns there. (He’s also currently executive director of the Hymn Society.)

The choice of search options are pretty interesting, however: title, tune name, author, composer, meter. There is a list of themes such as Advent, Christmas, Easter, Lord’s Supper and a few dozen more.

What seemed unique was the option to search (even in this limited pool) by scriptural reference. For example, a search for John 14:6 matches 30 hymns, including this one by Christopher Idle

God the I AM who does not change
brings mercies ever new;
no time nor space exceeds the range
of One whose grace this world finds strange-
yet we have found it true.

So Jesus Christ, from yesterday
through all todays the same,
the same for evermore, the Way,
the Truth by whom alone we pray,
the Life, the sovereign Name:
…

While the content (the product) is little too contemporary for my taste, it certainly will be of use to others. It also offers a model of how traditional Christian hymnody could be presented by a university or non-profit research group.

Still love those Germans

In one of my earliest posts, I wrote about the contribution of German composer to Christian liturgy, in addition to that of Martin Luther and his “Mighty Fortress” hymn.

In his blog “Thinking out loud,” LCMS pastor Rick Stuckwisch lists his favorite 120 German hymns, most of which have been published in the most recent LCMS hymnal, the Lutheran Service Book. The most common names are Martin Luther and his successor Paul Gerhardt. I was surprised that Philipp Nicolai only appears twice, and by listing the author and not composer, Stuckwisch does not directly identify the contributions of the great Johann Crüger.

To me, 120 German hymns seems excessive — but then 120 COE hymns would not. Clearly some of them are ones that I forgot were of German origin, notably “Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light,” written by Johann Rist and composed by Johann Schop. What I do recall is the Bach harmonization of Schop’s tune, printed as a Christmas hymn in Hymnal 1940 (#25) and even Hymnal 1982 (#91).

Walter Dennis and his Canon lose a big one

The Rt. Rev. Walter Dennis and his ”Dennis Canon“ have been on a roll recently, winning major court cases in California and most states outside Virginia. There was an increasingly presumption that the Canon was valid, despite the obvious legal holes.

On Friday, the highest court in South Carolina issues a ruling resoundingly rejecting the Dennis Canon. As always for the Schism II property fight, Anglican Curmudgeon has the authoritative coverage.

There is no guarantee this will become an influential precedent. All Saints, Pawleys Island had an unusually strong title to their property. Also, the California Supreme Court is notorious for ignoring precedent and going its own way, as when it invented a right to gay marriage.

Still, conflicting state rulings are the textbook reason for the US Supreme Court to take up the Dennis Canon. This could be the best hope for the California parishes facing permanent loss of their properties.

Liturgy and architecture

Titus 19 referenced an article from Lawrence, Kansas about Trinity Episcopal Church, a TEC parish that is going back to the future to attract Kansas U students:

When the church decided to add a new service in fall 2006, instead of looking forward, it looked back.

Way back. As in the fourth century.

The result is a unique celebration of Christianity referred to as the Solemn High Mass. A mystical meeting of old traditions in a setting where blue jeans and T-shirts are appropriate, the Sunday night service features incense, music and what the church, 1011 Vt., refers to as all of the “major propers” including the Kyrie Eleison, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Credo, the Sanctus and Benedictus and the Agnus Dei, which are chanted.

Performed only during the Kansas University school year, the service, which began its 2009-2010 season last Sunday evening, has snagged a crowd young and old, Episcopalian and not, says the Rev. Paul McLain, the church’s curate.

The “4th century” argument seems hyperbolic. It’s hard to tell, but this sounds like no Opus Dei or Tridentine Mass. I’m pretty sure there was no 4th century Christian worship in North America, so the 21st century English will be a bit of an anachronism.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, as preserving the traditional liturgy for the new generation is an important goal. However, this would have been considered normal liturgy at a high church (“bells and smells”) PECUSA parish, so the oddity isn’t all that odd — other than my comparison to the liturgical drift of the past few decades.

No word on whether the parish also plans to preserve traditional theology; the Bishop of Western Kansas is considered a TEC moderate, e.g. on the Windsor Report. However, Trinity is in the Diocese of Kansas, whose bishop is listed as a Gene Robinson supporter. Stand Firm in Faith counts him as a KJS apologist.

Still, perhaps the most interesting paragraph was only indirectly related to liturgy:

Solemn High Mass was introduced to Trinity in 2006 by its former rector, the Rev. Jonathon Jensen. Before leaving in June for his current post at the Trinity Cathedral in Little Rock, Ark., Jensen described his thoughts behind the addition of the old-style service this way: “… Lots of churches in Lawrence do contemporary worship, and that’s wonderful, but this is a 150-year-old downtown church that looks like an old English church and we have a fantastic organ and a wonderful chorale tradition, and we know what we can do best. And it’s not contemporary. It’s that (old style). And, so, we wanted to have this distinct offering.”

I’ve always wondered about the link of liturgy and architecture, but this raises more questions than it answers.

For example, do you need an old sanctuary (or old-looking sanctuary) to do traditional worship? (Or to attract parishioners looking for traditional worship?) Similarly, is it inappropriate to have a rock band in the such a building? Trinity seems to have a standard Rite II service on Sunday mornings, but the website doesn’t say what kind of music it has.

Update: Rev. Elizabeth E. Evans of the TEC and GetReligion seems to be similarly skeptical of the claimed “ancient” nature of the Trinity Episcopal worship service.