Using Vintage Hymns in Worship: Hidden Treasures Rediscovered for Today’s Church
Ebook
For Christian believers, hymns offer an opportunity to bear witness to their faith and lift their voices in praise of God with their fellow worshippers. Hymns, even those dulled by familiarity, far from being trite and complacent, have the power to alert us to grave dangers facing the world today, and even to move us to decisive action.
It is tempting to disregard older hymns thinking of them as past their sell-by date, yet for many of the faithful, these traditional texts form the bedrock of worship and liturgy. What can be done if treasured hymns express social attitudes we no longer share, for example with regard to gender or colonialism?
Gillian Warson blows the dust off unfashionable texts and argues that they can now be regarded as “vintage”. She argues that hymn singing can continue as a flourishing tradition with old and new coexisting comfortably alongside each other, and invites us to see that vintage hymn texts are lovingly preserved so that they can be enjoyed for generations to come.
Keeping Hymns as a Living Tradition
GILLIAN R Warson’s slim, but engaging paperback, Using Vintage Hymns in Worship (Sacristy, £9.99 ) has the subtitle: “Hidden Treasures Rediscovered for Today’s Church”. She says one of the joys of hymn-singing rests in “revisiting and re-evaluating our favourites”.
Overall her search rests in “discovering whether this hymn or that is relevant to singers today”. T
hose which make sense she describes as “vintage”. Th ere is no reason why we cannot sing them today. However, there are others, some well known, that need a degree of questioning and perhaps, popular or not, they must be discarded.
She takes a number of hymns occupying space in mainstream collections. She examines them from various perspectives such as gender, the changing nature of individual words and their meanings, the rewriting of texts and a suggestion that a strong tune can cause us to overlook the import of the lyrics. She says there are the “No” words such as “bowels” (Charles Wesley might be disappointed, so to Luther), “bosom” and “breast”, which she says are often frowned upon when it comes to singing hymn lyrics. In discussing the power of the tune to overide any lyric doubts, she majors on Luther’s great “A safe stronghold of our God is still”. Methodists of age will appreciate her awareness of the much praised Rupert Davies reworking of text so as to enable the hymn to find contemporary reference.
Gender leads her to “Who would true valour see” and a rare sharp rebuke in this book to the past editor of the “English Hymnal”, Percy Dearmer, for allowing “He” who would valiant be. In “Songs of Praise”, Dearmer sees it as a “manly” hymn. Ms Warson is not impressed and calmly puts him in his place: “I conclude Dearmer subscribed to the belief that God is surely an Englishman and accordingly the Bible should have been written in English.”
While she might have alluded to far more “living” hymn-writers, she does praise both Andrew Pratt and Brian Wren for clearly showing how it is possible to absorb a change of meaning. Her comment follows upon some paragraphs where she sees difficulty in now using the word “gay” in its changed meaning. LGBT also comes under consideration. The two texts she praises are Brian Wren’s, “Come welcome Christ in every face” and Andrew Pratt’s “There are no strangers to God’s love”. She writes: “Both … are examples of how it is possible to absorb a change of meaning into our hymns.”
Her other outbreak from written calmness is a delightful motoring on the Christmas carol “Away in a manger”. She brings into play Sue Gilmurray’s reworking that removes the well-behaved scene of the familiar with its emotional overlay and “leads us into a world full of conflict and warring factions”.
Certain subjects gain her attention, one of which is “war”. She asks which hymns that fall beneath this title can be sung. She takes us from How’s, “Soldiers of the cross” to Baring-Gould’s “Onward Christian soldiers”. She adds “Stand up for Jesus” and how it has been uplifted thanks to the tune “Morning Light”. She does not mention the other tune by Geibel where the hymn gains a refrain and is found in the Moody and Sankey collections, Salvation Army song-books and so gains an even more distinct marching feel.
She notes in this subject area and beyond many hymns that contrast the supposed strength of the male to meekness and frailty and seen as female qualities. That said, it is surprising she does not ask why major hymnbooks utilise so comparatively few hymns by women. Nor does she remind us of those writers whose work could be included.
The author does have an enormous affection for Cecil F Alexander’s “All things bright and beautiful”. It seems to pop up everywhere in this 97-page book. I can only conclude she has given many talks on this laboured hymn and it seemed good to insert her notes into this text. She does of course give reason for her affection, but like many fans of this hymn there is avoidance of the capricious nature of the animal and bird world where whatever you name has its predator. She admits it is a hymn both loved and hated in equal measure. She insists it has much to offer us today. She also bats strongly for Mrs Alexander’s “Once in royal David’s city”.
Her text is written post-first lockdown and it is hardly a surprise that she is driven to ask whether hymn singing is a thing of the past. She asks the question: “What can we do to ensure that hymn-singing does not fade to a fond memory but remains a living tradition?” Such is our time.
Back to the hymnal
AS WE cautiously return to congregational singing in in our public worship, this is a timely book. In four elegantly written and engaging chapters, Gillian R. Warson helps us to re-evaluate our repertoire of classic hymnody.
Although the focus of the discussion is on the function of hymns in worship, the author reminds us of the wider contexts, literary as well as social, in which our hymns feature.
Warson evidently appreciates the potency of adding tunes to verses, and of how verses themselves are amenable to memory. And this feel for language continues in the sensitive way in which she discusses the major issues and apparent obstacles to singing of some hymns. Here, difficult questions of gender inclusivity, militaristic vocabulary, anachronisms, and verses redolent with the theme of empire are fully faced and discussed in a nuanced way.
The meanings of words slip and slide, change and develop. But hymnody is a living literary tradition. I warmed to the judgement expressed here that too often “popularity seems to trump suitability”. The final chapter, a re-reading of C. F. Alexander’s “All things bright and beautiful” in the light of the environmental crisis, is a perceptive reflection. I have one criticism, and this is of an irritation rather than a substantive point: the author’s repeated use of the word “relevant”, as though relevance were the final arbiter of taste and suitability. Relevant to what and to whom?
A useful addition would have been a short chapter setting out the criteria by which we choose hymns for worship. Most traditional hymnbooks, The New English Hymnal and Hymns Ancient and Modern, for instance, include suggestions for hymns on Sundays, feasts, and the seasons of the Christian Year, and a full listing is published by the Royal School of Church Music. But a critical evaluation of these suggestions would have been useful. Nevertheless, this is a gem of a little book and all who have the responsibility and privilege of leading worship — musicians and ministers alike — would benefit from reading it.
- Title: Using Vintage Hymns in Worship: Hidden Treasures Rediscovered for Today’s Church
- Author: Gillian Warson
- Publisher: Sacristy Press
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781789591668, 9781789591644, 1789591643, 9781789591651, 1789591651, 178959166X
- Resource ID: LLS:9781789591668
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-06-15T01:17:35Z
Gillian Warson lives in North Oxfordshire and works as a private teacher of piano and upper strings, and most recently has been working to develop Palenka, an ensemble for young string players.