O For A Thousand Tongues

Continuing the Rowan Williams theme, Dr Abacus does me a great service in pointing me to an article from The Times I would have to pay to consult myself, in which the former ABC opines about the plight of modern hymn-singing. Absent anything more than the vaguest knowledge of religious music on the part of the general public, he says, people asking for hymns at funerals or weddings are driven back to ‘primary-school level’ songs. It’s worse that that, I would think: every clergyperson despairs at having to sing ‘All Things B&B’ again, but that’s the ‘primary school level’ of 50 years ago or more. This is not just a random outburst from Dr Williams, as he is president of the Hymn Society of Great Britain & Ireland, but it does edge in the direction of grumpy-old-priest-ism. He pleads for priests ‘to encourage children at local schools to do more hymn-singing’ (I will do my best and we’ll see how that goes) and it’s left to the Society’s secretary, Fr Richard Cranham, to offer thanks that people still know 'All Things B&B' even if they’re ignorant of everything else. 'Apart from Away In a Manger', probably.

When we used to get together to plan the monthly Family Service (RIP) at Swanvale Halt, Edgar (RIP) could usually be relied on to argue that we needed to strive to include modern hymns that non-churchgoers knew. "But Edgar", I would say, knowing that what he meant was something written in the 1970s, "the problem is that people now don’t know any hymns. We can’t just restrict ourselves to the half-a-dozen that they might possibly have heard of" (especially when that includes the aforementioned 'Away In a Manger'). My main reflection is that, quite apart from any spiritual deficit that might result, the lack of hymn-knowledge is a tremendous cultural impoverishment. Lots of traditional hymns are nothing very special, but some are stunning. Anyone who thinks that trad church music is boring should have been at our evening mass last Sunday when we sang 'O For A Thousand Tongues' to the tune Lyngham. As I told the congregation, it’s a good 18^th-century hymn tune so for the bit where you repeat lines you can basically sing the words you want and whatever notes you want and provided we all come together at the end it will be all right. And it was sensationally uplifting. As for schools, the usual fare at our Infant School – apart from the songs the children sing, which tend to be seasonal rather than religious – we troop into assembly to the worship songs the head teacher is familiar with from her own place of worship, but I remember the day when she instead decided to play 'Eternal Father Strong to Save', which is one of my favourites, rigorous in its theology and incomparably powerful in its emotion. I definitely got a lump in my throat. And yet, although I think many people would probably recognise this song if it was put in front of them, they probably aren’t aware enough of it, or many, many more like it, to remember it otherwise.

What we do about this is another matter. Once upon a time we had a thing called ‘Sunday Sing’ which was simply a group of us gathering one Sunday evening a month to sing hymns that might be coming up in worship in the next couple of months, with tea afterwards. But only the usual suspects ever came, not the souls who could have benefited most from singing them. Still, I’ve often wondered whether hymns are, potentially, a bridge to unchurched people.

Perhaps the Goth-inflected Irish entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, Bambie Thug, has some knowledge of hymns, though they show no overt sign of it and Roman Catholics aren’t all that used to singing compared to Anglicans. Following the usual Goth strategy of turning negative emotions and experiences into something positive and active – victimhood to autonomy – the artist’s witchy imagery of candles, pentangles, and baths full of flower petals and coloured dye, provokes Irish priests to outbursts that read more like an old bloke ranting in the pub than a sermon, but although I’m sympathetic I don’t warm to it a lot either. I understand what’s going on, but these occult mechanisms of blessings and hexings are either a way of talking to and animating elements within yourself – a form of meditation – or an attempt to make things happen in the real and concrete world by bargaining with forces that in fact aren’t there – a form of magic. Either way, they're a spiritual dead end. Mx Thug would be far better off, ultimately, getting to know a few hymns: I can't help feeling that they, and the great majority of people, are missing out terribly.

Caught Speechless

The induction of the new incumbent of Steepmoor was going so well, and it should have done with three bishops present. We were singing a modern hymnette which I thought was perfectly acceptable until we got to the bit which implored God to 'win this nation back', and I found myself unable to carry on. 

There is a minor theme in a lot of modern Evangelical hymnody which deals with 'the nation' and the hope that it will return to God. I've long wondered what people think this might mean. The United Kingdom is a secular state with a Christian symbolic discourse in the form of its monarchy and established Church, and I rather prefer that combination to the toxic coupling of religion and power you find in the USA or, currently, Hungary. Souls turning to Christ is one thing: the idea of a nation doing so fills me with horror, because it will not be Christ to which it truly turns but an idol of its own imagining, generated from its fears and desires. God only ever had a covenant relationship with one nation, the people of Israel, and never gave any indication that he planned another. That role passed to the nova Israel, the Church.

Which brings us to the next bit that made me fall silent. 'We are your Church, and we are the hope on earth'. No, we very emphatically are not. If the Christian Nation theme teeters on the brink of blasphemy, this jumps gaily in. Only Christ can ever be the hope on earth and to place that hope anywhere else - even in a supposedly Spirit-filled body of believers - is going to lead you down paths with flashing warning signs above them. 

Surely Christians, and most particularly those who call themselves Evangelical, can't have failed to notice how questionable this stuff is? Or are they so caught up in emotion that they don't pay any attention to it, even while they sing it?

Cutting Edge

The rain held off just long enough for us to gather at the Grassward Park estate to sing twenty minutes' worth of carols this evening. In the end I thought a top hat would be a bit de trop but hung a lantern off a beech branch I pruned from the tree in the garden because my head kept bumping into it, lending a little bit of Dickensian atmosphere to proceedings. There were a dozen of us, including Daniel with his trumpet adding some instrumental oomph beneath the more or less wavering voices. I said that delivering the leaflets the other day was probably the evangelistic point, but having made that point we did actually have to do some singing, and was prepared for absolutely no reaction on the part of the residents at all. However we gradually gathered an audience framed in their warm doorways and even some applause when we finished. That's a fresh expression of Church for you.

Accessible Worship

In view of our recent thoughts about the worshipping life of young families, the Advent Service of Light last Sunday was quite instructive. This candlelit event can veer in moments from the sublime to the surreal although this year it went off without incident, and all the short pieces the Choir sang were better far than the Rutter Requiem I heard at a concert in the church two nights before (after that, I found that one of the front benches was mysteriously covered in glitter: people suggested this might have been down to the soloist who was also thus covered).

As we sang the first hymn I realised there were piping childish voices raised among the adult ones. In the front row was Caelyn (3 and a bit) from Toddler Group and her very young mum and dad (or they seem very young to me) who I know have absolutely no Church experience whatever. What were they doing there? What had inspired them to come to this service in which, notwithstanding the picturesque qualities of candlelight and lighting, nothing really happens apart from very trad music being performed? How would they respond to the carols and readings, some of which are positively Apocalyptic? I intoned the Advent Collect: 'Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light, now, in the time of this mortal life ...'  'He's singing!' I heard Caelyn point out vocally.

She wasn't alone, either, as after a while another Toddler Grouper, Teddy, appeared at the front of the church on the opposite side, having apparently insisted that he and his mum move there to get a better view. He gyrated about the end of the bench a bit but did it silently.

The end of the service came when, to the strains of 'Hills of the North, rejoice' we all processed out of the church with lit candles and through the garden into the hall. Not many of our candles remained lit, but somehow Caelyn's did, and once she noticed that some were out, she insisted on going round relighting them for people, subsequently stationing herself in front of the door to catch anyone coming in who required this service. She did it with such solemnity that many of us had to bite our lower lips to maintain the proper demeanour.

Revival!

One of our curate Marion’s more interesting achievements has been to establish an ecumenical prayer group which meets on the second Monday evening in the month. This doesn’t sound like anything very radical, but it’s the mix of people that makes it unusual. It’s settled down into a gathering of Anglicans – coming from a mainly Catholic-side-of-centre church, remember – and Charismatics from various church communities round the area. When it became clear that managing the different styles and expectations presented some challenges, I helped Marion think through it and devise a very minimal ‘liturgy’ to provide the meetings with some sort of shape (basically just a gathering and closing time of quiet and the Lord’s Prayer). Those challenges are still there, and Anglicans who come have to have either a sympathy with noisy, passionate Charismatics, or exercise a great deal of self-control; but the group still meets, nearly two years later.

I don’t have the opportunity to attend very often, but I was able to come to most of the August gathering. I came in a bit late and sat in the circle just as the prayer was at its most Charismatic mode, the attenders from those church communities and one of our congregation who is furthest in that direction dominating the proceedings. The main concerns were that Swanvale Halt church, in particular, should experience revival. Anna, who belongs to our congregation, often chafes about what she perceives as our lukewarmness and reluctance to talk about matters of faith, and mentioned that to God: ‘Lord, please change us so that we’ll be more willing to be open about our faith, and set this place on fire, so that everyone around us says, What’s going on at the church? They’re all excited and talking about God!’ I wondered whether that’s really what people would say, and, further, as I often do, how far God gets a word in edgeways in the Charismatic mode of prayer, and how far it’s more about us than him. Having said that, only to listen and never to speak is also to pray incompletely: you may find that you are not really listening to God at all, merely eavesdropping on your own thoughts. Speech takes the uncertain motions of the Spirit and brings them, or what we take for them, into the open and tests them. Those motions must be named, as they are in the liturgies of the Church, and gain a power as a result: we are physical beings, not mere minds. I suspect I am not as willing as I should be to speak about the things of the Spirit, and it has taken me long years to find even some way to do so in my own voice.

But – ‘revival’? What would ‘revival’ in people’s faith – assuming they require it – look like? And would it really bring the success Christians of a Charismatic (or even Evangelical) bent dream it might? Nearly forty years ago that doyen of Evangelical hymn-writers of a former generation, Graham Kendrick, wrote

Restore, O Lord, the honour of your name,

In works of sovereign power come shake the earth again,

That all may see, and come in reverent fear

To the living God, whose kingdom shall outlast the years.

Restore, O Lord, in all the earth your fame,

And in our time revive the Church that bears your name.

And in your anger, Lord, remember mercy:

O living God, whose mercy shall outlast the years.

Dumping in a reference to God being angry is almost demanded for lyrics that emerge from that stable, but the rest of the words are equally striking. Although the powerful lyric appears to be about God, in reality it’s about us, about our needs and desires, about the desperate yearning to be in charge again, not for anyone else’s benefit apart from our own. And beneath them is a dreadful insecurity. We are in with the boss, aren’t we? So where is he? What’s going on? And forty years of singing this hymn and praying these things later, God still has yet to do it. Instead, all the traffic is, apparently, in the other direction, so much so that you would be forgiven for wondering what on earth God is up to, or whether he’s there at all. But ‘revival’ is the answer. Wave our hands harder, sing louder, and the gays will go away, and the Kingdom will come.

A few days ago I mentioned the survey the Church Army was conducting into the way Messy Church works. One of the questions asked ‘What would be the most appropriate way of measuring discipleship among your Messy Church families?’ and provided some ideas – reading the Bible at home, taking communion, giving financially, ‘using and discovering their gifts in ministry’, changing character and changes in lifestyle. Leaving apart the challenges in quantifying some of these characteristics, I’d be happy for ‘revival’ to be judged in terms of any of these measures.