Author: Scott Wells

Universalist minister in Washington, D.C.
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The (almost) complete Hymns of the Spirit

As I wrote yesterday, I’ve restarted my Hymns of the Spirit site, a “resource site for the joint 1937 Unitarian-Universalist hymnal and service book” because I have more need of it now. Careful observers will note the site is all about the service material and not at all about the actual hymns. From my perspective this makes a lot of sense. I have two or three copies of the actual hymnal, I’m not a musician and I really wanted a way to search the liturgical material.

Besides, Hymnary.org is a better resource for hymnals, hymns, tunes and making links between all of them; if you don’t already have an account there, I encourage you to do so. Years ago, I participated in identifying hymns in Hymns of the Spirit on Hymnary.org by number, first line, tune and sources. It was a slog, but I did not finish, so earlier this week went over to pick up where I left off. No need, though, as others had finished the work in the meantime.

It has what I don’t have and vice verse. So between that site and HymnsOfTheSpirit.org, you have the contents of the whole book, even page images. (Hymnary.org has the hymnal indicies.) Almost.

I’ve loved this hymnal for decades, but it’s been old as long as I’ve known it. It turns ninety next year. But what’s changed since my youth is that more and more of its contents have entered the public domain, including everything published in 1930 or before. Because Hymnary.org won’t show material in copyright, we have a good (not flawless) indication of what’s not in the public domain by what doesn’t have a page image. Sometimes the copyrighted element is the text, sometimes the tune. In at least two cases (280, 300), a public domain text is shown on one page with two tunes, but one tune is still in copyright, so you get to see neither. Some are ambiguously dated and Hymnary.org sides with caution. As you sweep down the listings, keep your eye on the camera icon. If it’s there, you can see the page; if not, you’ve probably hit something in copyright.

Those chestnuts “Morning has broken” (97) and “Wonders still the world shall witness” are in that list. One of my favorite Advent hymns, “Heir of all the waiting ages” (178) is too. “O bold, O foolish peasants” (183) should be in the public domain by Palm Sunday 2031, but I think I’ll stick to the same-tuned “All Honor, Laud and Glory” (not in Hymns of the Spirit.) Henry Wilder Foote’s “Thou whose love didst give us birth” (193) deserves a place at Easter or All Souls, or both, and will be in the public domain in 2030. (Sing it at my funeral, too.) But most of the book is in the public domain.

You can see the whole book by “borrowing” it from the Internet Archive. They have three copies, but I think this is the best. You will need an account to login.

But I’m not done with the Hymnary.org site; more about that later.

Cross-posted to HymnsOfTheSpirit.org

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Plans for HymnsOfTheSpirit.org

I started the Hymns of the Spirit site in 2013 as a “resource site for the joint 1937 Unitarian-Universalist hymnal and service book.” I have also made no changes to it since 2018. This may not be a problem for any of you since it’s a little known hymnal. Besides, I made it for me and I’ve been using it; if others have been using it, I’ve not known. I don’t keep statistics.

Lately, I have new reasons to use it and expand its offering, so I’ve reinstalled the Jekyll website software and added a new post saying that I’m back. I’ll cross post articles and link to resources as they emerge.

But does anyone who still reads this use that site?

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Return of an Independent Sacramental database

I remember how ten or fifteen years ago one could find different online resources about churches, clergy and jurisdictions associated with the Independent Sacramental stream, but then it died up bit by bit. I don’t know if it’s because the entities ended (some did, which I’ve noticed in the overlap with Universalism) or the shared work to communicate between them did.

I just read how one database has come back. Sort of, as it only has a handful of entries, though more than even this morning. But that’s even more reason to note and promote it; it’s looking for input.

Independent Sacramental Movement Database

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Peace through polity

I was thinking about what historic congregational polity, adapted to the present age, might offer to the community of churches in the United States facing catastrophic decline. I’m still mulling over it, focusing a number of ideas, drawn in part from years of writing on this site. If I come up with something worthy of sharing, I’ll share it, but not today.

But even if I don’t come up with anything in particular, it’s been worth trying. I’ve consulted old, but familiar, texts and let my mind wander to freely associate possible options that could exist. This means I’ve been reading books (e-books count) and thinking rather that scrolling face down into my phone. Others on the morning bus might think I’m daydreaming or just looking mindlessly off into space.

This engagement with theology — as ecclesiology is a domain of theology, if one of the earthy ones — gives me a lot of peace: an anchored position in the middle of today’s storms. And like a good anchor, it may be lifted as needed and the vessel can move. The vessel may the church (which moves slowly) or the self, going great and unexpected distances. But not today. Lifting anchor in a storm is foolish and dangerous. Obsessing today over what one cannot change, attentive to every gust and wave, is also foolish and dangerous. The anchor stays down for now, and that lets me look up and past the doom scroll. In a word, focus on deeper things, for these will carry you onwards.

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A challenge to the faith

Apologies to my would-be readers for being so quiet after having good intentions to write more. World affairs and poor eyesight haven’t helped either my mood or my desire to spend my evening hours in front of a computer monitor. I can’t do much about the news, but with my cataracts remove at least I can see the monitor….

Sometimes I get requests. I would like to know I can help you with Universalism.

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What can one say?

A word, mostly for the ministers out there.

I’m in a ice-locked city, heated by anger and grief. The most recent cause is the killing in Minneapolis of Alex Pretti and from it the cascade of official lies. But fundamentally my feelings of moral injury (and perhaps yours) come from those who have authority and for whatever reason cannot speak truly or act justly. Grift and cruelty have become the law. The willful, gleeful double standard, benefiting those who support or apologize for the president and made a weapon against those who don’t, is a sure sign that the old method of moral suasion, so loved by the liberal ministry, is dead. You cannot shame the shameless. So, maybe the president is in decline, and perhaps the midterm elections will mean he’ll be inhibited in some way, and some equilibrium will return. But the calculus has changed and liberal Christians (perhaps others too) need new public politics.

Bring force or bring help, but leave the petitions and solemn assemblies at home. Church-speak appears as cliched insiders’ jargon. Hand-wringing public prayer leaves me hot in the face. Street theater antics have aged especially poorly. But even if you do everything the right way, you can’t expect an increasingly secular culture to care about your methods. When a gathering of clergy from a variety of backgrounds went to Minneapolis to witness and serve, it didn’t get the press attention it might have once gotten, which means it doesn’t work the way it once would have. Force, if there is any, comes from sheer numbers of witnesses; a phone camera is more powerful than any principled demand. But even that won’t keep you from getting killed.

However, our power as pastors is something other than force, and it comes from from speaking the truth and leading in the name of the Lord. Our hearers are as important as our message. Do not cast pearls before swine. Universalists have long been caught by the gotcha of having to include Hitler or Stalin, at long last, into God’s household, but these are exceptional cases and doesn’t describe how we ordinarily live and believe. Our first hearers are essentially good and decent people who are weak, fearful or worried about their and their loved ones’ places in God’s household. They so often have to unlearn the unlove that inhabits them, and from that strength and resolve with a new vision of all creation. Likewise, these are the people on whom the future of the Republic rests, sometimes uncertain and ambivalent of our history to date. Hope rests in what is possible, not just what has been. So some suffer and some die in that cause, which both brings grief and the respect of an ailing people.

As we lament and the families mourn, pastors, let us turn sideways — and if to be honest, inwards — to attend to this injury in the way to which we were called and ordained. We were called to do this. There are others with great skill who can attend to legal, logistic, political and organizational demands of the moment, and we can help in our turn. But our responsibility is to lead and defend people in that Godwards path, identifying truth and falsehood along the way, without confusing or conflating them. In the present moment, it’s easier to see the wrong than the right because it has become so unrepentant in cruelty and manipulation. We must minister to the assaulted and spiritually poisoned, and a “spirit of niceness” cannot protect us or serve them. This too, I fear, is a legacy of the old method of engagement. It necessarily means uncomfortable exchanges and exposure. But we cannot stay fearful — either of hellfire or ICE — and be true to the office God has called us to, or to the people we have been entrusted to serve.

May God bless us in our ministry, and may God grant the slain Paradise.

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Still here!

Half a month has past since I last wrote, and casual readers may have thought I’ve slipped back into the void. The fact is it’s hard to keep momentum, and worse now that the blogging ecosystem is so diminished, and — frankly — the Unitarian Universalist space has become so inert.

So, I plan to read or re-read as many neo-Universalist books as I can muster to see which I would recommend for the newly convinced, and for ministers who may be drifting this way. I suspect this will also help me say more about the various needs of different groups of Universalists. I might also transcribe another historic work. But if you have thoughts about what I should address, please leave them in the comments.

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Public Domain Day, 2026

Happy New Year, and with January 1, 2026 a whole bunch of works from 1930 have entered the public domain in the United States. (Recorded music has its own rules.)

For a few years now, I’ve looked to see what Universalist works are now in the public domain. Nothing denominational apart from the main denominational magazine, and they’ve been freely available (but under copyright) for some time. A few references here and there in other books, but slim pickings and I’m not sure how many I’ll run down, if any.

But there are a number of valuable cultural works that are now in the public domain, including the sheet music of the well-loved “Georgia on My Mind” (especially if you’re from Georgia like I am) but clergy beware of Agatha Christie’s The Murder an the Vicarage.

You can read a more detailed review at the Internet Archive.

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FDR’s D-Day Prayer

Though I live in Washington, D.C. I’ve not seen every statue and monument, and while walking on the National Mall yesterday, I visited one that recently established (June 6, 2023) and new to me: the Circle of Remembrance next to the World War Two Memorial. In form, it’s a small paved plaza ringed by a low wall, and at the south edge facing the main body of the memorial is a plaque with the prayer President Roosevelt made — and was broadcast — on June 6, 1944 as United States and other Allied forces stormed the Normandy shore.

Part of the prayer at the memorial, overlooking the main World War Two Memorial

It was one of those moments when in peril a national leader must fill a particular role: to bear the feelings and fears of the people, and though them lead. Clergy and no small number of lay persons recognize this role, and when it’s missing or (worse) mishandled the sense is a mix of unease and betrayal. FDR did well by his people, and I’ve long been impressed and encouraged by this prayer.

You can read the text here, or listen to a recording of the broadcast: https://archive.org/details/FranklinDRooseveltsPrayer

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Christmas worship 2: how to

Time to wrap this up; Christmas is coming.

If you find yourself wanting to have a personal or family devotion apart from a church using the liturgy, here are my thoughts. (Last time I wrote about using an in-person or broadcast service as the context for your own devotions.)

Finding an easy liturgy is the easy part. A search engine is your friend but if you would like to use one developed in the 1930s for Unitarians and Universalists, see here. It’s pretty robust, and dates to a time when in Protestants weren’t as wordy as today, but it could face a little editing.

An excess of words does not make worship better and that’s specially true for individuals or very small groups. I think that the fewer people you have the shorter service should be and the slower it should progress. Worship takes as long as it needs to, and if it’s just you or you and another person — well, you know yourself better than I do. If alone, don’t be afraid to trail off a prayer or phrase, or to repeat one. Sometimes saying a prayer to yourself slowly, and then repeating it brings out different meanings and directs your prayer in unexpected ways. I think the Lukan nativity gospel (Revised Common Lectionary, NRSV) is a central part of the Christmas service, but the nativity gospel from Matthew (1:18-25) is an alternative, especially if you’ve not read it recently. Go slow, and my earlier comments notwithstanding, don’t be afraid to go long, and to think on all these things like Mary did. (Luke 2:19; see it’s worth going long in this case.)

Don’t be afraid to make alterations in the text, especially to simplify phrasings and include special petitions in the prayers.

Ok, but what would I recommend? Using the service above and a source of Christmas carols (the Open Hymnal Project has its Christmas 2025 booklet to download), I would read out loud, in a low voice or silently the first invocation, the bold-type prayer for minister and congregation and the Lord’s Prayer, although I would probably also shorten and modernize the text of those first two prayers and change the pronoun from we to I. Then comes a reading of the Gospel, followed by one of the prayers at the end: probably the first is it is more evergreen and general than the others. Then I would sing as many carols as I would like, or listen to them recorded. Short, small services do not lend themselves to being a hymn sandwich. A nativity scene makes a good focus for Christmas worship in the home.

However you mark the day, Merry Christmas and God bless.