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Choir
Just a song?
A new trend is sweeping the nation’s hip, young Christian world: Beer and Hymns. The concept is simple. Drink beer; sing hymns. No more complicated than that. Nashville’s own Sunday-brunch-destination/hipster-nexus-of-the-universe, Mad Donna’s, has made national news for its increasingly popular beer and hymn sing. The event is not a Bible study or a worship service, and there are no creeds to recite. Just good old-fashioned drinking and singing.
It is a testimony to the power of music to transcend our theological debates. We 21st-century North American Christians, after all, put a lot of stock in our intellectual beliefs about God. Who is God? What does God do?How does God relate to humans? These are the questions that have divided countless churches and unleashed violent ecclesial battles. In the past two centuries, denominations have been constantly forming, splitting, and re-splitting over what we claim to believe about God.
Our hymns, however, have survived the worst of it. The same songs that inspired the fervently faithful a century ago are still making the rounds in church services, country music covers, and beer and hymn sings.
Which made me wonder: What is the theology of our most popular hymns? How do our sung words about God relate to our spoken words?
Trying to avoid my own biases, I have relied on a number of online rankings to compile an (entirely scientific) list of the five most popular and lasting hymns of the past couple centuries:
5. Be Thou My Vision (Ancient Celtic Hymn, trans. 1905 by Mary E. Byrne)
4. Great Is Thy Faithfulness (Thomas O. Chrisholm, 1923)
3. How Great Thou Art (Carl Gustav Boberg, 1885; trans. 1949 by Stuart K. Hine)
2. Amazing Grace (John Newton, 1779)
1. Holy, Holy, Holy (Reginald Heber, 1826)
Inside the verses of these hymns, I found theology that was both expected and surprising. Four major themes pervade the hymns, and I have grouped them below.
Here are my findings. Do with them what you will:
God is powerful.
This one is hard to miss. God is the “ruler of all,” “Lord God Almighty,” “perfect in power,” and of course, just simply “great.” How great is our “great God of heaven?” Great enough to get an entire song just about being great. Yes, God’s power has been displayed throughout the universe, and Elvis Presley is going to drive that point home until you are convinced: God is great; God is powerful.
Based in the highly academic “natural theology” of the Enlightenment, God’s omnipotence (having all power) is usually an undisputed trait. If nothing else, God has all power, we suppose. This is where many atheist arguments begin, in fact: If God is all powerful, then why does God not do something about all the horror in the world?
Unfortunately, the biblical narrative is not so clean. God’s power often falls into question. Human beings convince God to change God’s intentions. God seems unable to stop certain events. At the peak of the Christian narrative, God forsakes all power in an act of love.
Interesting, then, that the most common thing we sing about is God being powerful.
God is personal.
“Lord of my heart,” “my best thought,” “heart of my own heart,” “my God, how great thou art!” God’s faithfulness may be great, but do not forget those “blessings all mine.” “The Lord has promised good to me,” declares the bold testimony of God’s amazing grace. This theological theme is clear: Faith is about me and God. It is a personal relationship.
I think music highlights the personal component of faith because, just like a good melody can move your soul, the thought of a God who is the “heart of your own heart” can bring anybody to tears. We are pretty self-centered creatures, so singing about a God who is 100% focused on me speaks to our natural tendencies.
Contrast the personal focus of the first four hymns however, with the communal words of “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and you find an interesting difference. The number one most popular hymn speaks of communal worship of a God who is wholly set apart. Not a God of our individual hearts but a God whom we gather together and bow before. We cannot even see this God, “hidden in darkness,” as the hymn describes.
Which portrayal speaks to your experience of God? Personal? Communal? Close? Distant?
God has done…something.
What has God done? Well, that depends. For the author of “Be Thou My Vision,” God has won your victory. Vague, but inspiring nonetheless. If you are drawn to God’s faithfulness, then it is all about “pardon for sin, and a peace that endureth.” Elvis gives us the most detail, singing about how God “on that cross, my burden gladly bearing, he bled and died to take away my sin.”
Grace, it seems, is what God has done. Grace that saved a wretch like me. Grace that has relieved my fears.
Those familiar with different theologies of grace, though, will notice the subtle differences here. The language of “Be Thou My Vision” implies the christus victor doctrine of atonement, centering on God’s victory over evil through the death and resurrection of Christ. “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” on the other hand, is all about forensic atonement: the point of grace is to pardon our sin. “How Great Thou Art” goes deeper into substitutionary atonement, where Jesus “gladly” bears our burdens on the cross in order to take away our sin.
Maybe that is why “Amazing Grace” has lasted so long. Rather than airing out the specifics of grace’s inner workings, the hymn simply acknowledges that when I was in trouble, grace saved me. I was lost, and now I am found.
Which narrative of God’s work speaks to you? What notion of grace do you connect with?
God is present.
No apologies - I like this theme the best. Far from the sense that one individual is claiming God for herself, these lines celebrate the simple presence of God. “Thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide,” as one spends time in the presence of “the woods and forest glades.” God’s presence is “my light,” as I am with God and “thou with me, Lord.”
When people ask where God is in the midst of tragedy, pastors are trained to respond with this simple affirmation: God is with us. It is there in the very name of Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us. God is present. God has promised to be with us, “always, even to the end of the age” (Mt 28.20).
Maybe that is a good takeaway from this whole exercise. No matter what we claim to believe, and no matter how the words of our hymns compare to the words of our creeds, God is with us.
If we can ground our faith in that promise, I think we are in good shape.
Image in the public domain, uploaded by Sailko on Wikimedia Commons. Cropped from Original.
Gabe Horton is a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School and a pastoral intern at Belle Meade United Methodist Church in Nashville, TN. He blogs at UMC Lead.