Prologue
A host of resolutions are passed every three years at General Convention. Of these, only a few ever receive air time. And we all know which ones they are: the wedge issues used by seasoned culture warriors Left and Right to energize bases and attract new recruits. And yet, every three years, at least a few changes get made that rarely if ever get talked about but that truly move the church to its foundations. These shifts are rarely obvious but are comprehensive in scope because these are the changes that affect the people in the pews—whether they’re aware of it or not.
One of these resolutions was passed three years ago with little notice or fanfare. This resolution, known to history as 2006-A077, is only four lines long yet invalidates and replaces some twenty pages of the Prayer Book, affecting every Sunday morning service in the Episcopal Church. I speak of the change to the Revised Common Lectionary.
Another such resolution was passed this summer.
Bishop Neil Alexander of the Diocese of Atlanta submitted a resolution to begin the process of compiling a new hymnal for the Episcopal Church. It was Resolution B004. While not quite as big of a change as a new Prayer Book, a new hymnal will change the very sounds of Episcopal worship—from what service music we sing, to what hymns we use to worship. And singing is prayer too. What we sing shapes how we understand ourselves, our gathered church community, and God as well.
This is no insignificant change. This will change the very words we use to worship. This matters.
The Plea
Bishop Alexander, members of the Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music, and those who make decisions regarding the shape of this future hymnal:
As you begin this weighty work, I submit three suggestions. They are interrelated. While each can stand on its own, the combination of the three will, I believe, seize the unique opportunities that this moment offers in the realms of spirituality and communication. First, restore the hymnody of the Daily Office to the place that it deserves in our life of worship. Second, establish a commission uniting skilled linguists and liturgical poets to create the new definitive Modern English translations of these texts. Third, whatever works this commission produces—do not copyright them.
On the Hymnody of the Daily Office
The Book of Common Prayer intends for the Eucharist and the Daily Offices—Morning and Evening Prayer with their attendants, Noon Prayer and Compline—to function hand in hand. The Holy Eucharist is “the principle act of Christian Worship on the Lord’s Day and other major Feasts” (BCP, 13); the Offices are the principle acts on all the other days, taking a secondary place on Sundays and feasts. With the success of the ’79 Book of Common Prayer, however, rarely are the Offices heard in our churches. Rarely are their patterns taught. Rarely do devout laity—not to mention clergy—take prayer book in hand at the hinges of the day to link hearts and hands and voices in this ancient Anglican rite.
The more recognition we give it in official materials, the better. Anything we can do to increase its visibility enables it to continue shaping Episcopalians in the ancient patterns of prayer, East and West, and blessed by our Anglican forbearers.
For our Offices derive from the classical eightfold hours of prayer, and continue their legacy. Of these, the three major Offices, Matins, Lauds, and Vespers, had special hymns for each season, often referred to collectively as the breviary hymns. The majority of these have been in constant use for over thirteen hundred years. Through the rise and fall of empires, languages, and peoples, these hymns have reinforced fundamental Christian principles and shaped how we understand the pattern and purpose of the liturgical seasons. They images they deploy, the Scriptures they borrow, have become inextricable parts of the fabric of the Western liturgy. To ignore them, to lose them, to misplace them is to consciously cultivate an amnesia of the meaning behind the deepest patterns of the liturgical year.
These hymns—they ground us in what it means to walk the year with Christ.
And I wonder if you, Bishop Alexander, felt a pang as I did when at Convention you saw the proposal for a Creation Cycle within the Pentecost season? Did you—a musician and liturgical historian immediately think of the weekday hymns for Vespers in the Time after Pentecost that extol the wonders of the earth and its creatures, remembering in turn each day the wonders God wrought in the first week of Creation? Imagine—a resolution calling for the composition of something that the Church has already used continuously for well over a thousand years, if only we can remember.
Of course, for those who know, many of these hymns can be found—either whole or in part—in our present 1982 Hymnal. (Only two of the Vespers creation hymns appear, Lucis Creator optime, 27-28, and Immense caeli Conditor, 31-32) Several even offer the option of singing the ancient words to either a plainchant melody or a more recent chorale. But they are, in fact, hidden. No symbols denote them. No preface identifies them. They languish unless discovered by chance.
A Translation Commission
Several times in our past the breviary hymns have been discovered anew and restored to the English-speaking church. The greatest advocate on their behalf is certainly the renowned translator John Mason Neale, Anglican priest and gifted poet. No less than 45 hymns in our current hymnal are direct translations of his; he is a silent partner in at least a handful more which are themselves adaptations of his efforts. His works and our great debt to him on their account should never be forgotten—and yet it is past time to build upon his foundation. His poetic diction is not ours. His deliberate archaicisms are today’s incomprehensibilities. It’s time for new translations to be done.
As no new Neale seems apparent on our horizon, a team of both skilled linguists and accomplished liturgical poets will need to collaborate upon this task. Both will be required to achieve the goal: accurate, sober, and faithful translations of the originals that will yet thrill both ear and mind, consonant with the originals in tone, style, and yes even meter, yet in lucid modern English.
Please, I beg you, shun the notion of paraphrases! Root out with relentless fervor that suggestion of “improving”, “updating”, or “making relevant” these treasures! After all, thirteen centuries of continuous use point to a relevance that transcends any decade’s favored talking points. (Remember Urban VIII and observe what he failed to see!)
Without Copyright
If such a commission were to succeed in its task, its value to the Church could only be enhanced by foregoing the process of copyright. The American Books of Common Prayer have all been published into the Public Domain. Nothing could be more fitting than for such labors to likewise be given into the keeping of all. John Mason Neale himself once stated, “I am very glad to have this opportunity of saying how strongly I feel that hymn, whether original or translated, ought, the moment it is published, to become the common property of Christendom; the author retaining no private right in it whatever” (Joys and Glories of Paradise, preface [1865]). I’ll let lawyers argue the finer points of intellectual property till the cows come home; in this case I agree with Neale.
The treasury of Christian prayer, whether spoken or sung, is the patrimony of all—our modern achievements no less so than our eldest treasures.
Furthermore, in this internet age, ideas, efforts, and even translations spread on the basis of their availability and merit. Should such a commission succeed as I imagine it could, should its works be made available to all, its works would quickly find a home not just in our denominational hymnal but in bulletins, servers, and databases around the world wherever Christians use English in worship. High quality public domain translations could offer a new gold standard, supplanting inferior options due to the combined powers of quality and availability.
Would this cut into Church publishing’s profits? I don’t know. Would it be a contribution beyond value to the faith? I know it would.
Conclusion
Bishop Alexander, your hymnal resolution is one that looks forward, both to the contemporary world and to the future. Your calls for the church to “explore sensitivity to expansive language, the diversity of worship styles, the richness of multicultural and global liturgical forms” are calls to look around at the contemporary world and to look forward to our common global future. Only the last call to explore “the enduring value of our Anglican musical heritage” looks back. I pray that as you look back to see what value the past will play in grounding the future richness of our global faith, you will consider these liturgical gems that over the ebb and flow of empires and peoples and languages have formed countless Christians ever deeper into the mind of Christ.
Sincerely,
Derek Olsen
Derek Olsen is in the final stretch of completing a Ph.D. in New Testament at Emory University. He has taught seminary courses in biblical studies, preaching, and liturgics; he currently resides in Maryland. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X/Y dad appear at Haligweorc.