December 3, 2017 the LIVING CHURCH CATHOLIC EVANGELICAL ECUMENICAL
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Hymnal Revision Forming Leaders Hispanic Growth December 3, 2017 THE LIVING CHURCH CATHOLIC EVANGELICAL ECUMENICAL Advent People Year Round $5.50 Advent livingchurch.org NEW FROM FORWARD MOVEMENT MAKESK For the Beauty of the EarthEarth A GREATGREAAT T GIGIFT Daily Devotions Exploring Creation Dancece aalong with the windd oof God, be bathedd in tthe primal waaters, and look withh aawe and wonder onn tthe myriadiadad crcreaturest es GGod d hhas madeade. JJoiin waatercolorlor artista ti t Kathrinin BBurleson and diversee vvoices ffrrom acrosss tthe faithh in exploringexp the wonderders of creaattion and thee beautyy ofo the Creator. 2018 Saintly Scorecard The Definitive Guide to Lent Madness This officialofffffficiicial guide to Lent MadnessMadnadness ffefeatureseatures the biograbiographiesphies of all 32 saintsts in contentioncocontention forffoor the covetedcovveted Golden Halo. 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Order at ForwardMovement.org or call 800-543-1813 THE IVING L CHURCH THiS iSSUE December 3, 2017 | NEWS ON THE COVER 4 Sing a New Song? “The practices we take on in Advent teach us to be attentive, one-day-at- 8 New Season for St. James the Great Church a-time pilgrims” (see “Year-round Advent” p. 18). FEATURES iStock photo 14 A Reason to Smile? | By Katy Crane 17 Hispanic Growth Equals Episcopal Growth? By Kirk Petersen 18 Year-round Advent | By Sybil MacBeth 20 A Symposium: Forming Faithful Leaders BOOKS 30 Gateway to Heaven | Review by Jennifer Strawbridge 31 Pavel Florensky | Review by Richard J. Mammana 32 The Mighty and the Almighty | Review by Stephen Platten CULTURES 34 Light Shining in a Dark Place | Review by Greg Garrett 4 35 How to Survive the Apocalypse | Review by Kyle Tomlin CATHOLiC VOiCES 36 The List | By Richard J. Mammana OTHER DEPARTMENTS 39 Letters 40 People & Places 41 Sunday’s Readings LIVING CHURCH Partners We are grateful to St. Mark’s Cathedral, Shreveport [p. 43], and St. Mary’s Church, Orlando [p. 44], whose generous 14 support helped make this issue possible. THE LiViNG CHURCH is published by the Living Church Foundation. Our historic mission in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion is to seek and serve the Catholic and evangelical faith of the one Church, to the end of visible Christian unity throughout the world. news | December 3, 2017 Sing a New Song? Liturgists, musicians are cautious about revising the hymnal. By Mark Michael American composers David Hurd and Calvin Hampton. He suggested that a symposium at Virginia Theo- new hymnal should not be prepared logical Seminary, “The Once until after the prayer book has been re- Aand Future Hymnal,” celebrated vised, because “the hymnal is really the the 1982 Hymnal and discussed possi- companion to the Book of Common ble directions for its revision. The Prayer.” event, sponsored by the seminary’s The Rev. William Bradley Roberts, Center for Liturgy and Music on Oct. professor of church music at VTS, cel- 23-24, gathered dozens of scholars, ebrated further achievements of the musicians, and clergy from around the 1982 Hymnal in a lecture interspersed country. Speakers sang the praises of with vigorous hymn-singing. Roberts the current hymnal and sounded a said the Hymnal 1982 significantly ex- rather hesitant note about the panded the number of plainsong, prospects for a new one. American folk hymns, and African “As the Episcopal Church looks to- American spirituals being sung in ward prayer book and hymnal revision Episcopal churches, with a few forays — do we? or don’t we?” said Ellen John- into Latino, African, and Native Amer- ston, the center’s director and a member ican hymnody. Ray Glover, the revi- of the Standing Commission on Liturgy sion committee’s chairman, told and Music. “i was especially taken with David Beale/Unsplash photo Roberts that his great regret was that the presentations of the Rev. Martin the hymnal did not include more Seltz of the [Evangelical Lutheran revision held earlier in October at the Spanish-language hymns. Church in America] and David Eicher University of the South’s School of Marilyn Haskel, formerly of Church of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Theology. Both events are part of a Publishing, reviewed a series of sup- Hearing about their processes of hym- conversation across the Episcopal plements that followed the hymnal. nal revision opened my eyes to the Church in response to the 2015 Gen- Aiming especially at expanding the use many facets of this work.” eral Convention’s direction that the of inclusive language and introducing Episcopal speakers at the sympo- Standing Commission on Liturgy and hymn texts in other languages, the sup- sium most often expressed concerns Music prepare a plan for prayer book plements were intended to be tempo- about the time costs and difficulty of and hymnal revision. rary and experimental, an opportunity finding consensus that would attend a The VTS gathering opened with to “take risks and see what works,” she comprehensive hymnal revision. presentations that traced the revisions said. The discussion echoed the standing leading to Hymnal 1982. Former mu- While earlier supplements like Won- committee’s 2012 Hymnal Revision sic professor James Litton, who served der, Love and Praise (1997) were au- Feasibility Study, which discouraged on the former Hymnal Revision Com- thorized by General Convention, proceeding with hymnal revision, es- mittee from 1966 to 1982, described a Haskel said Church Publishing as- pecially amid strong opposition to re- painstaking process of text and musical sumed direct responsibility for later vision among the laity and those editing, with thorough vetting of hymn ones. The period of experimentation younger than 29. in the symposium’s selections by clergy and musicians. overlapped with what Haskel called closing sessions, several speakers joked The revisers, he said, were “living at “the Age of Congregational Musical about a new hymnal being as yet “a a time of hymn explosion,” and could Diversity,” as the 1991 General Con- glimmer in the eye” of the Episcopal draw on compelling new texts by Fred vention permitted the use of “great di- Church. Pratt Green and Carl Daw, as well as a versity of musical styles” to address the The symposium was a companion distinctive genre of unison “art song” church’s evangelistic needs, a decision to a similar event about prayer book hymn tunes, especially associated with that “opened the door to less musical 4 THe LIVInG CHURCH • December 3, 2017 oversight in the Episcopal Church.” hood in 1979 brought profound and anything. You can make almost any Seltz and Eicher discussed the unsettling change. While stressing that kind of change. And so, with the un- ELCA’s Evangelical Lutheran Worship he supported these decisions then and certainties that live with us in the (2006) and the PCUSA’s Glory to God now, Wade counted their costs. world around us, there is the uncer- (2013). Both men played coordinating “We made some profound changes, tainty to change almost anything we roles for their church’s revisions. Both and with that comes this implication: leaned against as a church, almost any- hymnals focused intensively on intro- we can rethink this stuff. Very few thing that holds us up. That’s an un- ducing texts that are “expansive with things in our structure, very few things certainty in some minds. it’s a freedom respect to God and inclusive with re- in our common life, are now fixed. if in others.” spect to people,” though Seltz said that you can change the concept of min- The Rev. A. Katherine Grieb, the the Lutheran hymnal also attended to istry to include the ordination of seminary’s Meade Professor of Biblical the integrity of texts that are “in the women and to center it in baptism in- interpretation, offered a similar review repertoire of memory.” stead of ordination, you can do almost (Continued on next page) The new hymnals also use texts and tunes from a wide variety of cultures, though Seltz said that in the case of Evangelical Lutheran Worship, this “re- flects the diversity that a big umbrella denomination like the ELCA wishes to see in itself, to which it aspires. … it is what we would like to be, not what we really are.” Seltz noted that Evangelical Lutheran Worship required six years of work. “We could have used more time, twice the amount of time for communal re- flection.” The Rev. Frank Wade, VTS’s interim associate dean of students and a dele- gate to 12 General Conventions, of- fered a keynote address about changes in the church’s cultural standing since 1983. Wade’s talk was an affectionate but occasionally bracing critique of the Episcopal Church’s seeming loss of di- rection and inability to speak to “a world becoming more and more un- certain.” He suggested that the church’s enthusiasm for