8/16/23

Last week, I wrote about a controversial book I found in my home library:  E.D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. 

While flipping through the book, I found a newspaper clipping I’d used as a bookmark: the Music Educators National Conference list of  42 songs every American should know (do you see a theme here?). There were some religious songs (“Amazing Grace”), folk songs (“Home on the Range”), patriotic songs (“God Bless America”), international songs (“Hava Nagila”) and it even included “Green Green Grass of Home,” written by mine and Steve Lilly’s mutual (and distant – at least on my end) cousin, Curly Putman. Like Hirsch’s book, this little list caused quite a hullabaloo!

Listen, if you want to get people really fired up, mess with their music! 

So, thinking about Hirsch’s book and thinking about the MENC’s list of songs, I ask the same question I asked last week: “Is it possible to write a Christian version of Cultural Literacy?

When it comes to music, there really was once a body of songs that most every Christian would at least be familiar with if they didn’t know by heart – the kind of songs you’d hear in movies depicting a church service, songs that even Hollywood expected everyone to know. Songs like “Amazing Grace” and “Blessed Assurance” crossed denominational divides and entered our national consciousness. And, of course, there would be Christmas carols. 

Not any longer. 

Several years ago, I stumped a teenager by asking her to sing the last verse of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” during a children’s Christmas program. When she said she didn’t know it, I thought she meant she didn’t recognize the words, so I told her the tune was “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” She said, “No, I don’t know the song. I haven’t been in a traditional worship service in years.” And I said, “Well, that doesn’t matter. This is ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem.’ Everyone knows that.”

Not any longer. 

AND, it used to be that at any community Christmas gathering there was no need for carol books or projected words. Everyone could sing Christmas carols by heart, and no matter what church we attended, the words were the same. They were universally beloved Christmas carols. Everyone knew them.

Not any longer. 

“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” is different in just about every hymnal. As church leaders became more sensitive to issues of inclusion, phrases like “born to raise the sons of earth” became “born to raise the souls of earth” or “born to raise us from the earth” (which doesn’t mean the same thing.) I get the concern but could we not show some unity and AT LEAST AGREE ON THE CHANGES? I mean, honestly!  

I understand the desire for inclusion, but what have we lost in the trade-off?

If you know me at all, you know I’m a big believer in unity and inclusion (I preached on it for 8 weeks). But when it comes to hymns, many of them existed as poems — works of art — before someone added music to them. Or even if they were written as hymns, I still don’t believe they should  be tampered with. But the same people who roll their eyes at the church leaders who painted underpants on the naked lost souls in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment have no qualms updating the words of hymns willy-nilly to pacify our modern sensibilities. 

 I mean, honestly! 

And there’s nothing that pulls me out of a worshipful moment more than stumbling over the words of a hymn I’ve sung my entire life – especially when the change is a poor substitution for the original. 

Back in July we sang “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” The editors of our current hymnal changed the opening line of verse 2 from “Here I raise my Ebenezer” to “Here I raise to thee an altar.” Why? Because a pastor or music leader might have to take a moment and explain the meaning of “Ebenezer,” a biblical term? Maybe it was guilt by association, since Dickens named a wrenching, grasping, covetous old sinner Ebenezer Scrooge? I don’t know, but not only do Ebenezer and altar not rhyme, they don’t even mean the same thing: The Ebenezer stone wasn’t an altar, but was a memorial stone set up to remind the people of God’s help. Not the same. 

I mean, honestly!

I’m about to get so agitated, I’ll end up like Screwtape in the C.S. Lewis novel and turn myself into a centipede! Like I said earlier, if you want to get people fired up, mess with their music!

At Christ Church, we sing music from the long history of the Christian church. In a couple of weeks we’ll be learning a Greek hymn that dates back maybe as early as New Testament times. This past week, we sang hymns from 1674 (the Doxology, and the music was from 1225), 1745 (“Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”), 1887 (“Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”), 1984 (“Lord God, Almighty”), 1992 (“Table of Plenty”) and from 2009 (“Yes, My Jesus Loves Me”). And if we throw in the psalm, that dates back to around 1000 BC! That’s altogether 3000 years of worship covered in one service. 

Why? Because we’re part of a long tradition. We’re continuing a story that began thousands of years ago, and part of our Christian culture includes the contributions made by those faithful believers who have gone before us – the songs and hymns of that great cloud of witnesses who left us the wonderful gift of song. 

So, no. It may not be possible to create a Christian version of Cultural Literacy because there’s no chest big enough to hold the treasure.