Sunday School

[James]

I taught Sunday School yesterday. My teacher called me Thursday and said do something. He was going away to see his youngest grand child baptized. He said do not continue in Acts because he had already done the research on the next section.

So, left to my own devises, I borrowed some points from Stephen Prothero's American Jesus and explored the way hymns over the years have influenced the church. As a starting hook, I asked each person to list five to ten favorite hymns. I wanted to see if my class mates who are all over 65 favored gospel hymns or traditional hymns. All present, except one, are also choir members of long standing. This is the list.

All Things Bright and Beautiful
Amazing Grace
Be Thou My Vision
Blessed Assurance
Brethren We Have Met
Children of the Heavenly Father
Come Ye Sinners
Draw us in the Spirit's Tether
Glorious Things
Great is Thy Faithfulness
He Leadeth Me
He Touched Me
His Eye is on the Sparrow
How Great Thou Art
I Have Decided to Follow Jesus
I know Whom I have believed
I Need Thee Every Hour
I Owe the Lord a Morning Song
I serve a Risen Savior
I Will Arise
It Came Upon a Midnight Clear
It is Well
Jesus Loves Me
Joy to the World
Joyful Joyful
Let the Lower Lights be Burning
My Faith has Found a Resting Place
O Come All Ye Faithful
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
Sweet Hour of Prayer
Take Time to be Holy
The First Noel
There is a Fountain
Thine is the Glory
This is my Song (Finlandia)
Up Calvary's Mountain
What a Friend

Amazing grace, blessed assurance, Joyful Joyful, Joy to the World, It is well and what a friend made multiple lists.

Looking at the texts yesterday afternoon, I determined that 13 were odes to God, 21 to Jesus and 2 to the trinity.

So our hymns show a bias toward the Jesus songs even among choir members. The list of the one non-choir member was all gospels hymns about Jesus.

We have one lady in the class who is very bright and studious who reads theology and church history for recreational reading. She's our biggest library customer. One of her favorites is Let the Lower Lights be Burning, I asked her why. She said she served as a nurse nutritionist on an island off the coast of Maine for several years. The song was a favorite of the little church there. It had meaning for them. When the weather got dicey and the fishing boats were away from safe harbor, every light on the island was turned on so that the boats could find the way home. A story very close to the story behind the writing of the hymn.

[Dave Roberts]

Wish I had heard what you did, James.

[Mrs Haruo]

"Let the Lower Lights Be Burning" is a favorite of mine that I don't hear near enough. Living in an area like Seattle that has a historic tie to shipping and fishing and life on the water, it has a special meaning for me too.

[James]

Dave, we ended the previous Sunday with the 11th chapter of Acts. Verse 26 tells us they were first called Christians at Antioch. Following Prothero, the established church more or less ignored Jesus or the Christ for much of its history. (I'm not sure he's entirely right). But when the church moved west, the puritans spent most of their effort on a distant God of Wrath. Jesus, if mentioned at all was another scary figure. So how did we get to the loving Jesus of modern USA evangelicalism. In simple summary, Daddy went to work in the factory and left the loving mother in charge of the home. A lot of these loving mothers, according to June Halden Hobbs, I Sing for I cannot be silent, mother in her spare time taught religion as a nurturing experience and wrote hymns about a loving Jesus which forced the preachers running the big house to pay more attention to Jesus as a merciful savior and friend.

That's a down and dirty simplistic summary of what I was trying to say. The class members assumed that the church had always been about a loving Jesus, but a summary look at the Watts hymns, even though he is given credit for introducing Jesus into hymnody, reveals a lot of gloom and doom, worms and wrath. As we used to say in the Hollow Square as we sang our minor key durges, "we love our cheerful songs." Prothero points to the lead up the Civil War, especially in the Camp Meeting revivals as the beginning of the Jesus movement. "I will arise and go to Jesus, he will embrace me in his arms (between the sheets Hobbs reminds her readers). Now we have a friend with whom we can walk and talk in the cool morning of a garden.

I love hymns and their stories and the stories of how hymns affect the lives and faith of individuals, churches and nations. To roughly paraphrase my favorite quote (can't cite the name off hand). You write the creeds and I'll write the hymns and we'll see who has the most influence on the faith.

P. S. Hobbs grew up SBC in Oklahoma. Her book title is from a Fanny Crosby Hymn.

[James]

Mrs Haruo, I met a retired sea captain some years ago who sailed a coastal freighter up and down the Atlantic coast. His daughter is an artist who loves to paint lighthouses. When he retired, his daughter said, "Dad, name the lighthouse and I will paint it for you." He named the lighthouse. She said that is the plainest light house on the coast and the coast is not pretty. Why There." He said, "Because, no matter what the time of night or weather, the lens was always bright. The light never failed." Let the lower lights was his favorite too. Unfortunately, hymnbook editors consider the hymn trite and obsolete. It is in the 56 SBC hymnal but not in the 91 hymnal.

After all, we live in the modern world. We have GPS. Who needs lights? We have psychiatry and pills to help us through life. Who needs the light of Jesus.

If you have pain real pain, terrible pain
Take vicodin into your brain (repeat)
Your pain will go away. Your brain will turn to hay.
Take Vicodin and feel good again.

to the tune of Let Jesus Come into Your Heart.

[Mrs Haruo]

How true- I have known several vicodin addicts over the years and hay-brained sure sums it up. I have had it myself after a tooth extraction to take the edge off things so I can get a decent nights rest so my body can heal, but once the fog clears, I prefer a dose of Marx Brothers movies as I find a good belly laugh is the best medicine.


I have heard Amazing Grace at so many funerals I'm tired of the song. However, I heard it sung to the tune of "The House of the Rising Sun" back in the 70s and have performed it myself that way. Even more fun is to the tune of "Gilligan's Island"..

[James]

Ghost Riders in the Sky does Amazing things for grace. Try it to Joy to the World.

But I agree, it is overdone.

What saves it for me is that my mother taught me that I was the most ungrateful wretch that ever lived so saving a wretch is what I needed and got. I'm still a sinner, but now I am saved by grace.

[Haruo]

At Song Circle Friday night I was going to sing the Gilligan's Island theme song to Pisgah, but I couldn't quite bring myself to do it. Common Metre is a wonder and a joy.

If my (and Mrs H's) old roommate, and Fremont Baptist's organist, Verne Eke, had not died a couple years ago and thereby put a major hiatus in the history of the Evergreen Hymn Sings, our next one was going to be Hymns, Psalms and Spiritual Songs of the Sea. "Let the Lower Lights Be Burning" would certainly have figured in the lineup. Looking at hymnary.org just now I'm amazed to see how thoroughly right you are James, that hymnal editors have lost their taste for that one. It occurs in 441 hymnals in the hymnary.org database, which is a pretty large number for a hymn written as late as 1871, but only two of them (!!) are from 1979 or later. And both of those are rather retro-oriented hymnals, Tabernacle's Hymns of Faith and the Bible Presbyterians of Singapore's Revival Hymns and Choruses.

[Haruo]

By way of comparison, Fanny Crosby's famous hymn "To God be the glory, great things he hath done" (published 1875, just four years after the "Lower Lights") occurs in only 150 hymnals, but 39 of them are 1979 or later. Given that there are simply not as many recent hymnals as there were in past half-centuries, this is clearly an indication that the Crosby hymn is in the ascendancy, and the Bliss is in decline.

[James]

In my look at Christian Hymnody through 700 hymnals in my collection, plus the reading in text books on hymnody, it seems clear that the church in America has had some form of informal/personal hymn music since the 1820s and the camp meeting revivals giving rise to Southern Harmony, Sacred Harp and other shape note collections. (I know these were not the first shape note books, but they are the big dogs in the pack). Then came what were called Sunday School Songs and then with Moody/Sankey revivals came the gospel hymn. The gospel hymn era in its productive stage lasted from about 1870 to 1940. Look at the hymnals from that era. Many churches had the Sunday Morning hymnals for the 11AM service full of traditional hymns and depending on publication date maybe a few gospel hymns, but they also had a book of gospel hymns for the Sunday School, evening and Wednesday service. The SBC in its 56 hymnal struck a nice balance between traditional hymns and gospel hymns. The 75 hymnal incorporated contemporary Christian songs which by then had long since replaced gospel hymns as a creative force in hymnody. The contemporary Christian era will also pass away. Some say it already has. The hymnals of 2150, if we still have them in printed form will have very few gospel hymns. I suspect that Blessed Assurance (Crosby) and It is Well (tune by Bliss) will make the cut. I think there will be even fewer of the contemporary stuff in the book. One that might make it is Because He Lives (gaither), not because it is great music but because it makes the statement that "Life is worth the living just because He lives."

[Dave Roberts]

I always enjoy the postings of the two BL hymnologists. Such a breadth of knowledge rests in James and Haruo.

[James]

Thank you, Dave. Sacred Harp singings prove that disparate people can achieve great unity of purpose in singing praises to God. Homophobes and homosexuals can sit side by side and sing together. Wiccans, atheist and evangelical fundamentalist likewise.

I'm going to continue taking info from class members until I have something from every one then I will recompile the list. When it is done, I will start a new thread bases on my findings. Then I will have to persuade Lit to give me a Sunday or two to lead the class through what I found. Sunday was about 40% class participation and 60% my comments.

[Haruo]

[James]

Haruo, Amazing Grace 4, Blessed Assurance 2, Joyful 3, Joy to the world 2, It is well 3, what a friend 2.

Our Sunday School teacher is enthused about my project so we will continue.

One Methodist writer I read years ago maybe in the Hymn Society Magizine explained to his readers that unless the hymn is clearly about or addressed to Jesus it cannot be a Christian Hymn. He used Holy Holy Holy as an exemplar giving it the barest nod as a Christian Hymn because the last phrase of v 1 includes "blessed trinity". Joyful Joyful is clearly addressed to God the Father as is Great is Thy faithfulness.

In a broad sense, you are right about Jesus and the ancient hymns but the emphasis on a personal loving Jesus is a fairly modern thing.

I came to love I Owe the Lord a Morning Song from the Community Hymn sings hosted by the Mennonites. It is in their 1967 hymnal (the beloved Red Book) and the 92 hymnal. It helped me put into words a feeling I have had for the last several decades that each day is God's gift to us. How we live it is our gift to him. I try to pray that He will find something pleasing in my gift.

My theology professor, Dale Moody who was condemned by the fundamentalists as a heretic gave me the mantra to express what I already felt about the trinity.
God is God
He is God the Father above us
He is God the Son among us
He is God the Holy Spirit within us
But in all perspectives He is the one and only God

So I have never really tried to get too technical about the trinity or how we Christians set the concept. For me, Jesus is and was the I AM incarnate who introduced himself to Moses. So in my personal book, all hymns are about the same entity whether called God/Father, Jesus/Son or Spirit. But the people who have spent many years studying these things to make a living tell me that such and such is so sometimes lead me astray on nuances. Sometimes it is like the discussions on economics and the welfare state that we find on the politics board. I certainly overstated the case about the Jesus hymns in Sunday School to try to make a point, but I promised we would do more and that seems to suit everyone so we can smooth out the edges in later discussion.

[Haruo]

What is missing from the Sunday School hymn list? I'm not sure. Here are nine hymns that are not on it but that would at least have a shot at making my top ten list if I could bring myself to do such a thing.

How firm a foundation
Come, thou Fount
The love of God is greater far
Battle Hymn
Hail to the Lord's Anointed (to SHEFFIELD)
Come, O Thou Traveler (to BONNIE DOON)
Chariots
Love Divine, all loves excelling (to BLAENWERN)
All hail the power (to GREEN STREEt)

[James]

Haruo, Chariots is the only one on your list I do not recognize unless it is short hand for Swing Low....

I talked to my SS teachers wife last night at choir. She is a professional musician and directs one of the church choirs for free. She told me she was sorry that she was away when the lesson was on her favorite subject. She will send out e-mail this week to all class members that they need to get their hymn lists to me ASAP. She really wants to get in on this. She told that one of her favorites on her list will be God of Every Generation which I know you do not have. It has never been published in a hymnal. Text is by a former pastor. Turn is by a former choir master/organist. It is a great hymn and the HBC hymn for all great occasions like minister installations. I'll post it as soon as I can get a copy. Copyright is HBC.

[Haruo]

I look forward to seeing it; I'm sure it's not this one: , which is what comes up if you google "God of every generation".

Chariots is a folk anthem from Britain by John Kirkpatrick. I'll post it later. Got to get off my butt and go to work at the moment.

A glorious Ascension Day to all!

[Haruo]

[Haruo]

Maybe I should have listed "Jesus, Lover of my soul" (to MARTYN), and "My Shepherd is the living God".