Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Hymn?

Long before churches fought about masks and vaccines, congregants argued about worship, particularly about the relative value of hymns or choruses. From time to time, this battle surfaces today. As you may know, I have chosen to write several blogs about women hymnwriters. And so I feel compelled to justify my positivity toward hymns, even though I am partial to choruses as well. To do this well, we should review some of the arguments marshaled against hymns:

·      Hymns are hard to accompany: Churches need guitar-ready, not piano-dependent music.

·      Some hymns are theologically light or just wrong, particularly ________. (Here you insert the hymn/s that annoy you.)

·      Many hymns only sound good if sung in four parts, AND most people are not trained to do that.

·      Some churches that use these very hymns even when their members don’t believe in any of the words, guilt by association.

·      Hymnals are heavy, expensive, off-putting: in other words, unnecessary in this digital age.

The anti-hymn forces present strong arguments. But rather than refuting their conclusions, I would like to tell you a story. In my long-ago youth when cars had fins and little girls wore petticoats, my dad assured me that God did not exist. This was a tenet he gathered years earlier when he had asked God to appear, and He didn’t. Amazingly, Dad did not forbid the agnostic me from attending church, as long I could arrive there without parental help. Kids in those days were “free range children.” In the summer, we might leave our houses at 9 am and not return (except for bathroom breaks and snacks) until dinnertime. Whether or not this was wise parenting I leave to you. The point is that during those early elementary years, I found myself walking to a neighborhood church on Sunday mornings. Alone!

If that is how I began going to Sunday School, what kept me there were the stars. I love stars—those weekly stickers that both proclaim “perfect attendance” and translate into gold-colored attendance pins and occasional bookmarks. It hardly mattered that my memories of those years are limited to a few Bible stories and lots of coloring. The rewards, and the sense I was a “good girl.” kept me coming. 

What proved most critical about these Sunday school years was that I learned two hymns that completely undid me. The first was “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” We elementary students never learned about this song’s tragic history and the fact that its author, Joseph Scriven (1819-1886) lost two fiancées to sudden death before dying himself of accidental drowning. Written as a gift to his mother back in Ireland, “What a Friend We have in Jesus” testifies that Jesus, the sin bearer, is also prayer answerer, willing encourager, faithful friend, and caring refuge. As a child, I may not have known what “solace” was, but I knew that Scriven’s lyrics awoke in my heart a desire for a forever Friend.

Another hymn I learned at Sunday school was the African-American call-and-response spiritual “Lord, I Want to Be a Christian in My Heart.” This song expressed longings I felt but could not verbalize. It told of desires to be a Christian, to be more loving, to be more holy. For me, such goals seemed impossible. Even as child, I knew I was selfish, that I often resented my younger siblings for interrupting my playtime and my older sister for casting me as the monkey in every space-travel role-play. I realized that, in spite of my baptismal certificate, I was not a Christian and that in actuality I was not “a good girl.”

A few years later, I found the answer to my yearnings. Believe it or not, a bookmark award from those Sunday school years played a role. Embroidered on that bookmark was the verse: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). After a college student explained that verse to me, I believed in Jesus as my Savior. Now the songs I sang, both choruses AND hymns, reflected a heart of love for my Maker.

Since those days, I have sung many Christian songs. While artists change and styles differ, well-expressed musical truths both touch me and make me curious about the experiences behind the lyrics. Consider, for example, E. Margaret Clarkson (1915-2008), an author whose salvation experience echoes my own. In Clarkson’s case, her parent’s “troubled and unhappy marriage” (ending in divorce at an era when even separation was a rarity) led her to turn to a local church for stability and direction. Finding God’s truth through her hymnbook, Clarkson came to trust Jesus Christ. Later in life, she recalled how she would climb the cherry tree at her home and belt out classic church hymns. As an adult, Clarkson not only sang hymns, she also wrote them, including “We Come, O Christ, to You” which begins: 

We come, O Christ, to you, 
true Son of God and man, 
by whom all things consist, 
in whom all life began. 
In you alone we live and move 
and have our being in your love>

 

Clarkson’s is just one of the many hymn stories I have pondered. Keep reading my blog, and you will learn more. Together they testify that the most memorable hymns are lyrical interpretations of the challenges, joys, and struggles of the Christian life. Hymns are testimony. Hymns record the musings of a living Church. We need not fear the “big bad hymn.” Instead, we can embrace Paul’s advice to the Colossians: Let the Word of Christ . .  . have the run of the house . . . And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way (3:16-17, MSG).

            

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Thoughts from the House of Mourning

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What’s in a Name? Cursing and Blessing