Category: Hymns

For a while, the locally produced Hymns of Truth and Light of First Congregationalist Church (UCC), Houston, Texas has appealed to me as a good alternative for both the ten-year-old UUA produced Singing the Living Tradition and the much older joint Unitarian and Universalist hymnal (Hymns of the Spirit) that we use here in Washington. Indeed, it seems like a blend of the latter hymnal and the Congregationalist Pilgrim Hymnal brought up to date. It is my understanding that a member church of the UUA has adopted Hymns of Truth and Light as its own.

Now there is another hymnal I’m looking towards: the yet-unnamed 2004 hymnal of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches (NACCC). There’s a good amount of information about this hymnal at their site, including a list of hymns retained from (of course) the Pilgrim Hymnal

Link: NACCC New Hymnal Committee

In the extended entry I’ve placed my first list of useful hymns, culled from the list of 150 chosen by the Consulation on Ecumenical Hymnody. No Christmas hymns are included, and I’ve picked the ones that look good for unaccompanied singing.

But what do I know? This is an end-of-day wind-down activity. It was either poke over the list or watch Blind Date.

See for yourself in the “continue reading” (extended entry) section.
Continue reading “Hymn list I”

Just so it wouldn’t get lost, here’s the PDF file from the 1917 Hymns of the Church of the hymn used at the 1903 Winchester Profession observances here in Washington, mentioned below.

It will fit on an 5.5 by 8.5 inch leaf, for the usual order of worship.

Download here: thouwhosewide.pdf (48 K)

In the last entry, Derek Parker [blog is extinct, 14 April 2005] mentions an ordination hymn in the comments.

This is a good place to do a little hymnological archaeology. For my own ordination, at Canon, Georgia, I looked up the meeting of the second Georgia Universalist Convention in 1839 the proceedings were published in a paper, later preserved on microfilm, in case you want to do the same where a minister was ordained: the first in northeast Georgia, and the earliest for which we have a detailed record. From that, I discovered what was sung there, and used it in my service (text in “continue reading”).

But I haven’t yet found the hymn Derek cites (despite my rather good collection of Universalist hymnals) but the text is in common meter, so finding a decent tune is duck soup. (My ordination’s hymn is in long meter, so I applied Duke Street “Unto thy Temple Lord We Come to it.)

As for gender exclusive ordination hymns (with respect to the ordinand) I have seen at least one nineteeth-century hymn (written, fwiw, by Universalist minister Edwin Hubble Chapin) that put the male pronouns in italics, which I suppose it to prompt substitution. Whether the substitution is to a plural (for multiple ordinations at State Conventions, as was often the practice) or to accomodate the ordination of women, I cannot say.

If I find anything more, I’ll add it here.
Continue reading “Ordination hymns”

If you come to Universalist National Memorial Church this Sunday, you’ll see the following in the order of service (or something like it)

The Universalist General Convention and First Universalist Church, Washington (Church of Our Father), this church’s predecessor, held Winchester Profession Centennial observances in October 1903. The first and third hymns this morning were the two hymns selected for that occasion.

The first hymn is still in our hymnal, Hymns of the Spirit, and is based on Tennyson’s poem. Read Strong Son of God at Cyberhymnal.org. (Here we sing it to Orlando Gibbon’s tune Song 5.)

The second is rare, and not in common usage today, and comes from the hand of Universalist Abel C. Thomas, Thou, whose wide extended sway. To see the text, click “continue reading.” The tune used in 1903 was Brannockburn; the meter is the odd 7.7.7.5.D., so I’ll need to see if we have any options.
Continue reading “Hymns for the Winchester Profession bicentennial”

I was in church today, but not preaching. That duty fell upon one of the deacons, Richard Hurst, who delivered a well-crafted sermon on anger, divine anger in particular.

But what will stick with me for the next seven days — a question asked Mystery Worshippers at Ship of Fools — is learning that the first verse of the morning’s first hymn, “O God of Earth and Altar” (sung to King’s Lynn) was incorporated into an Iron Maiden song, “Revelations” from the album Piece of Mind to be exact: [full lyrics]

Who knew?

There’s a hymn — sadly missing in the 1993 Singing the Living Tradition but present in the 1937 Hymns of the Spirit we use at Universalist National Memorial Church, Washington; you can also read the full text at CyberHymnal, even though I prefer it matched to the tune Stockport (Yorkshire)‘ — that informs my ministry and faith, and is probably my favorite: “Eternal Ruler of the Ceaseless Round.” The last verse is my favorite, particularly when things get hairy at church.

O clothe us with thy heavenly armor, Lord,
Thy trusty shield, thy sword of love divine;
Our inspiration be thy constant Word;
We ask no victories that are not thine;
Give or withhold, let pain or pleasure be,
Enough to know that we are serving thee.

The hymn survives, if not in today’s Unitarian Universalist hymnals, than in
ecumenical hymnody. If nothing else, it makes a rousing sing, like
“Rank by Rank, Again We Stand.”

But what is this business about heavenly armor? A reference to Ephesians, I reckon, where Paul exhorts his hearers to “put on the whole armor of God” (6:11) Then the next verse (NRSV):

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Charismatics I have known — and others — stand on guard against spiritual forces of evil, and more often than not pitch battle with Satan in prayer. Liberals, in turn, more often than not treat these “prayer warriors” as cranks or fools, and little wonder with this generation of liberals’ ambivalence towards military force and religious observance.

John Chadwick, the hymn’s author, seems to add constancy and abiding faith to the arsenal, assumes that life (and in particular the work of the ministry) is, in part, a struggle with forces over which we have no control. To my mind, that has a greater grounding in pastoral theology than the new songs written for General Assembly worship that usually can be filed under “Big Happy Family.”

Chadwick, like other Harvard Divinity students of his day wrote this hymns, and this one was for his class of 1864. Long gone are the days that Unitarian ministers were likely to be reasonably accomplished hymn-writers (the Universalists wrote a lot of hymns, but few were worth singing then, much less now) but, then again, I live in hope for better, richer, and deeper things to sing.

Philocrites, though unordained, is a hymn-writer, and I believe a graduate of a certain divinity school on the north shore of the Charles. He and Mrs. Philocrites (a divinity student in her own right, though I’m sure it is a different school north of the Charles) seem to have returned to Massachusetts after their honeymoon. Blessings to both.

For a while now, I’ve been looking for a modern set of metrical psalms and canticles — Biblical psalms and songs rearranged so they can be sung to “hymn tunes”; in fact, many of today’s hymn tunes startes for psalms, like Old 100th — and have now found a source:
A New Metrical Psalter by Christopher L. Webber. New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1986.

(Link)