Christoper Idle asks if some of our churches are missing out on something
There’s an evangelical church near you – not your own, of course – with a remarkable take on the 20th century.
For about 49 weeks of the year, the dates 1901 to 1999 are just so last-millennium. The songs they sing week by week are guaranteed to be the very latest inspirations from the singer-songwriters of the day: know what I mean? The music group takes its job seriously, so it buzzes and bounces along each Sunday morning with some insistent melodies, powerful rhythms and sometimes a fresh challenge in the lyrics.
Any item from as many as 15 years ago may be introduced as a ‘golden oldie’ with a half-joking apology from the ‘worship leader’.
NME
Not quite so bad as the world of NME. Yes, the New Musical Express; how fascinating for a greybeard like me to read recently its semi-official history. In the 1950s I devoured it every week, when the pop music charts were an experimental novelty; this is what gave the paper its commercial lift-off. For me it was more a case of left-off, as the paper slid into a drug-fuelled orgy of promiscuity and pseudo-revolutionary posturing. Not that I’m taking sides, you understand?
Other impressions from this nostalgia-trip: in spite of protestations of poverty and homelessness, plenty of cash was sloshing around from somewhere. Anyone over about 28, if they were still alive by then, was seen as a hopeless old wrinkly. There was a culture of contempt for any style – in music as in clothes – that had lasted just a month too long. You didn’t need a sell-by date, just a superior smirk.
You get the picture? Not of course to be compared with that church down the road; and yet… was it C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien, those creative best-selling lovers of Old English or Anglo-Saxon, who wrote of the tyranny of fashion, the adulation of the contemporary, which soon brings with it a contempt for the past? ‘That’s history’ used to be a positive phrase indicating factual reliability; now it is more likely to mean ‘Forget it!’
Too close for comfort?
Some churches seem just a mite too close for comfort to the NME mindset. Many of them still honour and teach the Holy Scriptures, that ancient yet ever-fresh Word of God. But for those 49 weeks, the music menu consists of today’s top-selling hits. Then every year without fail comes mid-December; and what a change there is as they switch seamlessly into major Victorian song mode.
Strange but true. How many whole services in the bleak mid-winter months treat us to hymns, songs and carols dating from 18something? Take some examples; the dates being the closest we can discover:
‘Angels from the realms of glory’; 1825 version (just before Queen Victoria)
‘O come, all ye faithful’; 1841.
‘Once in royal David’s city’; 1848.
‘It came upon the midnight clear’; 1849.
‘See, amid the winter’s snow’; 1851.
‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’; translated mainly 1851.
‘Good Christians all, rejoice’; 1853
‘As with gladness men of old’; 1860.
‘O little town of Bethlehem’; 1868.
‘Silent night’; translated 1871.
‘In the bleak mid-winter’; 1872
‘Away in a manger’; 1883.
The golden age?
We could respond to this short list (which could easily be longer) by saying: ‘What a golden age of Christmas composing! Ah, they don’t write like this any more!’ No, of course not. Some of these are absolute musts for any carol service; leave them out, and risk the wrath not only of those annual visitors we hope to attract, but even of the Trades Descriptions Act. We could go back another century or two and add ‘Hark, the herald angels sing’ and ‘Joy to the world‘ (no complaints here); not to mention such older folk-delights as ‘God rest ye, merry gentlemen’, or folk-nonsense like ‘The first Nowell’.
But, with some notable exceptions, see what has happened? The same congregation, instantly, instinctively and ritually, has skipped back two centuries, only to skip forward again each January, neatly sidestepping the 20th century in which even some of our younger members grew up. Are they right?
I would never want to abandon the best of our Victorian heritage, at Christmas or any other time. But the 20th century has also been a rich time for hymn-writing, not least about the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour of the world. In our lifetime it has touched on some vital aspects of his coming which the Victorians were not so keen to write or even think about.
Something newer for Christmas?
Well, as a signed-up member of the Hymnwriters’ Union (only joking) I would say that? But I have written comparatively little for Christmas, partly because my contemporaries have done the job so well, in quality and quantity. Pre-eminent among these names must be Timothy Dudley-Smith, whose Christmas output is quite unique. So why do we so rarely get to sing ‘Holy child’ (1966), ‘The darkness turns to dawn’ (1970), or ‘See, to us a child is born’ (1982)? Every one of his texts carries more than a hint of our redemption and its cost. What a gospel opportunity is here!
Until his death at the age of 54, Michael Perry also made a concentrated impact with his original work (‘Calypso carol’, ‘Come and sing the Christmas story’ or ‘The story has broken’) and his rescue attempts to make sense of some obscure texts with lovely tunes! Earlier names might include Percy Dearmer and Frank Houghton; later, those of John Bell, Elizabeth Cosnett, Alan Gaunt, Fred Pratt Green, Martin Leckebusch, Linda Mawson, David Mowbray, Emma Turl or Paul Wigmore. Lest we get too insular, carols from Canada (Margaret Clarkson), the USA (Thomas Troeger) and New Zealand (Shirley Murray) express the sheer loveliness of ancient truth in fresh ways which we neglect to our immense loss.
In a rather different genre, Stuart Townend’s ‘From the squalor of a borrowed stable’ just dates from the 20th century, representing songs with real content which start at the manger but do not stop there.
Be an explorer this year
If some of these names are unfamiliar, the Internet makes them easier than ever to discover. This year, why not show an explorer’s initiative rather than following the fashion which ignores work of any date beginning with the number 19?
Or do we really want to go on making the unspoken statement that the 20th century is best forgotten?
One practical suggestion: when you have digested the rest of this issue, why not cut out this page and take it along to the senior pastor of that church next door? You could hand it in brazenly, or slip it into the letterbox along the dark streets, through the winter snow one silent night.
