roof work has begun

Work began this last week on the south roof of the church. Eastern Construction's crew has been working hard to beat the incoming storm.

Movie Night - Thursday, October 18

Movie Night Thursday
October 18

6 p.m.
Covered dish supper

7 p.m.
Movie:  LOVE FREE or DIE; Award-winning filmmaker Macky Alston follows Gene Robin-son, the first elected openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. There is no charge for this event and it is open to the public.

Horrible Hymns by Dr. Anthony Antolini

In a previous column I wrote about how music has the power to heal on a personal level or to raise a nation’s spirit. This column is devoted to the opposite – hymns that have a negative effect on us. I requested that members of the congregation contribute ideas for a list of hymns they don’t like to sing and tell me why they found such pieces objectionable. The results have been both revealing and entertaining. They show that people do think quite a lot about the words they are expected to sing in a hymn. It’s not just about a tune they don’t like. In fact, most of the submissions to the Horrible Hymn list are there because of the words, not the music!

Not everyone who submitted comments for this column gave permission to name them, so, in the interest of privacy, names of participants in the survey have been omit-ted. There is no particular order to the list that follows although, in some cases, there was more than one vote against a certain hymn. In as many cases as possible I list the current hymn number in the Hymnal 1982. When it is not included in that book, it can be found in the Hymnal 1940.

In my August 26 homily about the healing power of music I cited some hymns that can cause trouble. Let’s start with those. “All my hope in God is founded” (#665) to the tune Michael is a standard Anglican cathedral style hymn. The melody, a fine one by Herbert Howells (1892-1983), is named after the composer’s son, who died as a boy. The words are by Robert Bridges (1844-1930) and are altered (indicated by “alt.” after the poet’s name). In the first verse of this hymn we sing the words, “…God unknown, he alone calls my heart to be his own.” The objection to this line is that it is bad theology. (Christ came into the world so that God would be known to us, therefore God is not “unknown.”)

A hymn that has solid theology but off-putting text is “Bread of heaven, on thee we feed” (#323). The text, by Josiah Conder (1789-1855) is also altered. Conder paraphrases the words of Jesus in which he refers to eating his flesh and drinking his blood as symbols of Holy Communion. But Conder’s words would be enough to drive many people from the church when they come upon the following:

Bread of heaven, on thee we feed, For thy flesh is meat indeed.

Or, in the second verse, the following:

Vine of heaven, thy blood supplies The blest cup of sacrifice;

A number of years ago I programmed “Onward, Christian soldiers” (#562) at the request of an older member of the congregation. The postlude had scarcely ended when I was confronted by several irate worshipers who asked how I could possibly have chosen such an offensive hymn. Visions of jihad and the crusades were mentioned. I made a mental note never to include this old chestnut again in services at St. John’s but I didn’t tell these complainers the history of the hymn. “Onward, Christian soldiers” was written by Sabine Baring-Gould in 1864 for a Children’s Festival at Horbury Bridge, “for procession with cross and banners.” Baring-Gould’s children sang the hymn to the theme of a slow procession from Haydn’s Symphony in D Major. When Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) wrote his popular tune St. Gertrude in 1872, the Haydn theme was no longer used. The hymn is clearly intended for Sunday school purposes and has no connection to the crusades at all. Will it be in the next hymnal?

The concept of inclusive language pervades the Hymnal 1982 and causes some amusing problems. Consider, for ex-ample, the old hymn “Rise up, ye men of God” (Hymnal 1940 #535). The text was written by William Pierson Merrill on a Lake Michigan steamer for the use of the Brotherhood Movement. It was inspired by an article by Gerald Stanley Lee entitled “The Church of the Strong Men.” Obviously, the Hymnal Commission wanted to get rid of the macho elements in this text but it made a silly error when it came up with “Rise up, ye saints of God,” (#551) because it exhorts saints, who are sup-posed to be exemplars of righteousness, to “have done with lesser things.” If the saints are truly saints as we are taught to think of them, why are we telling them to “be done with lesser things?” Perhaps “Rise up, ye friends of God” would make more sense. (See below for the use of the word “friends” to substitute for “men”.) Inclusive language caused at least one old and popular hymn to be omitted from the Hymnal 1982. It is “Turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways,” (Hymnal 1940 # 536). It’s a real puzzle to try to come up with a single syllable to replace the word “man” in the opening stanza of the hymn so it was dropped. It’s also possible that this hymn was cut because of an old organist’s joke: The hymn ought to be sung as the processional at weddings!

Musical objections can also cause hymns to be put on the horrible list: “God of the prophets, bless the prophets’ heirs” (#359) bombs out for some people because the tune, now listed as Toulon, is a truncated version of “Turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways.” Old timers in the congregation not only remember the original words but also sense that something is missing. Indeed it is! An entire musical phrase has been hacked out of the original tune (listed in the Hymnal 1940 as Old Hundred Twenty Fourth) to fit the new words.

Another hymn that people still ask for, even though it has been replaced by other words that are far less popular, is “Once to every man and nation” (Hymnal 1940 #519). The reason it’s not in our current hymnal is that the text, written by James Russell Lowell in 1845, is not theological, but a rallying cry against war. The title of Lowell’s poem is “The Present Crisis.” It was written as a protest against the Mexican-American War in which Lowell deplored what he considered unjust aggression. He also feared that annexation in the southwest of the United States would increase the extent of slaveholding territory. The objection to including it in the current hymnal is theological: In our faith we get more than one chance to choose the good over the bad. Lowell limits the choice in his poem to “once.”

Others’ objections to certain hymns are more difficult to characterize. There’s just something about how the words sound that makes some people irritable. Here are some examples. “The snow lay on the ground” (#110) is a Christmas hymn whose words are listed in the hymnal as “source unknown.” The third verse is remarkably bad poetry: “Saint Joseph, too, was by to tend the child; to guard him and protect his mother mild…”

A now deceased parishioner would regularly become irritable if we sang “Amazing Grace” during a service. I was put warned that this hymn, so popularized by folk and pop singers, would be best left out of services!

Many people’s objections are focused on our denomination’s editorial fixation with inclusive language – the need to remove the many masculine references in hymn texts. The winner in this category is the Christmas carol “Good Christian friends, rejoice” to replace “Christian men.” These days it’s about 50/50 which word you’ll hear people sing on Christmas Eve but the use of “friends” to replace “men” is certainly a lightning rod for traditionalists.

Occasionally, the Hymnal Commission was clearly stumped in its quest to remove masculine language. They allowed a famous male-dominated text get into the Hymnal 1982 because it eluded inclusive language. It is “He who would valiant be” (#564). The poem, by John Bunyan, comes in the chapter of Pilgrim’s Progress entitled “Mr. Valiant for Truth.” The original text begins: Who would true valour see, Let him come hither.

Originally published in the 1684 edition of Pilgrim’s Progress, it was turned into a hymn by Percy Dearmer in the English Hymnal in 1906. The tune, called St. Dunstan’s, was composed by Canon Winfred Douglas on December 15, 1917, while riding a commuter train from New York City to Peekskill, NY. (His home was called St. Dunstan’s Cottage.) Canon Douglas later wrote: “Bunyan’s burly song strikes a new and welcome note…The quaint sincerity of the words stirs us out of our easy-going dull Christianity to the thrill of great adventures…It should have a quality of sturdiness which always reminds the writ-er of St. Paul vigilantly battling through manifold disasters in ‘the care of all the churches.’” The text is loaded with masculine references, as we can see in the first verse:

He who would valiant be ‘Gainst all disaster Let him in constancy Follow the Master. There’s no discouragement Shall make him once relent His first avowed intent To be a pilgrim.

The Hymnal Commission deserves some credit for fixing things up, however. In the Hymnal 1940 (424) there is a very beautiful hymn entitled “I heard the voice of Jesus say.” The words are by Horatius Bonar, written in 1846. In the first verse Bonar comes very close to committing a grammatical error. Here is the offending line with the grammatical problem underlined:

I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Come unto me and rest; Lay down, thou weary one, lay down Thy head upon my breast.”

Technically, Bonar’s syntax is correct because the sentence means “lay down thy head” but anyone singing it is led to think that the words ought to be “lie down.” The Hymnal Commission gets an A+ on this one because in the Hymnal 1982 they’ve really improved Bonar’s poem:

I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Come unto me and rest; And in your weariness lay down Your head upon my breast.”

I’ve saved the best complaint for last. We have someone in our community who laments the disappearance of the “Holy Ghost” in favor of the “Holy Spirit.” Others probably would disagree with this observation, citing confusion for children and newcomers over the use of the word “ghost” so much associated with Halloween spooks. But the Anglican tradition is filled with references to the Holy Ghost and it’s not easy to remove them all. We include the “Holy Ghost” every Sunday when we sing the doxology. The person who objects to the loss of the word “Ghost” has (with tongue very much in cheek) submitted the following 21st-century version of the doxology that wraps up this month’s column. Note that “him” has been replaced with the repetition of the word “God” (heard regularly now in church). Hint: the author is a very senior citizen! Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; Praise God, all creatures here below: Praise God above,

now let’s all hear it! Praise Father, Son and Holy Spirit! Ah-friends.

Not Like Before by the Rev. Peter Jenks

      One in five American adults now have no religious affiliation, according to the report released Tuesday from the Pew Forum. This combined with news of religious fundamental-ism gaining more and more momentum around the world, from the Republican Christian fundamentalism in the United States to the Muslim brotherhood, to Hindu fundamentalism to radical Jewish settlers driving Palestinians from their land, is a sign of a major religious transformation. The presence of such a reaction reveals the power of the changes taking place, for with every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The age of Constantinian Christianity, where church and state led the charge, ended in the last century with the end of the nation states and the rise of science and technology as our primary hopes for health, and knowledge. A hundred years ago it would have been unthinkable to imagine the nation state and influence of Israel; or the global effect of Buddhism – that there would be Buddhist Christians and Jews; that the majority of Muslims would be non Arab; or Hinduism as a worldwide faith and not just in India; or Europe as being barely, if at all, a Christian Continent. We are in changing times, not like a Reformation, but more like the birthing time of Christianity, or Buddhism.

What we are experiencing is nothing short of a complete rewiring of our collective soul. It is a time to be-ware of charlatans and charismatic demigods. It is a very rare time in human history when we have actually faced and understood our species as possibly becoming extinct because of the major changes we’ve inflicted upon our planet.

I have been following politics and the state of Michigan has been going through a major political transformation and upheaval. Liberals and conservatives are fighting each other for control, when it is not about either of their agendas. The state was a logging and farming state that suddenly became a major industrial center for the auto industry before the second World War. Now that industry has left and the state is being fundamentally redefined, it cannot go back to its industrial period, nor logging and farming as it once was, nor the frontier land be-fore that. It will be different from what we know and whoever is able to help the people of that state to see a positive and possible future will be the key for positive change for them. Many will try with good ideas and dreams of riches. Likewise, in religion, we cannot go backward as we move ahead, we cannot become a nation of Christian imperialism, nor a missionary venture to uncharted territories. We are moving into a different way of understanding ourselves.

Before I got married, a friend advised me; saying that whatever I thought it would be, it will not be that. This does not mean that God’s love, mercy, or forgiveness is any less than before. The structure, the institutions, the previous experience we may have known will not be the same. Redefining ourselves with new technology can be effective, but only if it is first initiated by a new experience of faith and grace. We need to receive again the vision, the connection and the oneness with the unrelenting passion and forgiveness of Christ. The Christian faith began by redefining the understanding of Judaism in a much broader, inclusive and renewed faithfulness to God.