wfn.org | Ten years later, 'United Methodist Hymnal' still sings

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May 25, 1999  News media contact: Tim Tanton*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn.
10-21-71B{288}

NOTE: This report is accompanied by a sidebar, UMNS story #289.  

A UMNS News Feature
By Tim Tanton*

Marjorie Tuell still gets a thrill when she picks up the "new" United
Methodist Hymnal in church on Sunday mornings.

Of course, it's not really new anymore. The hymnal's 10th birthday came and
went this month. But for Tuell and others who were involved in developing
the book, the events of more than a decade past remain as fresh in the
memory as if they had happened last week.

"There will frequently be times when a hymn is announced that I remember our
discussion on (it), even though we discussed hundreds and hundreds of
hymns," said Tuell of Des Moines, Wash. "I kind of smile a little bit as I'm
getting ready to sing it. Or I'll come across one of our subtle little
language changes and I'll smile."

The 1989 hymnal replaced the 1966 Book of Hymns. The newer songbook was
developed by a 25-member Hymnal Revision Committee and approved by the 1988
General Conference, the top lawmaking body of the United Methodist Church. 

The creation of the hymnal was a more demanding task than most of those
involved could have imagined, and it was not without controversy. Initial
plans by the committee to alter the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and omit
"Onward Christian Soldiers" drew a storm of protest and showed the revision
team members just how sensitive their work was.

However, the finished product has been universally praised for its
inclusiveness and breadth.

"I understand in excess of 4.5 million copies have been bought to date,
which is one of the success stories of 20th century U.S. denominational
publishing," said the Rev. Carlton R. Young, editor. 

"I've been very pleased with the way it holds up and the reception that it's
received," said the Rev. Laurence Hull Stookey, professor at Wesley
Theological Seminary in Washington and a member of the revision committee.
"It was a monumental undertaking. I don't think I've probably in my life
undertaken a bigger job. People keep telling me what a good resource it is
for them and their congregations."

Stookey is particularly pleased that the committee was able to produce a
book for use by the whole denomination and not just segments of it.

No general church funds were used in the revision, Young said. The United
Methodist Publishing House paid all the committee's work expenses, which
came to a little over $2 million. The Publishing House and United Methodist
Board of Discipleship, both based in Nashville, Tenn., were the agencies
responsible for the project.

Until the creation of the hymnal, United Methodist congregations had used a
variety of songbooks. Some sang from the former Methodist Church's Book of
Hymns or a hymnal supplement issued in 1982. Others used the old Evangelical
United Brethren hymn book, while some used books produced specifically for
African-American, Native American, Hispanic American or Asian congregations.
The United Methodist Hymnal brought material from all of those sources
together into one book.

"The '89 edition was the first hymnal of United Methodism," said Young, who
also edited the 1966 book. "Its content and format successfully represented,
and still represents, the needs of the various constituencies in the
precursor denominations." 

The Book of Hymns had been published two years before the Methodist and
Evangelical United Brethren denominations merged, creating the United
Methodist Church. As if that event alone didn't date the 1966 book, its very
contents did. The book didn't reflect the church's global nature, and it
lacked inclusive language. Young said it was outdated before it came off the
press. 

In contrast, the 1989 book was a "people's hymnal," said Jane Marshall, a
consultant to the revision team and currently a teacher in sacred music at
Perkins School of Theology in Dallas.

"The thing that I think is overwhelming in a way ... is the concept of the
way it was put together and by whom," she explained. "Most hymnal committees
are appointed committees of experts in text and tune. This hymnal was put
together by elected lay and clergy people from the annual conferences of the
United Methodist Church all over the country. In other words, many of the
folks elected to be on the committee were not experts." 

"Putting a hymnal together is a political process," Marshall said. And Young
"was a political genius" in the way he led the work, she said. The result
was a book with something for everyone.

The Hymnal Revision Committee had 13 subcommittees and consultations, each
focused on a specific area, such as the texts, tunes, psalter, Wesleyan
hymnody, language. 

Young also appointed 800 reader consultants to help the committee. They
included clergy, laity, choir directors, teachers, and others who reflected
the church's diverse makeup. The reader consultants were kept informed of
the committee's work and were encouraged to respond.

"So by the time the hymnal actually came out, any of the flak that
invariably comes with it was over with," Marshall said.

Touchy issues

The biggest barrage of flak occurred when the committee proposed leaving
"Onward Christian Soldiers" out of the new book because of its military
references. The decision made news nationwide. The committee received 11,000
pieces of mail in the two months following its vote, and only 44 expressed
support for the move, Young wrote in Companion to the United Methodist
Hymnal. The committee kept the hymn, winning over a lot of people in the
process.

Language was the touchiest issue for the Hymnal Revision Committee, and the
topic of gender references to God and people was hotly debated. Several
hymns and other texts were changed to replace masculine language with more
inclusive words.

For Tuell, chairwoman of the text subcommittee, the language issue was
important. "I feel like I'm a feminist, and I felt language was important
after talking to my own baby boomer daughters and others of their ages,
saying some of these texts turned them off. They couldn't see through the
theology and the biblical language to the essential language because they
kept being bothered by the masculine tone of the hymn. They didn't want to
be 'brothers.' They were sisters."

The committee took a middle course with regard to language about humans and
God, Marshall said. Composers of new texts were asked not to use the
masculine pronouns solely to represent God, she said, while masculine
references were left alone in some older, familiar texts. Archaic references
to humans, using "thee" instead of "you," for example, all but disappeared.

When reading a text, committee members considered whether it was in harmony
with the Bible, had good poetry and was theologically sound. Did it fit the
tune? The "cultural look" of a hymn also was important, since the book had
to reflect the church's diversity, Tuell said.

"We had poets as consultants who would help us rewrite a sentence or a
chorus or a whole stanza that would make it more inclusive," said Bonnie
Jones Gehweiler of Lake Junaluska, N.C., who today leads retreats involving
the hymnal. She headed up the important hymns subcommittee.

People accused the revision team of changing words, but in many cases, the
members went back to earlier versions of hymns and changed lyrics back to
the original words, Gehweiler said. For example, the committee reversed
changes that John Wesley had made to many of brother Charles Wesley's
lyrics, she said. "I would say that our hymnal is much more authentic in
many ways."

The work didn't always go smoothly. Committee members had strong feelings
about which hymns to include or exclude, and what changes should be made.

"I never worked with a committee that held together (so well) in the face of
some very sharp divisions," Tuell said. "Part of the thrill of working on
that committee was that we could have sharp divisions, but always when that
session was over ... we always got back together and were good friends."

The committee strove for fair representation of the cultural and ethnic
diversity of the church, and tried to satisfy the needs of both small and
big churches. Inclusiveness was a goal for Gehweiler as she led her
subcommittee's work on the hymnal. 

"It jars at points, but it doesn't jar enough to make people angry," she
said. The team wanted to avoid making the hymnal elitist, she said. "We were
trying to make it a book that was singable and usable by the congregation."

The revision committee also was aware of political pressure from within the
denomination.

"I think too much was made of the continued and implied threat of the 'Good
News folk,' that they would not support the hymnal at the General Conference
if their improvisitory agendas were not adequately addressed," Young said.
"Consequently, the revision committee felt it politically necessary to
include a vast number of redundant Gospel hymns, avoid recommending hymns
which would have more fully expressed female metaphors, descriptions and
forms of address of deity, and neutered metaphors, descriptions and forms of
address of the risen Christ."

However, Young is pleased that the hymnal was received positively by the
1988 General Conference and was published within a year of its
authorization. That's "a tribute to the tireless efforts" of the committee,
its chairman, Bishop Reuben Job, and the Publishing House, led by
then-publisher Robert K. Feaster, Young said.

Hard work

The work was intense. Tuell remembers being wiped out on the trips back home
from Nashville to Los Angeles, where her husband was bishop at the time.

"I would just be blown for about three days after I got home because of the
intensity and the tensions, even though we had happy times and we had good
times - we became good friends on the committee," she said. "I would just
come home absolutely worn out."

If Tuell was worn out, think of how Roger Deschner must have felt. He had a
giant yoke with suitcases full of hymnals from other denominations, and he
would use that yoke to carry the books while traveling to and from the
meetings.

"He was a big man to begin with, and here he came with that yoke," Marshall
said. The late Deschner, who directed the sacred music program at Perkins,
made many contributions to the hymnal, particularly in the areas of Wesleyan
and Native American hymns and German chorales.

The late Bishop W.T. Handy, a revision committee member, added a lot of
humor to the work. "He would pretend not to know anything," Tuell said. "He
was putting on the mantle of the very small church." Handy, in fact, knew a
lot about music. He played piano and, as an ardent jazz fan, championed the
placement of  Duke Ellington's "Come Sunday" in the hymnal.

New favorites

Many of the "new" hymns have become favorites, such as "Hymn of Promise,"
"On Eagle's Wings," "Here I Am, Lord," "Lord, You Have Come to the
Lakeshore," "Jesu, Jesu" and "Victory in Jesus." Old favorites, such as "In
the Garden," appeared for the first time.

"I still believe it's the most eclectic collection of any hymnal that's been
done in the last 20 years," Marshall said. "... We've got Duke Ellington,
we've got Amy Grant, we've got Charles Ives, an American composer in the
early part of this century." The German version of "Silent Night" was one of
several hymns that appeared in a language other than English.

Beyond the songs, the hymnal was designed as a complete resource for
planning a service.

"I wanted to see a hymnal that had integrated resources, so that people
could see the connections between things," Stookey said. That was achieved
in the way the hymnal's table of contents was organized, and by placing
prayers and other non-musical texts with hymns that were related by
liturgical season or content. 

"It's really intended not to be just a hymnal but to be a worship book for
those in the pew," he said.

Many congregations, it seems, still haven't explored the book's diversity.

"What we find is that people haven't even begun to dig the depths of that
hymnal, and this is a real disappointment," Gehweiler said. "People still go
back to 'Blessed Assurance' and don't look at the breadth and depth of the
hymnal." More work is needed on using music to embolden the worship service,
she said.

Overall, the hymnal holds up well. Says Gehweiler: "Everywhere I go, people
love it."
# # #
*Tanton is news editor for United Methodist News Service.

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