wfn.org | UCC/Braille hymnal helps church members

[powellb@ucc.org]

Date:  July 21, 1997
Office of Communication
United Church of Christ
William C. Winslow, press contact
(212) 870-2137
E-mail:  william.winslow@ecunet.org
Office of Communication
(216) 736-2222                            
On the Web:  http:\\www.ucc.org                             

[EDITORS: Photo available upon request.]

A musical touch:  braille hymnal
helps blind church members feel welcome

      CLEVELAND ? When Rich Pumfrey sings in church, he uses a
19-volume hymnal.
      Pumfrey, a musician who has been blind all his life,
sings from the recently issued braille edition of a United
Church of Christ hymn book, The New Century Hymnal.
      Actually, he doesn't heft all 19 volumes out of a pew
rack every Sunday.  Before worship, someone at church goes
into the 19 ring binders and slips out the braille pages
containing that morning's hymns.  Other worshipers at
Cleveland's Euclid Avenue Congregational United Church of
Christ use the standard pew edition of The New Century
Hymnal -- a single, 900-page volume.
      "This braille hymnal makes me a full member here," says
Pumfrey, 23, who sampled other churches but found them
unaccommodating of people who are blind.
      He might not have stayed long at Euclid Avenue either,
until the Rev. Roger Knight, senior minister, introduced him
to another new parishioner who knew a braille edition was in
progress -- Audrey Miller, who heads the Education and
Publication Division of the United Church Board for Homeland
Ministries.  At the 
time, the Pilgrim Press, the part of that division that
published the hymnal, was 
already working with the National Braille Association in
Rochester, N.Y.
      It took about a year for the Association to translate
the texts of The New Century Hymnal's songs, psalms, prayers
and readings into the patterns of raised dots that readers of
braille trace with their fingers.  (It does not contain
musical notes.)  The braille edition costs $500 for a single
copy.  More than a dozen churches have made inquiries, says
Paul Tuttle, marketing director at The Pilgrim Press.  Four
copies have been printed since it became available in early
1997.
      One of them is in use at Park Church, a UCC congregation
in Elmira, N.Y., where Carrie Hooper is a member.  A recent
college graduate who minored in music and who is blind, Hooper
is active in the musical life of her congregation as a
performer and as a worshiper.  Park Church bought the braille
hymnal after contacting the braille association in Rochester. 
"It sure makes life easier for those of us in need of such
service," she says.
      Why spend such a sum of money for one hymnal?
      For one thing, it's consistent with a tone set by the
UCC's General Synod, a biennial national meeting of delegates. 
In 1981, the Synod went on record as urging local churches "to
use such aids as braille materials; talking books; large-print
hymnals, Bibles, Orders of Worship; signing; and image and
color."
            In 1990, public awareness of disability-related
issues got a boost when President Bush signed into law the
Americans with Disabilities Act.  This mandated that
facilities used by the public provide such aids as ramps and
wheelchair accessible rest rooms, light switches and water
fountains.  Many churches, of course, have long provided hand-
held devices for people with hearing impairments and offered
large-print editions of worship bulletins.
      "We are all discovering the dimensions of things we take
for granted, like seeing," says Knight, the pastor at Euclid
Avenue, where the Sunday bulletin also is printed in braille. 
"We hadn't thought about it until it was presented [in the
person of Rich Pumfrey]."
      The Bible seems to be on Euclid Avenue's side.  In the
story of the Great Judgment in Matthew 25, Jesus speaks of
welcoming strangers; in Romans 13, Paul urges the church to
offer hospitality to them.  The use of braille is one way for
churches to welcome those who have felt like strangers and
treat them as brothers and sisters instead.
      The United Church of Christ, with national offices in
Cleveland, has more than 1.5 million members and 6,100
congregations in the United States and Puerto Rico.  The New
Century Hymnal, published in 1995, is a collection of new and
old hymns chosen to represent the faith of believers in this
century and the next.  It contains more than 600 hymns. 
Familiar words or music, drawn from traditional sources,
represent more than 60 percent of the material in the hymnal. 
It also reflects the broad racial, ethnic and cultural
diversity of the UCC, and includes hymns from African-
American, Native American, Latino, Pacific Islander and Asian-
American traditions.

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