The Singing Church: The Hymns It Wrote and SangLorenz, Edmund S. (Edmund Simon)
Religion
The Singing Church: The Hymns It Wrote and Sang
Lorenz, Edmund S. (Edmund Simon)
Hymns -- History and criticism
The victory of the Church over Arianism was a singing victory both in
the Eastern and Western churches. The Crusades were marked by
processional singing of religious songs. The singing Lollards and
Hussites heralded the Great Reformation, and the most effective
preaching of Huss and Luther and Calvin was the hymns and metrical
psalms they introduced. Watts prepared the way for the Wesleyan
revival, and the Wesley brothers entered the path he had blazed and
made a great highway of Christian song. Dour New England found its
voice during the Great Revival under Jonathan Edwards and later under
Nettleton. The preachers who saved the pioneers of the Appalachian
range of mountains and the budding Middle West from relapsing into
paganism and savagery were “singing parsons” with their repertoire of
“spiritual” revival choruses and religious ballads.
Even Charles G. Finney, the great praying evangelist and later founder
of Oberlin College, whose revivals swept through New York and northern
Ohio like a prairie fire, had the popular _Christian Lyre_, edited by
Joshua Leavitt, as a breeze to fan the flame, although he often
forbade the singing of hymns in certain conditions in his meetings.
William B. Bradbury, S. J. Vail, Robert Lowry, William H. Doane, Fanny
Crosby, George F. Root, Philip Phillips, P. P. Bliss, and many others
had written and taught the American people the songs that prepared the
way for the Moody and Sankey revival movement which so profoundly
affected the religious life of both America and England and, through
the missionaries, intensified the faith of the Christian Church
throughout the world.
Through all the centuries it has been the singing armies that have won
the religious wars. The successful denominations and individual
churches have been pre-eminently singing churches led by singing
preachers who swayed their communities. Cardinal Newman is now chiefly
remembered for his hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light.” Washington Gladden, a
great religious leader, will have his memory kept green by his hymn,
“O Master, let me walk with Thee,” and Bishop Phillips Brooks fifty
years hence will be chiefly remembered for his Christmas carol, “O
little town of Bethlehem.”
VI. STRANGE INDIFFERENCE TO HYMNS
_The Minister’s indifference._
In view of the considerations and facts here marshaled, how strange is
the general lack of interest among ministers toward their hymn
service, toward the hymns themselves, their history, their meaning,
the methods to be used in exploiting their great value. Is it saying
too much to suggest that three out of five ministers have no adequate
conception of the possibilities of hymn singing or appreciation of its
value?
_Indifference of the Congregation._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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