Category: Worship

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Getting ready for Christmas Eve

Bowl with 61 (5 lbs.) clementinesDon’t bother telling me it’s too early to think about Christmas Eve. As an ordained minister (though not one serving a parish) I know Christmas needs to be planned well in advance. And while the ideas I’ll be blogging about are not (for me) actionable, they’re not too early. I do hope they’re useful for a stressed small-church leader, lay or ordained.

For one: the 5-pound bag of clementines you can get at Trader Joe’s (at least in Washington, D.C.) has 61 of the little citrus fruit in it. For refreshment planning. But I’m also thinking about the service…

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The red hymnal on Earth 2

So, Hubby and I sometimes imagine a version of Washington, D.C. according to an alternative historical timeline, on a planet we call Earth 2. With today’s realities a bit different, changed by what-could-have-been. The garden variety stuff of science fiction.

And somehow this thought brings me to the thought of Jewish liturgics. OK: I watched several hours of Yom Kippur services from Reform temples on streaming video, but I’ll address that later. Now, I’m going to wade out into the liturgical habits and controversies of another religion, and that’s usually a bad idea, so I ask your indulgence for a moment. Let it be granted that the liturgical innovations of the earlier Reform Jewish generations are commonly portrayed (fairly or not) today as imitating Protestant worship, particularly in predominant use of English, hymn singing; sometimes, rabbinical dress. Reform worship has, in succeeding generations, become more traditional in custom, particularly in its use of Hebrew. (There’s a countervailing movement I’ll try to get back to; again, later.)

But, being Protestant, I’m curious to see what they came up with.

And what did I find? A Reform hymnal contemporary to the 1937 joint Unitarian and Universalist Hymns of the Spirit (“the red hymnal”). Thus my Earth 2 moment. Really, it’s also a parallel to the old Beacon Song and Tune Book: they both include fully-worked services for children. It’s the Union Hymnal.

I’ve round references to the Union Hymnal in print until the 1950s. The one linked here, despite the earlier bibliographical information is from 1936.

It’s not so unlikely a parallel development. There was a time (before this) when the most progressive Unitarians and Reform Jews made goo-goo eyes at each other. (Not sure off-hand if any Universalists joined in.) The 1937 joint Unitarian and Universalist Hymns of the Spirit (“the red hymnal”) starts with a Jewish hymn: “Praise to the Living God”, co-translated by Unitarian minister Newton Mann and Reform rabbi Max Landsberg. It’s also found in the most recent Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition at 215.

And here it is; note there are more stanzas than we use.

The connection cuts both ways, with Unitarian-written texts in the Reform hymnal: here, here, here, here and doubly here. I’m sure there are more.

A resource to review, methinks.

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More Unitarian service books

While I focus on Universalist worship resources, the book digitization revolution has brought back to light Unitarian service books, too — by which I include comprehensive prayerbooks and other resources (often with hymns) that have service elements.

cover page, Church of the Unity bookHere are some I’ve found recently, in chronological order; click through to download or read online. (There are others I’ve writtem about before.)

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A fiddle-and-lecture order of service

In one step, from the medieval to Modernism.

bitb_jenk-jones1907The Western Conference Unitarians — think of the middle third of the United States a hundred and more years ago — were known for a kind of bibical rationalism and a minimalist style of worship sometimes known as “fiddle and lecture”. And I’ve been looking for some simplified options.

Without directions, it’s hard to know what exactly this kind of worship looked like. Yesterday I found a piece of ephemera: an order of service from Jenkin Lloyd Jones’s All Souls Church in Chicago, from January 27, 1907. That should be a representative sample from one of that movement’s leading lights, maturely developed.

I. Organ Prelude.
II. Voluntary (with “From all that dwell below the skies…”)
III. Poem.
IV. Choral response.
V. “Prayer, ‘Our Father,’ chanted.”
VI. Scripture.VII. Hymn.
VIII. Sermon.
IX. Solo.
X. Offertory.
XI. Hymn.
XII. Benediction.
XIII. Organ Postlude.
XIV. Social Greeting.

I can confirm that the hymns map back to Unity Hymns and Chorales, so the “Choral reponse” was surely one from that book, too.

All Souls Church, Chicago, order of service
All Souls Church, Chicago, order of service

What strikes me is how little congregational repsonse there is. Little, perhaps nothing spoken in the pews — only hymns and chanting. Perhaps a small step from the Middle Ages, when the silent congregants would look devotionally upon the sacrament: here, the preaching.

Theological qualms aside, such a service can be sensible, even wholesome and devout in a large congregation — not unknown to “the Unity men.” In small congregations, the effect would surely be stilted, and with an unsteady preacher, deathly.

I’ll keep looking.

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A Mozarabic prayer in the Hymns of the Spirit

So, why is there a prayer from medieval Spain in the “old red hymnal” (Hymns of the Spirit) ? See page 139, under the heading “Prayers for Righteousness of Life”:

Grant us, O Lord, to pass this day in gladness and peace, without stumbling
and without stain; that, reaching the eventide victorious over all temptation, we may praise thee, the eternal God, who art blessed for evermore, and dost govern all things. Amen.

The index identifies it from the Mozarabic Rite — the dominant form of worship in Muslim Spain, as distinguished by the now-dominant Latin Rite — is a darling interest of students of liturgy, preserved in a single chapel among the Catholics, but revived by the Anglicans in Spain. A trial prayerbook in Mexico strongly commended by the United States Episcopalians also revived the Mozarabic rite. It didn’t take.

But this prayer in particular was widely antologized, found in ecumenical hymnals for youth and the armed forces, plus Episcopalian, Lutheran and Congregationalist formulations, from the Progressive Age to the Second World War — the era Hymns of the Spirit (1937) was composed. An Episcopal prayerbook for solders and saliors puts the prayer under a heading that typifies the time: “For victory over temptation.” Likewise one for scouts: “For purity”. (PDF)

So where does this bit of liturgical saltpeter appear in English translation?  Hard to say. I cannot yet find a reference earlier than 1913, and nothing quite like it appears in the studies the Episcopalians made for the Mexican church, this Collect for Grace being the closest (and perhaps the source) in Charles R. Hale’s Mozarabic Collects Translated and Arranged from the Ancient Liturgy of the Spanish Church (1881):

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who didst take upon Thee the weakness of our mortal nature; Grant that we may pass this day in safety, and without sin, resisting all the temptations of the enemy, and that at eventide we may joyfully praise Thee, O King Eternal; Through Thy mercy, O our God, Who art blessed, and dost live, and govern all things, world without end. Amen.

A good place to leave it.

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A liberal license in a liberal service book

Free-culture and free software advocates easily identify art and technology as fields of interest. Software to share creates common tools for further creativity and interoperability. Riffing on existing films, photos and songs unlocks creativity. Drawing from the public domain preserves human accomplishment and refreshes it. These are easy to see, but worship?

Copyright and liturgy — literally, “work for the common good” — exist (for some sensitive souls) in tension. The bonds on what comes from God, or what is given to God, ought to be loose, if made at all. Since this attitude predates personal printing — think spirit duplicators in the pre-computer ago — little wonder the limits of liberal licensing extend to redistribution or free (that is, sponsored) distribution (one example) and not adaptation. In the United States, the public domain ascription of the Episcopal Church’s prayerbook is the exception that proves the rule: it has been widely adapted and modified. Unitarian Universalists could take this attitude to heart.

Gladly, I can point to one example that should still be effect and, for some, still useful. From the introduction to the 1937 Services of Religion prepended to Hymns of the Spirit (the red hymnal).

All of the services are intended to encourage a larger participation by the people than is sometimes to be found in what is called “Congregational worship,” but which too often is carried on only by the minister and choir with the people as silent auditors. To ensure full participation by the people the printed services should be in their hands, and they should be instructed to respond audibly in those parts assigned to them, which are printed in bold face type. In churches which lack the printed services or wish to follow a simpler form, it is suggested that the order of service, in a sense of the main sequence of events be printed on cards to be placed in the pews or hinged into the hymn books, the minister drawing upon such of the materials included in this book as he finds suitable for the occasion. Ministers wishing to reprint single services on leaflets for use in their own churches are liberty to do so but the words “Copyright by the Beacon Press” must appear in every such reprint and reprints may not be sold.

An imperfect license, but there are better ones today. Might I suggest, like the Open Siddur Project, a free/libre license using their license decision tree? (It refers to these licenses.)

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Working notes about streaming worship and virtual congregations

The Growing Unitarian Universalism blog featured web-streaming worship services (also) last week, a subject I care about and wanted to add thought to.

The idea of a remote congregation isn’t new. Postal missions and radio churches (breadcast sermons) have a long history, both for Unitarians and Universalists and others.

Metro DC holds testimony to the potiental power of broadcasting worship. All but two Unitarian Universalist congregations in the area are children or grandchildren of All Souls (Unitarian) and the proximate cause of the expansion was the satellite services, driven by A. Powell Davies’s preaching. But the days of white-flight suburbanism and culturally reinforced worship attendance are over and we can’t lean on that model reflectively.

So, I think, the first thing to consider is what kind of participation is desired of, of even possible by, the person watching or listening.

There are (at least) two complementary ways to look at broadcast worship. One, implicitly knows that the broadcast experience is second-best, but simulates the experience of in-real-life worship, with the an opportunity to participate at some important part, say by watching the elevation and fraction of the host at a televised mass, or to pray for one’s own beloved dead at the Kaddish. “These experiences fill an obligation” is another way to look at it.

The other participation mode is to be a consumer of the aesthetics and information, and I’m plainly worried that as a function of our free-church mode of worship this is where the mainline of Unitarian Universalism is. It gets its value from being “the best show in town” or by being a rare conduit for some spiritual understanding. I think I can be forgiven by pointing out how unlikely the “best show” production values are, and that the more likely appeal is for those far from a Unitarian Universalist congregation. (Special spiritual understanding is possible, but let’s put that to one side for the moment.) That necessarily limits the appeal of webcast worship to the already convinced, but spatially inconvenienced.

(I’d better post this or I’ll never do it. But I do have some opinions of “how” based on what I’ve found online.)

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"Wholly symbolic" communion?

In the joint Unitarian and Universalist 1937 Hymns of the Spirit the shorter communion service has a provision where “there is to be no distribution of the elements” “the communion being wholly symbolic.” I’ve never seen this ever done myself; has anyone?

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Sandy Day blogging

I’ve not bothered to see if Hurricane Sandy has degraded to a tropical storm (or been upgraded in colliding with that winter storm) because all evidence is that it’s terribly fierce. I hear the wind, rain and sirens of emergency vehicles.

But we’re better off than the Jersey Shore; remember its people and our beloved Murray Grove in prayer.

I wrote about hurricanes in 2003 and you can find some resources there.