Evangelical Covenant Church

Congregational Singing in England, Canada, and The United States Since 1950

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Since 1950, there has been more music published for congregational singing than at any other time in the history of the church. Nearly every major denominational body, as well as many independent congregations and publishing companies, have produced official and supplementary hymnals and related collections of songs. In almost every case, these collections evidence a recovery of traditions once lost and relentless pursuit of contemporary music that is both faithful to the gospel and representative of the languages—both verbal and musical—of modern culture.

The 1950s

Several trends continued throughout the decade of the 1950s. Many new publications indicated an increase in the use of some one hundred to two hundred common historic hymns which later became the basic repertoire of congregational songs found in most hymnals. At the same time, the multiplication of simple choruses, sung chiefly in evangelical gatherings, made differences in the musical styles used in the church more pronounced.

Most hymn singing of the 1950s came to sound all the same, almost always sung to organ accompaniment. With the development of technology for sound amplification, numerous sanctuaries were “remodeled” to nullify the distraction of any sound except that which originated from the preacher or singer stationed behind a microphone. This discouraged wholehearted congregational hymn singing.

However, during the same period of time, a new working of God’s Spirit was evidenced in the phenomenon of glossolalia (i.e., speaking in tongues). This new movement claimed participants in the mainline denominations as well as churches of Pentecostal persuasion.

By the end of the decade criticism against traditional forms of worship and musical styles increased. And, although it was most intense among the youth, adults too voiced concern against archaic language and what seemed to them to be medieval music.

The 1960s

The great divide between the past and the present in congregational singing erupted in England with the publication of Geoffrey Beaumont’s Folk Mass in 1957. Written for young people, this work was composed in an innovative manner, calling for a cantor to sing a phrase of the text, which was then repeated by the congregation. This responsive form, along with the popular style of its melodies and harmony, made this work an instant success.

Similarly, in the early 1960s, Michael Baughen, later Bishop of Chester, along with some friends, sought to provide new songs for a new generation. Even though no publisher would support their first endeavor, they published Youth Praise (Michael A. Baughen, ed. [London: Falcon Books, 1966]). The Church Pastoral Aid Society subsequently published Youth Praise 2 (Michael A. Baughen, ed., [London: Falcon Books, 1969]) and Psalm Praise (Michael A. Baughen, ed. [Chicago: GIA Publications, 1973]). This cluster of friends, known as the Jubilate Group, includes such outstanding writers and composers as Timothy Dudley-Smith (b. 1926), Christopher Idle (b. 1938), Michael Perry (b. 1942), and Norman Warren (b. 1934). It has grown to forty members, becoming well known in the United States due to the consistent effort of George Shorney, Chairman of the Hope Publishing Company. Their modern language hymnal, Hymns for Today’s Church was published both in England (by Hodder and Stoughton, London) and in the United States (by the Hope Publishing Company, Carol Stream, Ill.).

Fred Kaan, a one-time pastor of Pilgrim Church in Plymouth, England, also wrote contemporary hymns for his congregation which was used far beyond those sanctuary walls. His first collection of 50 texts was called Pilgrim Praise (Plymouth, England: Pilgrim Church, 1968). After moving to Geneva, Switzerland, where he collaborated with composer Doreen Potter, he published twenty new hymns under the title Break Not The Circle (Carol Stream, Ill.: Agape, 1975). Later, in 1985, Hope Publishing Company issued the complete collection of his work, The Hymn Texts of Fred Kaan (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing, 1985).

Other publications appeared with new texts and music. In London, Josef Weinberger became the publisher of a series of supplemental books beginning in 1965. These contained representative works written in a pop style by the Twentieth Century Church Light Music Group. Some of these songs also became available in the United States in the 1970s. In addition, Gailliard (London) published the Sydney Carter song, “Lord of The Dance,” in l963, followed by a collection of other songs by Carter which were recorded and made available in the United States.

Continuing in the tradition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, 100 Hymns for Today (John Dykes Bower, ed., [London: William Clowes and Sons, 1969]) was published as its supplement. Some years later, a similar supplement to The English Hymnal was completed with the title English Praise (George Timms, ed. [London: Oxford University Press, 1975]).

The United States. The earliest work in the United States similar to Beaumont’s Folk Mass was Herbert G. Draesel, Jr.’s immensely popular Rejoice (New York: Marks Music Corp., 1964). Later recorded, this sacred folk mass promoted the use of electric guitars and drums in the regular worship services of churches. Then soon after Vatican II, young Roman Catholic musicians introduced a large number of folk masses intended for unison singing with guitar accompaniment. Each of these was made available both in print and on records, which accelerated their popularity.

The great success of F.E.L. (Friends of English Liturgy) Publications widened the acceptance of these and other new songs into Catholic and non-Catholic circles. Their Hymnal for Young Christians: A Supplement to Adult Hymnals (Roger D. Nachtwey, ed., Chicago: F.E.L. Church Publications, 1966) was released in Roman Catholic and ecumenical editions in 1966. A second volume appeared in 1970. Songs such as “We Shall Overcome,” “Allelu,” “Sons of God,” and “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love” were commonly sung by Christian young people.

At the same time, many Methodists sang songs found in New Wine (Jim Strathdee, ed., 2 vols. [Los Angeles: Board of Education of the Southern California—Arizona Conference of the United Methodist Church, 1969,1973]), and some Presbyterians adopted Richard Avery and Donald Marsh’s Hymns Hot and Carols Cool (Port Jervis, N.Y.: Proclamation Productions, 1967).

In evangelical churches, the rapid development of the youth musical (such as Buryl Red’s Celebrate Life [Nashville: Broadman Press, 1972]) coincided with the popularity of compositions for youth by Ralph Carmichael that appeared in films and on record. A number of these songs were printed in the little pocket edition (melody line and texts) of “He’s Everything To Me” (Los Angeles: Lexicon Music, 1969).

More traditional in its orientation, the most important Protestant hymnal published in the 1960s was The Methodist Hymnal (1964), released under the expert supervision of editor/composer Carlton R. Young.

The 1970s

In the 1970s, ecumenical and denominational hymnals continued to be published. A staggering number of smaller supplemental books, often experimental in nature, also appeared.

The continuing ecumenical emphasis of earlier years was evident in the fourth edition (1970) of The Lutheran World Federations Hymnal, Laudamus (a fifth edition was published in 1984). And the more comprehensive work of hymnologist Erik Routley was evidenced in the 1974 Cantate Domino (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), compiled for the World Council of Churches. In 1971 the impressive Hymn Book (Toronto: Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church of Canada, 1971) drew together quality selections from past centuries as well as some of the finest new songs, such as Sydney Carter’s imaginative “Lord of the Dance.” During the following year, 1972, the Presbyterian Church in Canada issued its own revision of an earlier book, The Book of Praise edited by William Fitch (Ontario, Canada: The Presbyterian Church in Canada, 1972). This collection adopted the more modern practice of placing all stanzas of the text between the staves of music. The Baptist Federation of Canada followed with their 1973 book, The Hymnal (Carol M. Giesbrecht, ed.) And a joint American/Canadian venture, the General Conference of the Mennonite Brethren Churches, published the Worship Hymnal (Hillsboro, Kans.: Mennonite Brethren Publishing House, 1973) with Paul Wohlgemuth as chairman/editor. The Covenant Hymnal (Chicago: The Covenant Press, 1973) of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America was the result of a careful search for the finest hymns of the past as well as new works, particularly hymns written in response to requests of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. Its supplement The Song Goes On (Glen V. Wiberg, ed. [Chicago: Covenant Publications, 1990]) was issued in 1990. Meanwhile, Donald P. Hustad served as editor for one of the more scholarly books to be published by the Hope Publishing Company. That book, Hymns for the Living Church (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1974) proved itself to be a valuable resource for churches with a broad musical taste. At the same time William J. Reynolds, another outstanding national leader in the area of church music, served as editor of the new edition of the Baptist Hymnal (Nashville, Tenn.: Convention Press, 1975).

In the middle of the decade, the editors of the Roman Catholic Worship II (Robert J. Batastini, ed. [Chicago: GIA Publications, 1975]) were free to admit that the Roman Catholic Church has its own sacred music tradition, but that tradition does not include a long history of singing in the English language. Unlike their fellow Americans of the same American “melting pot” culture, Catholic parishes for the most part have yet to experience the same vitality of song that echoes from their neighboring Christian Churches.

That vitality of song had already existed in the worldwide Lutheran church for over 450 years. Lutheran immigrants to America sang their chorales in their original languages. However, by the time of the 1960 and 1962 Lutheran church mergers, those various nationalistic branches had become “Americanized,” adopting a larger number of English hymns, along with translations of their ethnic songs. The Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1987) is a culminating work that includes these translations and a number of contemporary texts and hymn tunes by recognized American Lutheran authors and composers such as Charles Anders (b. 1929), Theodore Beck (b. 1929), Jan Bender (b. 1909), Paul Bunjes (b. 1914), Donald Busarow (b. 1934), Gracia Grindal (b. 1943), Richard Hillert (b. 1923), Frederick Jackisch (b. 1922), Carl Schalk (b. 1929), and Jaroslav Vajda (b. 1919). Members of the committee which produced this book represented all of the participating American and Canadian churches in the Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship.

Also of importance was the innovative and highly influential collection Hymns for the Family of God (Fred Bock and Brian Jeffery Leach, eds. [Nashville: Paragon Associates, 1976]). A new era in congregational singing was proclaimed in its preface:

Whereas it used to take decades or centuries for a hymn or song-style to become an established part of the Christian’s repertoire, today this can happen in a matter of a few month’s time. For example “Alleluia” and “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love” are sung almost everywhere by almost everyone.

In addition to the appearance of these new hymnals, there was a flurry of publications of a quite different nature, published to fill the need for more contemporary songs with updated language, and using a greater variety of popular musical styles.

In England, the work of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland introduced the newest texts of Albert Bayly (1901–1984), Fred Pratt Green (b. 1903), Fred Kaan (b. 1929), and Brian Wren (b. 1936) as well as the most current music by Peter Cutts (b. 1937) and Michael Fleming (b. 1928). Galliard of Norfolk had a continuing series of books that were made available in the United States, such as Songs for the Seventies (James D. Ross, ed. [New York: Galaxy Music Corporation, 1972]). This collection contained Sydney Carter’s controversial “Friday Morning.”

In America, Hope Publishing Company’s subsidiary, Agape, and editor Carlton Young had their own series of imaginative and innovative books. In both a pocket-size edition and a larger spiral-bound edition, they presented a collection of seventy eclectic songs called Songbook for Saints and Sinners (Carol Stream, Ill.: Agape, 1971). The Avery and Marsh folk-song pieces were printed next to Catholic Ray Repp’s “Allelu,” Lutheran John Ylvisaker’s “Thanks be to God,” Southern Baptist William Reynold’s “Up and Get us Gone,” Episcopalian Herbert G. Draesel’s “Nicene Creed” and numerous black spirituals. The Genesis Songbook (Carol Stream, Ill.: Agape, 1973) which followed in l973 contained such popular songs as Stephen Schwartz’s “Day by Day,” Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin,” James Thiem’s “Sons of God,” Sy Miller and Jill Jackson’s “Let There be Peace on Earth,” and Gene MacLellan’s “Put Your Hand in the Hand.”

The Exodus Songbook (Carlton Young, ed. [Carol Stream: Agape, 1976]) was next in 1976 with an amazingly different gallery of songwriters: Burt Bacharach, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Paul Simon, Kurt Weil, Malcolm Williamson, and Stevie Wonder. Some of the titles indicated the unusual nature of the group of songs in this collection: “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “What the World Needs Now,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “A Simple Song,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head,” “Come Sunday,” “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” “Somewhere,” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

By 1977 editor “Sam” Young had turned his attention to a uniquely adventuresome supplement project. Ecumenical Praise (Carlton Young, ed. [Carol Stream, Ill.: Agape, 1977]) came to be the most experimental and influential work of its kind. The list of its contemporary composers was quite impressive: Samuel Adler, Emma Lou Diemer, Richard Dirksen, Richard Felciano, Iain Hamilton, Calvin Hampton, Austin C. Lovelace, Jane Marshall, Daniel Moe, Erik Routley, Ned Rorem, Carl Schalk, Malcolm Williamson, Alec Wyton, and Carlton R. Young.

In addition, the evangelical “youth” booklets came forth in a steady and seemingly endless stream. Many had only lyrics, melody lines, and guitar chords. They were intended to be used for unison group singing in Sunday school, at camp, in youth meetings, and in coffee houses. The youth in the Lutheran church used a number of books such as David Anderson’s The New Jesus Style Songs (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972) while those in evangelical churches sang the songs in Ralph Carmichael’s He’s Everything to Me Plus 103 (Los Angeles: Lexicon Music, 1972). Those who participated in Young Life or Campus Life on high school and college campuses sang from Yohann Anderson’s Songs (San Anselmo, Calif.: Songs and Creations, 1972). In time many larger, independent hymnals included other songs of the seventies, such as Andre Crouch’s “My Tribute” (1971), Kurt Kaiser’s “Oh, How He Loves You and Me” (1975), the Gaithers’ “There’s Something About That Name” (1970), Jimmy Owen’s “Clap Your Hands” (1972), and a large number of spirituals that had been revived during the years of civil unrest.

The 1980s

Ecumenical efforts in the publication of hymnbooks continued. The successor to the 1933 English Methodist Hymn Book was the 1983 Hymns and Psalms: A Methodist and Ecumenical Hymn Book (Richard G. Jones, ed. [London: Methodist Publishing House, 1983]) Prepared by representatives of the Baptist Union, Churches of Christ, Church of England, Congregational Federation, Methodist Church in Ireland, United Reformed Church, and the Wesleyan Reform Union, it produced one hymnbook for several denominations, not unlike the idea of the unified Korean Hymnal of 1984 and similar efforts in Sweden. The contemporary British authors represented in this large (888 items) Methodist book include Albert Bayly, Sydney Carter, Timothy Dudley-Smith, Fred Pratt Green, Alan Luff, Erik Routley, and Brian Wren. Some of the notable hymn tune composers are Geoffrey Beaumont, Sydney Carter, Peter Cutts, Erik Routley, Norma Warren, and John Wilson.

The “hymn explosion” that had taken place in Great Britain became the “hymnal explosion” of the 1980s in the United States. This was due in part to the exceptional efforts of George Shorney, chairman of America’s largest publisher of nondenominational hymnals, the century-old Hope Publishing Company. As host to visits of leading English hymn-writers and the publisher of single-author books of texts, he did more than any single person to promote the use of those new texts on this side of the Atlantic.

One of the early volumes contained The Hymns and Ballads of Fred Pratt Green (Bernard Braley, ed. [Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1982]), complete with notes on each text. This collection contained “General Hymns,” “Hymns for Special Occasions,” “Ballads,” “Translations,” “Early Hymns,” and “Anthem Texts.” It seems as though every new American hymnal has adopted his oft-quoted “When in Our Music, God Is Glorified” (Later Hymns and Ballads and Fifty Poems, Bernard Braley, ed. [Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1989]).

In 1983 The Hymns & Songs of Brian Wren, with Many Tunes by Peter Cutts was published in the United States as Faith Looking Forward (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1983). “Christ is Alive!,” one of his innovative works, found its way into a number of hymnals during the eighties. Another collection followed in 1986. Then in 1989, thirty-five new Wren hymns were issued under the title Bring Many Names (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1989).

The following year the collected hymns of Timothy Dudley-Smith were published as Lift Every Heart (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1984). And in a very short period of time, a number of his widely accepted texts were printed in a variety of denominational and nondenominational books. Likewise, the work of Canada’s leading hymn-writer, Margaret Clarkson, was collected in A Singing Heart (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1987), while American counterpart Jane Parker Huber had her texts published in A Singing Faith (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1987). In the same year, Lutheran Jaroslav J. Vajda had his hymns, carols, and songs published in a volume entitled Now The Joyful Celebration (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1987). In the early 1990s, New Zealander Shirley Erena Murray’s work was introduced in the United States by the collection In Every Corner Sing (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1992).

A few years later the collected hymns for the church year (after the model set in Keble’s Christian Year) were assembled in Carl P. Daw, Jr.’s A Year of Grace (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1990). Eighteen of the metrical canticles from this significant work were published subsequently, each with two musical settings, in To Sing God’s Praise (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1992).

Finally, the single-author collection Go Forth for God (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1991) introduced the complete hymn-writing opus of English clergyman J. R. Peacey to editors and worship leaders in the United States. The British “hymn explosion” had become a significant part of the “hymnal explosion” in the United States.

This decade of the hymnal began with the publication of Lutheran Worship (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1982), the authorized hymnal for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. It restored original unequal rhythms to a number of the early chorales and included important contributions by such contemporary Lutheran composers as Anders, Beck, Bender, Bunjes, Busarow, Manz, Sateren, and Schalk.

However, it was The Hymnal 1982 (Raymond F. Glover, ed. [New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1985]) which set the standard for future denominational hymnals. A revision of The Hymnal 1940 (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1940), had several noticeable differences: (1) the use of guitar chord symbols; (2) added instrumental parts; (3) metronome markings; (4) black note notation, and (5) music within the musical staff.

In l985 the Reformed Church in America issued its own book, Rejoice in the Lord: A Hymn Companion to the Scriptures (Erik Routley, ed. [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985]). It is chiefly the work of editor Erik Routley and it bears the stamp of his genius.

A year later two very different collections of congregational songs were published. In Worship III (Robert J. Batastini, ed. [Chicago, Ill.: GIA Publications, 1986]), Roman Catholics made an effort to move into the mainstream of congregational hymnody. Distinguished composers included in this new revision of the l971 and 1975 editions were Marty Haugen, Howard Hughes, and Michael Joncas.

Remarkably different was The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration (Tom Fettke, ed. [Waco, Tex.: Word Music, 1986]). Its brief services (and medleys) with choral introductions and codas and the complete orchestration of its contents made this a distinctively new collection. Moreover, the eclecticism of its contents may best be illustrated in the titles of some of the songs: the “Hallelujah Chorus” (Messiah); Timothy Dudley-Smith’s setting of the Magnificat, “Tell Out My Soul”; Andre Crouch’s solo song “My Tribute”; the country/western song, “I’ll Fly Away”; the spiritual, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”; Ralph Carmichael’s hit song, “He’s Everything to Me”; and Jack Hayford’s praise chorus, “Majesty.”

Another pair of hymnals was published in 1987. The carefully constructed Christian Reformed Psalter Hymnal (Emily R. Brink, ed. [Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 1987]) featured metrical versions of all 150 psalms, settings of biblical songs from Genesis to Revelation, and hymns for every act of worship and season of the Christian year.

This may be contrasted with the evangelical Gaither Music Company publication, Worship His Majesty (Fred Bock, ed. [Alexandria, Ind.: Gaither Music Company, 1987]). Here the reader will find Christian contemporary solos by Paul Stookey, Dottie Rambo, and Bill and Gloria Gaither, along with nineteenth-century gospel songs by Fanny Crosby and Ira D. Sankey. The Church of God also used contemporary Christian songs in their new hymnal, Worship The Lord (Alexandria, Ind.: Warner Press, 1989).

Until the publication of their new hymnal in 1989, the United Methodists used the 1982 Supplement to the Book of Hymns (Carlton R. Young, ed. [Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1982]) as well as a 1983 Asian-American collection, Hymns from the Four Winds (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983) edited by the distinguished ethnomusicologist, I-to-Loh.

At the end of the decade, a superb collection of congregational songs was completed by the members of the Hymnal Revision Committee of the United Methodist Church under the editorship of Carlton Young. This 1989 book was the result of a careful review of traditional and contemporary materials. Well-known hymns from Greek, Latin, German, Scandinavian, Wesleyan, English, and North American traditions were placed alongside representative and meaningful evangelical songs. Selections from the contemporary popular repertoire were printed with English and American hymns of the “hymn explosion” period. A wide variety of ethnic songs were also given some prominence.

Apart from these large collections of congregational songs, a large number of supplemental books appeared during the eighties—books of every possible kind, many with accompanying cassette recordings. And with the recording of the songs in these very diverse books, the adoption of the new music became increasingly rapid.

Roman Catholics purchased cassette tapes of single artists/composers such as John Michael Talbot as well as the music and tapes of Gather to Remember (Michael A. Cymbala, ed. [Chicago: GIA Publications, 1982]). Moreover, the many cantor-congregation publications encouraged an easy form of responsive singing. The Music of Taize (Robert J. Bastastini, ed. [Chicago: GIA Publications, 1978]), a Protestant community in France, was promoted by Robert Bastastini, editor of GIA Publication.

Episcopalians made a significant contribution to the growing repertoire of ethnic hymnody in the publication of Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Collection of Afro-American Spirituals and Other Song (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1981), and the Catholics followed with Lead Me, Guide Me: The African-American Catholic Hymnal (Chicago: GIA Publications, 1987).

The Hope Publishing Company, Agape division, published a 1984 Hymnal Supplement (Carol Stream, Ill.: Agape, 1984) followed by Hymnal Supplement II (Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Co., 1987) with new material from leading British and American writers and composers. Then in 1989, Tom Fettke compiled and edited Exalt Him (Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1989) which was issued in a words-only edition, a music edition, and a piano/rhythm book, and was recorded on cassette and CD, along with a variety of accompaniment tapes.

Three major groups emerged as leaders in the publication of praise-and-worship music. Maranatha! Music had early been the leader with its famous Praise (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Maranatha! Music, 1983). Integrity’s Hosanna! Music also developed a continuing stream of both printed and recorded materials, while the Vineyard Ministries spread both their style of worship and their musical repertoire to a number of countries. All three repertoires have been used extensively.

One of the most unusual series of publications of the late 1980s came from the Iona Community in Scotland. The wild goose, a Celtic symbol of the Holy Spirit, was adopted as the symbol of this community of prayer, which is made up of ordained and lay men and women of all denominations sharing a common rule of faith and life. The chief author of each collection of unaccompanied songs was John Bell. Some sixty percent of the fifty songs in each volume were his own compositions. The remainder were mostly British folk tunes such as “O Waly Waly,” “Sussex Carol,” “Scarborough Fair,” and “Barbara Allen.” The first collection, Heaven Shall Not Wait (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Maranatha! Music, 1987), was issued in 1987 and revised in 1989. The second volume, Enemy of Apathy was issued in 1988 (John Bell and Graham Maule, eds. (Chicago: GIA Publications); Heaven Shall Not Wait was revised in 1990. The third in the series, Love from Above (John Bell and Graham Maule, eds. [Chicago: GIA Publications, 1989]) was published in 1989. The main themes here pertain to the Trinity, Jesus as a friend, creation, and the oneness of worship and work. A recording of each compilation was also made available.

The 1990s

The publishing of new hymnals continues and shows no sign of abatement. Under a directive to develop a hymnal using inclusive language with an awareness of the great diversity within the church, the Presbyterian hymnal committee included 695 selections in its Presbyterian Hymnal and its ecumenical edition Hymns, Psalms & Spiritual Songs (Linda Jo McKim, ed. [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990]). Their aim—“to provide a book for congregational singing with the expectation that all who use it may be enriched by hymns from gospel, evangelical, Reformed, and racial and ethnic traditions in the church”—is clearly stated in the preface (p. 7). True to the Presbyterian heritage, the book includes one hundred musical settings of selections from the Psalter, including six settings for Psalm 23. And there are 157 congregational songs included in the Christian Year section, indicating the continuing interest in the denomination to observe the Christian year. The remaining 347 songs in the Topical Hymns and Service Music sections comprise a varied selection including music provided for Spanish, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese texts.

The leadership of George H. Shorney and the enthusiastic efforts of hymnal editor Donald P. Hustad, one of America’s leading church musicians and hymnologists, resulted in The Worshiping Church: A Hymnal (Donald P. Hustad, ed. [Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1990]). Of particular interest in this important book are its several adjunct volumes. The three accompaniment books have been published for keyboard, brass, and handbells. The Worship Leader’s Edition contains helpful articles related to worship and congregational singing as well as a brief analysis of each song printed. The concordance tabulates the texts which contain any important word that the user wishes to find. Moreover, the dictionary companion contains complete historical information about all texts and tunes.

The latest Baptist Hymnal (Wesley L. Forbes, ed. [Nashville, Tenn.: Convention Press, 1991]) is a magnificent contribution to the ongoing development of heartfelt congregational singing in the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination. A hymnal for people of the Book, each text has been carefully examined as to its theological content. From the beginning of congregational singing in Benjamin Keach’s London church (1691) until 1991, the published books for Baptist congregations have included a wide variety of forms and styles. This book features the greatest variety to date, including traditional hymns and gospel songs as well as contemporary classical hymns, contemporary gospel songs, renewal songs, choruses, and ethnic selections.

Likewise, the 1992 Mennonite Hymnal (Kenneth Nafziger, ed. [Scottdale, Pa.: Mennonite Publishing House, 1992]) contains a wide variety of texts. There are twenty by Watts and twenty-three by Wesley, fifteen by Brian Wren, and eight by Fred Pratt Green. The music is also varied. There are fourteen American folk tunes here and thirteen Afro-American songs, ten tunes by Lowell Mason, and thirteen by Vaughan Williams. Ethnic songs are represented by Swahili, Swedish, Taiwanese, Welsh, South African, Slavic, and Spanish melodies.

In England, the work of the early church music reformers continues in the endeavors of the Jubilate group. Hymns for Today’s Church (Michael Baughen, ed. [London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982]), Carols for Today, Church Family Worship, and Songs from the Psalms were followed by Psalms for Today (Michael Perry and David Ibiff, eds. [London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1990]), also available in the United States from Hope Publishing Company. Intended for Anglican worship, this volume is certain to be widely used in both England and America. Extensive use has been made of folksong-like tunes, as well as newly composed melodies to supplement those selections which continue the use of familiar traditional music.

The printing of supplemental books continues and is well illustrated by Come Celebrate!: A Hymnal Supplement (Betty Pulkingham, Mimi Farra, and Kevin Hackett, eds. [Pacific, Mo.: Mel Bay Publications, 1990]) with its very singable songs. Written for the Community of Celebration of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, a community drawn together for daily worship, this collection, which is a supplement to The Hymnal 1982, is intended to be “a resource for enriching parish family worship with simple songs and hymns, on Sundays, at home, at work, and in the dailiness of life” (Preface). Here one will find unison and part songs (with piano or guitar accompaniment and other instruments, including a bass instrument and percussion) for the Daily Office and for celebrations of the Holy Eucharist and the Church Year.

An additional 1992 book of hymns from the Hope Publishing Company is 100 Hymns of Hope (George H. Shorney, ed. [Carol Stream, Ill.: Hope Publishing Company, 1992]) commemorating the company’s 100-year history. Its contemporary hymn texts and music are by English, American, and Canadian authors such as Michael Baughen, Margaret Clarkson, Peter Cutts, Carl P. Daw, Richard Dirkson, Timothy Dudley-Smith, Fred Pratt Green, Hal Hopson, Alan Luff, Jane Marshall, J. R. Peacey, Michael Perry, Richard Proulx, William Reynolds, Erik Routley, Jeffery Rowthorn, Carl Schalk, John W. Wilson, Brian Wren, and Carlton Young, all members of congregational song’s “Hall of Fame.”

Finally, Word Music has issued a comprehensive collection of Songs for Praise and Worship (Ken Barker, ed. [Waco, Tex.: Word Music, 1992]), an anthology of 253 songs and choruses providing material from a number of praise-and-worship-style music catalogs to serve as either a stand-alone collection or a supplement to any hymnal. The several editions include the pew edition, the singer’s edition, a worship planner’s edition, a keyboard edition, and fifteen instrumental editions. Transparency masters and slides are also available. Its table of contents reveals a growing sensitivity to the need for topical songs and includes sections such as God Our Father, Jesus Our Savior, The Holy Spirit, The Church, The Believer, Opening of Service, and Closing of Service.

Conclusion

Because so many materials are available for congregational singing, and since only a small fraction of the various texts and song forms can be assimilated by any one congregation, worship leaders are constantly required to make difficult choices. Also, because there is such rapid change taking place in American society and within the church itself, worship leaders must be sensitive to the needs and requests of a shifting multigenerational and sometimes multicultural membership.

Lyle E. Schaller says it well in his descriptive work, It’s A Different World!: The increase in the range of available choices has made the task of being a leader in the church more complex and more difficult than it was in the 1950s. Being able to recognize that every choice has a price tag, encouraging people to understand the matter of trade-offs, and being able to identify those trade-offs makes the responsibility of serving as a leader in the church today far more difficult than it ever was in 1955. ([Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1987], 239)

One of the major problems which emerged from the church music renewal movement of the 1960s and 1970s is the division between those churches that chose to continue singing traditional songs and those assemblies which adopted praise-and-worship-style music exclusively. Also, there are those church leaders who opted for both by scheduling two services, one traditional and one contemporary. However, this practice has been just as divisive, though confined to the local church. Congregational song, however, is for all of the people of God in united acts of worship. Thus, the convergence so wonderfully advocated by Robert Webber and Chuck Fromm is the most rational and pragmatic response to the problem. In Signs of Wonder (Nashville: Abbott Martyn, 1992) Webber points out the following:

There is a movement among the people of the world to find out each other’s traditions and to share from each other’s experiences. We the people of the church have even more reason to learn what is happening in other worship cultures and to draw from each other’s spiritual insights and experiences. After all, there is only one church, and although there are a variety of traditions and experiences within this church, each tradition is indeed part of the whole. The movement toward the convergence of worship traditions and the spiritual stimulation which comes from borrowing from various worship communities are the results of the worship renewal taking place in our time.

In the final analysis, those responsible for leading congregational singing are required to know the entire repertoire of congregational songs appropriate to the culture in which they live. They need to know the most meaningful and relevant songs from the past, and they must exercise a growing sensitivity to the heartfelt needs of those whom they lead. And they primarily must seek the mind of God—together with pastoral leaders in their churches—in making the crucial decisions of what is to be sung.

Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in the Evangelical Covenant Churches

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The Evangelical Covenant Church emerged from small groups of believers (conventicles) that met to cultivate warm personal piety. It has also—on a customary rather than mandatory basis—sustained observance of the church year, which keeps the Christian story alive and vivid in the community.

The Evangelical Covenant Church originated in the nineteenth-century spiritual renewal movements within the Lutheran Church of Sweden. Earlier influences that contributed to this renewal were Pietism and Herrnhutism from Germany, and, to a much lesser extent, Methodism and Puritan devotional literature.

Worship in the Conventicles

Participants in this renewal were called readers because of their commitment to the reading and discussion of Scripture and other devotional texts published in the journal Pietisten (The Pietist). These discussions took place in small groups called “conventicles,” known for their intimacy, vigorous exchange of ideas, the general practice of the priesthood of all believers (a doctrine fundamental to Christians of Lutheran origin), and vigorous singing of the hymns of Lina Sandell, Oscar Ahnfelt, and others. This hymnody is rich in feeling without being sentimental, attentive to human desire and dread without being captive to subjectivity, and anticipates the contemporary recovery of the friendship of Jesus without at the same time collapsing friendship into sheer immanence.

Remarkably for pietistic groups, a “Jesusology” was not permitted to crowd out theology, that is, to neglect the God whose mission Jesus embodied and carried out. God is praised because of Jesus Christ.

The personal and relational elements fostered in the conventicles were not permitted to crowd out the churchly, classical, and transcendent dimensions of the Christian life. This is seen in the preservation of attentiveness to the festivals of the liturgical or church year and the lectionary of readings prescribed for those festivals as they were used in the Lutheran state church. The Covenant Church has no canonical requirement that these festivals are celebrated and these texts read. Rather, the preservation of these festivals and readings is customary—uncodified yet honored stewardship of a gift that is commemorative of the great salvific deeds of God for Israel and the church.

The annual celebration of these events preserves the corporate memory of the people of God. The liturgy ensures that the community’s story will not die or be forgotten. The Covenant Church preserved this legacy so that subsequent generations would not be left without the “big picture” of whose they were, whence they came, who were brothers and sisters, and to whom they should go with the story of the God of Jesus Christ.

Worship Books

Practically speaking, this preservation takes two major forms: the pastor’s handbooks/books of worship and the hymnal. The Covenant church published its first worship handbook in 1900, entitled Forslag till kristlig gudstajanstordning (A Guide to Christian Worship). While this book contains no printed lectionary, it refers to “the usual Gospel and Epistle texts,” thus assuming access to the customary lectionary. In 1901 the Eastern Preacher’s Conference published a Pastoral Handbook which contains the complete lectionary—three sets of readings. The lectionary and liturgical festivals are reprinted with only minor variations in the Covenant’s Pastor’s Handbook of 1923. The lectionaries contain texts for two Marian days—Purification and Annunciation, John the Baptist’s Day, and the festival of the archangel, St. Michael. Some distinctive Swedish uses are also present, such as “Prayer Sunday” preceding the Ascension and the second-day celebrations of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.

While the Covenant Ministers’ Service Book of 1945 contains no lectionary, the A Book of Worship for Covenant Churches (1964) contains a lectionary for a three-year cycle but without the special days listed in the 1923 book. In 1981 A Book of Worship for Covenant Churches was published along with the now current ecumenical Common Lectionary, with some variations for use in a three-year cycle. This book contains a brief paragraph at the beginning of each season of the liturgical year explaining what is commemorated, celebrated and confessed during that season. Special celebrations include Covenant Founders Day (February 20), Christian Family Day, Reformation Day, Thanksgiving Day, and New Year’s Day. The Transfiguration of Christ is no longer commemorated on August 6 but on the last Sunday in Epiphany. The three pre-Ash Wednesday Sundays—Septuagesima, Sexagisma, and Quinquagesima—are dropped in favor of a longer Epiphany season as is now the common practice, and the long Trinity season is now named the season of Pentecost. This book also contains a carefully crafted statement on the theology of worship and a discussion of the use of colors for banners, stoles, and paraments according to the season.

Hymnals

Hymnals constitute the second set of major influences. Sionssharpan (Zion’s Harp), the antecedent of the first official hymnal of the Covenant Church, was published independently by the Mission Friend’s Publishing House in 1890. It combined the chorale tradition of the Lutheran church and the newer music of the readers as sung in the conventicles. It contains eighty-five specific hymns in a section spanning the birth of Christ through Pentecost. In 1909 the Covenant Church published its first official hymnal, Sions Basun (Zion’s Trumpet), bearing a clear relationship to the aforementioned antecedent. The section on the church year is slightly expanded to about 100 hymns covering similar material and the full lectionary of the Swedish Church is published, including the two previously noted feast days of Mary, John the Baptist’s Day, and the day for Michael the Archangel. In 1931 a new hymnal came out, The Covenant Hymnal; it contained little by way of reference to hymns sequenced according to the liturgical year and no lectionary. The Hymnal of 1950 has a clearly marked section of hymns devoted to the liturgical year (about one hundred) and contains the lectionary of Gospel and Epistle texts published in A Book of Worship for Covenant Churches in 1964.

In The Covenant Hymnal (1973) the section on the liturgical calendar was expanded to about 140 hymns, and the lectionary includes a description of each season of the church year to which the readings pertain, together with a general statement about the nature and function of the church year and the lectionaries. This hymnal also contains the lectionary for the special days referred to in the Covenant Book of Worship in 1981.

The Evangelical Covenant Church is in the process of publishing a new hymnal, due in 1995, that will present the liturgical year as “The Story We Tell.” It is to include a section on “Promise and Covenant” drawing together a more integral relationship with the Hebrew scriptures and the story of Israel. No doubt it will also contain a lectionary.

Freedom and independence are not the same. The former seems best achieved in and with a community. The continued use of hymnals and worship books maintains an organic relationship with a heritage that continually calls its heirs to account and thus can save them from both a parochialism that denies the catholicity of the faith and from a novelty that more calls attention to itself than to Christ and the gospel. Covenant churches treasure the liturgical year as generative of our common life but not as our canon law. We enjoy freedom but not independence.

Materials referred to in this article or desired secondary literature may be obtained by writing: The Covenant Archivist, c/o North Park Theological Seminary, 3225 W. Foster Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60625.

The Arts in Evangelical Covenant Churches

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The Evangelical Covenant Church eschewed traditional church architecture and use of the arts in its beginning. But in the twentieth century, it has produced church buildings built in a variety of architectural styles. Denominational leaders have been influential in the literary and visual arts.

Architecture

The Evangelical Covenant Church was born out of the pietistic renewal movements that swept Sweden in the nineteenth century. It was organized in Sweden in 1878 and in the United States in 1885. Colporteurs distributing tracts and other Christian literature became key links among and between conventicles. Some became gifted preachers. Meeting in homes, halls, and lofts, the setting, often a circle, was open, face to face, and intimate. A place was given to people of low and high birth, tenant and owner, men and women. Great energy, power, and freedom were released, and the emphasis attending a firsthand experience of grace yielded a feeling of immediacy but not necessarily emotionalism.

Early Covenant churches were very simple in design. Often they resembled a rural school building or meeting home. Such simplicity of architecture has several roots. One was legal. Olaf Gabriel Hendengren was a wealthy estate owner and a pietist who built a plain building—his “chapel” as he called it—because he was obliged to design it to be “as unlike the churches as possible.” First built as a house of prayer and study for his workers, it would have run afoul of the law if it had resembled a church. Second, such a structure was an ideal setting for fellowship and encounters with each other in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. Third, this differentiation became part of the church’s identity as a “free”—i.e., non-state—church and a place of open fellowship for those who had found new life in Christ. So while the phrase “unlike the churches as possible” originally described a legal circumvention, it soon became common to appropriate such a phrase to show one’s distinction from the Lutheran state church. As such it became an important architectural criterion for Covenant churches.

In the United States, revivalists such as D. L. Moody also made a contribution. Already the emphasis in Covenant life had been placed on reading, discussing, and preaching of Holy Scripture. The pulpit was central and, as Karl Olsson says, the church was a “listening post.” American Covenanters were particularly amenable to the “Akron Plan” or, in some cases, to a design that resembled a tabernacle. The “wrap-around” seating arrangement gathered people close to and around the pulpit. The intimacy of the conventicle was somewhat retained, but the center became a pulpit and preacher. Churches were built to accommodate listeners.

A change in the approach to church architecture took place in the late 1920s in that a few congregations erected buildings of Gothic design and introduced the divided chancel. Stained glass windows began to include more than biblical scenes. Classical symbols now graced newly built churches, introducing a new language into worship, a language addressed to the imagination more than the language of literal, reproductive art. An editorial in the Covenant Companion of this period remarked that older churches were built for evangelistic services, whereas the newer churches attended more to the devotional aspects of worship. It was further contended that the ritualistic churches retained the children better than free-church congregations because the iconoclasm of the latter took away many things that appealed to children.

This development had earlier roots. In 1900 the Covenant’s Committee on Ritual published a volume called Guide to Christian Worship. This volume contended that “the outward form of the worship should be reverent, festive, and beautiful.” Human beings are described as “spiritual-physical beings” who have a continuous interaction between the body and the soul, which are entered through the “Eyegate and Eargate.” The symbols present and the forms used kept the gospel perceivable and concrete, thus avoiding sentimentality and abstraction. Formalities, not formalism, awakened and maintained devotion. Thus, the architectural changes and liturgical developments of this period were a natural outgrowth of a document stressing reverence, festivity, and beauty.

There is, however, no uniformity regarding architectural styles in the Covenant churches. In fact, one can find vigorous discussion as to whether or not a “churchly” building may interfere with outreach to a culture put off by the songs and structures of Zion. The phrase, “as unlike the churches as possible” may again find currency, not because of legal restrictions or antistate church bias, but for cultural reasons. Voiced in particular by the church growth movement and the megachurch philosophy, this phrase is a programmatic criterion used in support of the idea that the alien character of classical church tradition, music, and architecture not only communicates nothing to contemporary Americans but in fact alienates them. Hence the interface between church and culture, in the form of music, buildings, forms of worship, and the nature of church programming is front and center. Churches with memories of the intimacy of the conventicles, the intensity of evangelistic meetings, and also the impingement of the transcendent through the liturgy and architecture in the “liturgical” churches from which they have come, will struggle incessantly with functionalism. The statement issued by the Committee on Ritual in 1900 refused the “functional only” route by granting integrity of its own to symbols, festivity, and beauty. With that, early Covenanters granted an intrinsic ecclesiastical identity to churchly matters for the sake of the gospel and it’s being heard and seen.

Storytelling

Hearing and seeing find expression in an art form intrinsic to pietism, namely testimony and storytelling. In the late 1920s Olga Lindborg (1889–1945), a leader in the educational work of the Covenant, wrote with a sophisticated understanding of the phenomenon of narrative expression in a simple style that gave Sunday School teachers in Covenant churches a highly competent analysis of the power of story and its educational potential. Lindborg pointed out the differences among story, myth, fairy tale, epic, biography, and history. She noted continuities within discontinuities. The hero in a story or epic is a successor to the giant in a fairy tale. What these art forms have in common is that they address the imagination, a most important human faculty. Imaginative people, she argued, are joyous beings, adept at self-expression. Hence she became an advocate of Forebel’s idea that education rests on a law of self-expression and thus contended that handwork needed to be a part of Sunday school teaching. By extension, pageants were also a form of handwork because they were imaginative reconstructions of primal events and experiences; through them, children became a part of the story they heard—in other words, they saw it and felt it. However valuable this was educational, many in the church viewed it as worldly, arguing that if pageants were approved, one could also approve the theater. And if one could use moving pictures in the church, why could one not approve of the moving picture industry? Lindborg found herself in the midst of controversy, engendered in no small way by pietism’s effort to separate from the world. Perhaps its failure to distinguish worldliness from living in the world led to this love/hate relationship with aesthetic expression and consequently to a nearly exclusive emphasis on preaching.

Yet Covenant preachers knew instinctively what Lindborg was exploring in her sophisticated analysis of storytelling. Early Covenant sermons were laden with stories, and conventicles thrived on testimonies of the friendship of God in Jesus Christ with those who were seeking new life and joy. Story writers, said Lindborg, are not in touch with an audience; a storyteller is. Story readers go off alone to read, while a storyteller requires a community. Storytellers are not mere reciters but must appeal to the senses, creating an immediate and interactive event.

Lindborg’s attempt to recognize that human beings respond bodily as well as mentally, imaginatively as well as intellectually, is now bearing fruit elsewhere. Some literature in Covenant history virtually repudiates bodily movement to music. “If the tune moves the feet, it is worldly” is an example of one such negative reaction. But in Covenant churches today one can find some use of liturgical dance, mime, and widespread use of musicals, choral readings, pageants, and audio-visuals. Praise music is accompanied by clapping and movement of feet along with drum, synthesizers, bells, pipe organs, and pianos. Lindborg would agree, I think, with poet and critic John Ciardi that if one asks not so much what but how does a poem mean, one could ask the same about church and education: how a service means is as crucial as what it means. The “how” issue calls for congregational and/or class involvement, and that calls for ritual, carried out in accordance with the gospel. By implication, pastors, and teachers are choreographers, a high art if there ever was one. The gospel story can be danced, mimed, sung, painted, sculpted, and told—one story in multimedia.

Visual Arts

While relying mostly on musical and verbal arts, Covenant’s artistic expression includes painting. Well known is the work of Warner Sallman (1892–1968), whose Head of Christ has been distributed in hundreds of millions of copies. Sallman, who began his career as an illustrator for a fashion magazine, studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and in several Bible institutes. He was advised by a dean to paint a “masculine” Christ, a rugged Christ of the desert, a Christ whose face had a distant gaze, in light of the events of Good Friday. Sallman focused on the meaning of a face, believing it to be the place where person and character are revealed. He often inscribed his work with this text from 2 Corinthians 4:6 (Phillips): “We now can enlighten men only because we can give them the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” The other person whose painting reached a wide audience was Walter Olson (1893–1974). Also trained as an illustrator, Walter Olson became the artist for the well-known Bethel Bible study program for which he rendered many of the epochal events of salvation history in portrait form.

Sallman and Olson are representative of two major emphases of Covenant life and history: the Word of God and the centrality of Christ. Significantly, Sallman’s work is called the Head of Christ. Pietism continually does battle with the tendency to flirt with a “Jesusology,” which promotes a more romantic than the prophetic person of Jesus Christ, in place of a Christology.

The Covenant Archives located at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago have materials related to Sallman and Olson, as well as bound volumes of the Covenant Companion, Covenant Quarterly, The Children’s Friend, and the Covenant Weekly. Karl Olsson’s By One Spirit (Chicago: Covenant Press) is the definitive history of the Evangelical Covenant Church, which should be read together with Into One Body by the Cross, 2 vols. (Chicago: Covenant Press). “The Mission Covenant Church of Sweden and Art” is published in Gyllene ljus (Stockholm: Verbum). The Covenant Book of Worship of 1964 contains the formative statement of the Covenant Committee on Ritual of 1900.