Sunday, November 6, 2011

Great Hymns of the Faith

As many of our readers are aware I host a weekly radio show called “Great Hymns of the Faith”.  I started this radio outreach while pastoring a church in Barrie Ontario (1993-2002). When we moved to the Bahamas (2002-2005) Great Hymns of the Faith continued over a local radio station. While in St. Mary's Ontario Great Hymns was heard over Joy 1250 in Oakville.

Now that we are living in Bermuda, Great Hymns of the Faith can be heard over local radio station Magic 102.7, Joy 1250 in Oakville and through friends in Scotland. Great Hymns is shared through a CD distribution ministry. For many years I have enjoyed sharing hymns, gospel songs and spirituals with listeners who enjoy not only the music, but also enjoy hearing a story about the author or perhaps a story behind the hymn itself.

Have you ever wondered why many of the Great Hymns of Faith are no longer in our new church hymnbooks?  Perhaps you have noticed that some of our Great Hymns have undergone changes in terminology!  Go ahead check it out! See if your favourite hymn from childhood days is still in the hymnbook that is being used in your church today! If it is, check to see if the words are all the same or if some verses have been dropped or new verses have been added. The reason behind many of the changes and deletions is that today’s church music committees have fallen prey to something called “politically correct language”.  In order to correct this problem new hymnbooks have done a number of things like dropping verses, adding verses, changing words and of course the most popular “drop the hymn entirely”.

In your study notice how many times reference to God the Father has been changed to God the Creator. Today’s society tells us that we mustn’t “overly” portray God as Father. But the Bible portrays God as Father so what are we to do? Well, we’ll drop reference to Father and use Creator or Lord instead! Also, many of our old hymns that have military images in them can no longer be found in the newer hymn books because today’s society states that to use military images is to glorify war!!

Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a problem if people want to come up with new hymns that don’t refer to God as Father, drop all military references and in general are completely gender and politically correct. I don’t have a problem unless these new hymns try to disguise themselves as the old hymns with the same authors. If you want politically correct hymns, come up with new ones yourself and stop stealing from the past!

I want to close this blog with a story of one of the greatest hymn writers of all times and that is Charles Wesley. Wesley wrote over 6,000 hymns. Like most hymnists, his works were frequently altered. In the preface to the 1779 Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists, his brother John wrote:

I beg leave to mention a thought which has been long upon my mind, and which I should long ago have inserted in the public papers, had I not been unwilling to stir up a nest of hornets. Many gentlemen have done my brother and me (though without naming us) the honour to reprint many of our hymns. Now they are perfectly welcome to do so, provided they print them just as they are. But I desire they would not attempt to mend them, for they are really not able. None of them is able to mend either the sense or the verse. Therefore, I must beg of them these two favours: either to let them stand just as they are, to take things for better or worse, or to add the true reading in the margin, or at the bottom of the page, that we may no longer be accountable either for the nonsense or for the doggerel of other men.