Sing An Old Song: Theology and Poetry
Sunday, October 16, 2011 at 11:02AM | by Otter Even people who lose their faith or renovate it beyond all recognition sometimes run into a severe problem when it comes to hymns.
Some of those tunes and some of that poetry gets under your skin when you sing them as a kid. Long after you reject or qualify the theology behind them, the music enchants you.
It doesn't have to be religious music: I tell my students sometimes that they should sue their parents for malpractice if they were not sung to as a child. Doesn't matter how bad a parent's voice is: to this day "You Are My Sunshine" will paralyze me a little bit because of the memory of falling asleep, safe, hearing it sung.
That music ties us to ourselves in some strong way is not a new thought, obviously. Psalm 137 plays on the connection between nostalgia (the word means something like "homesickness") and music:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing Yahweh's song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
(The Psalm goes on to invoke a pretty severe curse on the allies of Babylon who helped tear down Jerusalem after that, kind of exploiting the nostalgic effect. But that's poetry for you: you can't make it behave rightly.)
The Crosby Show: A remarkable woman, blinded by an incompetent doctor, Fanny Crosby cast faith in that personal, sentimental mode of the Victorians. The poet of the Personal Relationship With Jesus Christ as Your Lord And Savior. I'd rather praise her than sing her, or listen to her work sung.Not all church music is like that. Fanny Crosby was one of the most prolific hymnists in history, and an amazing individual. Her hymns, however, generally make me want to stick my head in a harmonium and die. The music is full of dreadful Victorian accidentals, and the lyrics indulge a taste for landscapes ("Oh Beautiful Sea") and simile ("Like the Sound of Many Waters" and "Like Dews of Morning") and mutual ownership between Jesus and the soul: her best runs, "Blessed assurance! Jesus is mine!", but then she has to go and say also, "I Am Thine, Oh, Lord!" It's a sort of divine exchange of apartment keys, I think. She also has a taste for paradox (she penned both "Let the Light Stream In" and "Let Your Light Shine Out").
Modern songs have often picked up the gauntlet of Crosby's sentimentalism and individualized faith. I played music in churches for years, and if I hear one more chorus of "Lord, You Are More Precious Than Silver," I can't be answerable for the consequences.
But yeah.
There are some that hit the crease.
The Orthodox / Methodist theology of Charles Wesley can paralyze me with its elegance: he, above all hymnists, nails the connection between theology and poetry. (Have you ever just read the lyrics to "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"? Don't stop at the first verse. Read 'em all, Wesley's original lyrics. You can use Mendelssohn's superior music if you want: Wesley wanted it sung to the tune of the equally awesome, powerful, "Christ The Lord Is Risen Today." ) Such hymns capture the mighty poetry of the idea of the incarnation: whether the thing actually happened, I can't say. But hearing Wesley sung, I can say that it's all true, or ought to be.
Some of those hymns that grew out of English churches, the kind where you can feel a sleepy Vespers service coming on with the windows open and the scent of early fall coming through the window: "The Day Thou Gavest Lord Is Ended," "Lift High The Cross," "Saint Patrick's Breastplate," "The Glastonbury Hymn."
And I inherited from my mother a taste for those old country and Appalachian blood hymns: "There Is A Fountain Filled With Blood," "Are You Warshed [!] In The Blood of the Lamb," "There's Power In The Blood."
I realized all this yesterday when I was playing guitar for my mother. Somewhere deep in "For All The Saints," I got throat-closure and something got into my eyes.
Some of those hymns don't come out with your theology. They tie you not to ideas about gods but to images, to emotions about things that matter. They tie you to your own aching need for there to be a love that you can trust and believe in.
Maybe because theology was always meant to be sung: it was always poetry, until people got hold of it who had a deep need to tell everybody else what to do.
Singing it doesn't make you good: but it can make you want to be.
Charles Wesley, Christianity, Hymns, Music, Psalm 137, Psalms in Imagination, Music, Poetry, Religion 
Reader Comments (7)
Growing up in The Salvation Army endowed my life with a gloriously interesting soundtrack.
I like this.
The music was lovely. Thanks.
Otter, what is this song's title? I can't remember and it's driving me nuts.
The tune is called "Pleading Savior." I think it's from the old The Sacred Lyre hymnbook, and several lyrics have been successfully set to it.
It's one of the more successful 8-7 hymn-tunes (that is, melodies for lyrics in stanzas of alternating eight and seven syllable lines).
"Maybe because theology was always meant to be sung" Yes! I experience nostalgia every Sunday. My parents are gone, and it's almost like being with them when I sing the old hymns. My church sings acappella, and you can hear all of the voices, for good or bad. Your words about the "blood" hymns brought back more memories.
Sherry, yep. Gods and god might well be much more than a function of deep psychology (depth psychology has some persuasive things to say about faith); but our deep faith takes place at a level of deep desires. And there we speak only in the language of poetry and dreams and music.