I received this letter from Isaac Watts a couple years ago, and published it on my blog. Watts gave me permission to publish it so I have done so here at RA again, with an additional postscript at the end.* ___________ Abney Park in Stoke Newington, September 30, 2008 To Mr. Ryan Martin Dear Sir,… Continue Reading
“It’s like reaching the rich young ruler by throwing money at him,” is the apt comparison of T. David Gordon in response to whether or not church music should be “seeker-friendly.” In an interview with Christianity Today‘s Mark Moring that springs from his book Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns, Gordon makes the case for traditional worship. Among other… Continue Reading
Last week I argued that, if we are committed to conservative worship, it only follows that we should be committed to perpetuating conservative worship in the next generation. We want to continue developing this theme as we post at the Religious Affections blog. What hymns might we teach children? Before I name some specific recommendations, there… Continue Reading
The singing of psalms has all but disappeared from many congregations, unless you count the “As the Deer” chorus as a singing of a psalm. (Lifting the first line from a psalm and adding words about your desire to eventually worship generally doesn’t count.) One cannot help feeling that many congregations treat their hymnal as… Continue Reading
The hymn “Come Down, O Love Divine” is a worthy one if you do not yet know it. I was first introduced to it several years ago by the masterful Kings College Choir recording Best Loved Hymns. The hymn is a prayer to the Holy Spirit to come and pour out his divine grace in… Continue Reading
The concept often referred to as the humiliation of God the Son—the notion that the second person of the Trinity emptied himself of the full manifestation of His glorious divinity, left his privileged position in heaven, veiled himself in human flesh, and dwelt among his creatures as one of them—is one of the most wonderfully… Continue Reading
I am always thrilled when someone introduces me to a hymn that is well-written and theologically rich, and for some reason or another has been neglected by the editors of popular hymnals. Today, let me introduce you to one of my old friends! “Jesus Lives, and So Shall I” by Christian Gellert (original German title:… Continue Reading
Changing the lyrics of hymns we sing has a long, established precedent, and for good reason. If hymns are meant to be genuine expressions of corporate worship, then we should sing what we mean and mean what we sing. If a hymn is good, and yet there are one or two words or phrases we… Continue Reading
This month, our pastor used Sunday evenings to preach a series covering the broad, overarching metanarrative of Scripture. Titled “The Epic Story,” he moved in four services through Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation (listen). For congregational hymns prior to the last message, I chose “Come, We that Love the Lord” (speaking of our present experience… Continue Reading
Here are PDFs and audio from the entire Christian hymnody series: Hymnody of the Church Part 1 | Audio Hymnody of the Church Part 2 | Audio Continue Reading
So where does this leave us today? I will conclude with several brief suggestions of we should be striving toward in our choices of hymns for corporate worship. Recognize the importance of form. Form shapes content. As we evaluate the hymns that we sing, we must not be content that our hymns simply say the… Continue Reading
The dethroning of the Church by Reason and the creation of pop culture left the Church in an awkward position. Its cultural influence was non-existent. As the culture around it plunged into sanitized paganism, the Church’s traditional forms became foreign. The Church was in Babylon, yet it was free to worship as it pleased. So… Continue Reading
Benjamin Keach, a Baptist pastor in the late 17th century, is often credited as the first Englishman to provide a well-developed defense of the recovery1 of hymn singing (instead of exclusive Psalm singing). His advocacy paved the way for Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and other significant English hymn writers. Just because you are a successful… Continue Reading
This far in our journey we have witnessed an almost unbroken stream of Judeo-Christian tradition. From King David to Lutheran composer Johann Crüger (1598-1662) we find a slow and steady cultivation of poetic and musical forms. There were certainly bumps in the road and many changes along the way, yet for around 1800 years the quality… Continue Reading
When Martin Luther (1483—1546) sparked a Reformation of the Church by nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the Church door at Wittenberg in 1517, he challenged the Roman Church’s doctrine and practice, but never its musical forms. The musical forms of the Reformation continued to follow in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The most significant change Luther made for… Continue Reading
When Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 with the Edict of Milan, and Christianity soon became the religion of the entire empire, the cultural conditions within which the Church thrived changed into a situation that had not been enjoyed since before the Hebrew exile. Soon the Church gained prominence over all aspects of politics and… Continue Reading
The hymnody of the early church was naturally an extension of Hebrew hymnody.1 Therefore, we can expect the hymnody of the early church to have the same general characteristics of Hebrew hymns: Early church hymns were word-centered, modest, and distinct, and they continued to nurture the forms they inherited from Jewish worship. The only change would… Continue Reading
The Beginning The first mention of music in the Bible is in Genesis 4. Verses 17—22 list Cain’s descendants, and specifically those who began the development of various cultural and social skills. Jabal was “the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock,” Tubal-cain was “the forger of all instruments of bronze and… Continue Reading
On the wall in my study I have three portraits. All three are portraits of theologians who were also heavily involved with music. They are Martin Luther, J.S. Bach, and Isaac Watts. All three men fought their battles in defense of high standards for worship music. All three had their share of controversy. And all… Continue Reading
I don’t have time to do a full-fledged review of this new book by T. David Gordon (author of Why Johnny Can’t Preach), but I do want to highly recommend it to you. I couldn’t agree more with Gordon’s approach, underlying assumptions, and conclusions in this book. Gordon argues that pop culture has so changed… Continue Reading