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Imagine the church without Amazing Grace or How Great Thou Art. Hymns were the backbone of the church’s worship for hundreds of years! Granted, hymns are losing their popularity with today’s generation, but God’s people still owe a debt of gratitude to their writers.
Instead, many hymnists were once hated for writing/composing such music.
What church hasn’t experienced the frustrations that stem from choosing musical genres? For the most part, the younger crowd wants a rockin’ live band and even some hip hop thrown in when they worship God; the older group prefers their more stately hymns.
Who’s right? Who’s wrong? The battle lines have been drawn.
Ironically, today’s debate over hymns – with the elderly usually being for them and the youth usually being against them – is the exact opposite of what happened when hymns were first introduced. When they appeared in Christian worship approximately four centuries ago, it was the older crowd that rejected this new thing called a hymn. (The established leadership of the church was only interested in using the Psalter for worship.)
The issue of whether or not to use hymns became a huge problem, even causing some churches to split. The use of hymns brought grief to churches on both sides of the Atlantic. Further, hymns faced such disdain, that those who wrote them (or used them) were often persecuted for doing so.
For instance, one of the church’s greatest hymn writers, Isaac Watts, suffered a mental breakdown from the opposition he faced over his music. One critic scoffed, “Christian congregations have shut out divinely inspired Psalms and taken in Watts’ flights of fancy.” And in May of 1789, Rev. Adam Rankin told the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, “I have ridden horseback all the way from my home in Kentucky to ask this body to refuse the great and pernicious error of adopting the use of Isaac Watts’ hymns in public worship in preference to the Psalms of David.”
And you thought Whoopi Goldberg had it tough in Sister Act!
We should be glad that they hymns of Isaac Watts (and others) were eventually accepted. Without Watts, we wouldn’t have songs like Joy to the World or When I Survey the Wondrous Cross…just a couple of the hymns that emerged from his ingenious mind.
The church will always change, and along with it, its music. Regardless of the tempo, the sound, the instrument, or the style, so long as the lyrics glorify God, it is worship!
Resource’s Origins:
Then Sings My Soul by Robert J. Morgan. Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003, Pages 34-35.
Topics Illustrated Include:
Argument
Change
Choices
Church
Disagreement
History
Hymn
Leadership
Music
Persecution
Problem
Singing
Worship
(Resource cataloged by David R Smith)
