Glover, Raymond F., The Hymnal 1982 Companion, 1990: The Church Hymnal Corporation, vol. 1, pp. 7-12. The Spirituality of Anglican Hymnody: A Twentieth-Century American Perspective CARL P. DAW, JR. The most obvious challenge in attempting to characterize the spirituality of Anglican hymnody is the sheer range of material that must now be taken into account in any such description. It is no longer possible to deal with the subject by reviewing the best-known psalm paraphrases or by considering the congregational repertoire of a parish church located (whether in fact or in attitude) in a picturesque English village. Although the influx of English psalmody and hymnody sustained and nourished the first three-and-a-half centuries of Anglican worship in this country, the latter half of the twentieth century has witnessed an increasing appreciation and use of texts and tunes from many other sources. The development of this enlarged vocabulary of praise is carefully set forth in the historical essays that follow, but its profound significance is greater than the sum of their narrative and analysis. For in the depth and breadth of resources represented in a collection like The Hymnal 1982 lies an essential expression of fundamental Anglican Christianity. The very range and diversity of what we sing derive from what we believe about God, about human beings, and about the ways human beings can know and respond to God. To preserve and foster a body of hymns for use in worship is itself an expression of a religious style characteristic of Western Christianity. Christianity in the West has nurtured a kataphatic spirituality, i.e., a spirituality channeled through the development of images—words, symbols, colors, music — regarded as integral to the way human beings approach and apprehend their relationship with God. Although images have also made important contributions to Eastern Christianity (the role of icons is the most obvious example), they have usually been carefully prescribed and limited to established patterns. In Eastern practice images aim towards self-effacement and guide believers to experience the presence of God in a moment of imageless (apophatic) encounter. Western images, by contrast, often call attention to themselves so insistently as to seem not simply instrumental but even essential to religious experience.1 That certain hymns seem unthinkable to omit at Christmas or Easter or some other occasion is only one of the ways this pattern manifests itself, but it is indicative of a predisposition to regard the constituent elements of worship as indistinguishable from the essence of worship. Such an attitude is merely one manifestation of the strongly incarnational orientation of Western Christianity in general, and of Anglicanism in particular. A noted twentieth-century theologian (Paul Tillich) is even reported to have characterized an emphasis on the Incarnation as "the Anglican heresy."2 Such overstatement from someone rooted in another tradition provides significant corroboration for the importance of this theme in Anglican spirituality and consequently in our hymnody. Indeed, Incarnation is clearly a strong motif in the hymns that are known best and loved most by Anglicans. Celebrations of the birth, life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ form a significant portion of our hymnals (including H82 ), and the experience of retelling that formative story through singing often provides the catalyst which allows worshipers to claim it as their own as well as to sense how it unites them with others. At its most profound, the very act of singing hymns represents a kind of miniature reenactment of -3- what it means for the Word to become flesh: the text and tune of the printed page are given life and breath; they cease to be merely an idea full of potential and become a present reality. This effect is perhaps strongest (even when not consciously recognized) with hymns on incarnation themes. Furthermore, because of the extent to which worship has been the primary means of Christian formation throughout most of Christian and Anglican history, it is not uncommon for a person to become acquainted with events from the life of Christ through allusions in hymns long before the full narrative is encountered in appointed scriptures. It is, of course, a commonplace to talk about worship as the formative influence in Anglican belief; the usual tag is lex orandi, lex credendi. In some ways it might more aptly be lex cantandi, lex credendi, given the crucial role of congregational song in the shaping of both corporate and individual faith. The ideas conveyed by words that are sung root themselves in our hearts and minds much more tenaciously than those merely spoken, a phenomenon the secular world not only recognizes but even exploits through countless commercial jingles. How often the words of a hymn will return to comfort, perturb, or enlighten us, when the words of sermons, prayers, and scripture do not. The re-singing of a familiar hymn, or even the first singing of a new one, can be a remarkable occasion of spiritual insight. As William Cowper noted two centuries ago, "sometimes a light surprises" the singing Christian [cf. 667]. When Cowper wrote those words, what Anglicans on both sides of the Atlantic would have sung most often were metrical paraphrases of the psalms [see below]. As the "Authors, Translators, and Sources" index of H82 demonstrates, such texts continue to form a substantial and influential part of our hymnody. Sometimes the connection with the Biblical text is clear and familiar, as in the various popular paraphrases of Ps. 23 [645/646, 663, 664]; at other times it requires some prompting in order to be recognizable, as in the derivation of "A mighty fortress" [687/688] from Ps. 46. But the Psalms are not the only parts of the Bible recast as hymns; the Index of Scriptural References (in the Resources for Service Planning Section, H&2 ai, p. 703) and HS 8 list a stunning array of scripture-inspired texts ranging from conservative paraphrases to indirect allusions. To the extent that hymnody can be taken as a valid index, this Hymnal (like its predecessors) shows a decided correspondence between the shaping of Anglican spirituality and the tripartite basis of Anglican theology: scripture, tradition, and reason/experience. Because it is characteristic of a kataphatic spirituality to focus on and elaborate received images, the great fount of biblical imagery has been tapped often and effectively as a source of texts. That this continues to hold true for hymns written in our own day gives eloquent testimony that (as a hymn writer of the last century phrased it) "the Lord has yet more light and truth/to break forth from his word" [629]. Our hymnody provides abundant evidence that there is a significant correlation between the theory of our theology and the praxis of our spirituality. To discuss the roles of tradition and reason/experience in Anglican hymnody is a much more problematical matter. Consistent with, our historic character as a people inclined to a spirituality channeled through thinking and images (i.e. speculative and kataphatic), many of the hymns in H82 reflect a concern with the preservation of received materials. Because Anglicans affirm “one holy apostolic and catholic Church,” the breadth of tradition reflected in this collection is consequently very comprehensive if not strictly representative. This is not a sectarian book; it includes a spectrum of texts reflecting diverse theologies and spiritualities. The distribution of texts through many centuries, languages, and kinds of people bespeaks a concern -4- with recognizing the fullness of the Body of Christ in all times and places. It is also worth noting that this concern for tradition (which literally means “that which is handed on”) looks forward as well as backward. The compilers of this Hymnal have made an effort to select texts which are likely to wear well; in other words, texts included in H82 have been deemed substantial enough to enrich our worship into the foreseeable future. It is equally important to consider the role of music in conveying a continuity with traditional materials. Because of the cultural conditioning which makes it inherently difficult to incorporate unfamiliar musical styles into congregational worship, the historical range of musical expression in this or any other hymnal is smaller than that of the texts. None of the pre-medieval texts, for example, can be presented with a tune of the same era. But what might seem like a defect from a strictly chronological perspective ultimately becomes an advantage for the purpose of affirming the continuum of tradition. For a fourth-century text to be joined with a twentieth-century tune [e.g., 443] or for a twentieth-century text to be yoked with a sixteenth-century tune [e.g., 472] provides eloquent testimony to a confidence that no single time or place or culture has a monopoly on God's favor. (This recognition of the variety of expression is further evinced by the numerous suggestions of alternative tunes in the H82 a2.). Because of various historical factors involved in the origin and growth of hymns in congregational worship, the proportion of tunes is still heavily weighted towards familiar styles, but the refreshing breadth and variety in H82 offer abundant opportunities to celebrate an enlarged sense of tradition. Music is also a helpful means of considering ways in which human experience finds expression in Anglican spirituality. Unlike texts, which are necessarily written for religious purposes (though not always originally conceived as texts to be sung), many of the tunes now used in Christian worship were originally intended for quite secular purposes. It is still shocking to some people to find that what they have always thought of as a lovely hymn tune began life as a love song; conversely, there are also people whose associations with the political origins of certain tunes find them unacceptable for use with hymns.