What to Sing: Psalms vs. Blasphemy & a Question of Content
It has been found accordingly in some of our Congregations, that in length of Time, their Singing has degenerated, into an Odd Noise…
-Cotton Mather, The Accomplished Singer (1721)
When we last left our heroes, the ministers of New England had begun calling for an elevation in music literacy. In 1720 Thomas Symmes had kicked off a deluge of pamphlets complaining about the quality of singing in New England congregations and the coming decade saw the beginnings of the New England Singing School movement, as well as the first publications of tunebooks for teaching in those schools. The “Singing School” was a kind of class or workshop series where more educated musicians would visit a church and lead a series of workshops on the basics of singing and reading sheet music. These classes and the groups that formed around them were part of a seismic shift in New England church music that went way beyond the notes being sung.
The Puritans of 17th century New England imported the psalm chanting traditions of Calvin’s austere Reformation. They believed, as Calvin had taught their great grandparents, that the only lyrics necessary or worthy for praising God, had been given to us in the Book of Psalms. They believed that the psalms and their sentiment could be internalized by chanting the words together in community. They considered everything else, every lyric written by human hands, to be blasphemous in church. Of course, there are numerous other songs recorded in the bible, but fundamentalists have always picked and chosen their favorite parts of scripture, so here we are.
Cotton Mather, perhaps a moderate in this area, thought that other songs based in the bible could be sung in church, but leaned heavy on the centrality of the psalms.
The Sacred Scriptures, which have Directed us to Sing unto the Lord, and Bless His Name; have also supplied us with an admirable and sufficient Matter for our Songs. We have a PSALTER, whereof the biggest part is of PSALMS, that were Composed by David, the sweet Singer of Israel.
The first book printed in the colonies was the Bay Psalm Book. It was a collaboration of the leading ministers in Boston to write verse as similar to the psalms as possible, changing only what was necessary to make them singable. It was meant to adhere more closely to the ‘original’ text of the psalms than the psalm book they’d brought over from Europe, called affectionately, “Sternhold and Hopkins.” Sternhold and Hopkins was a close interpretation of the Psalms, but apparently, not close enough.
Back in Europe, the followers of Martin Luther, who wrote several dozen hymns, had been arguing with Calvin’s followers about this since the 1500s. While Calvin’s psalm-only tradition had so far won the day in New England, the hymn-singing revolution was always on the horizon. Luther loved congregational singing. In his foreword to a collection of chorale motets, he wrote,
“A person who… does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God, must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs.”
In the Colonies though, the hymn revolution landed on our shores with the music of Isaac Watts. Watts published his first hymn book in England in 1707 and it only took a few years for his hymns to arrive in the Colonies. Watts is recognised as the “Godfather of English Hymnody.” He wrote more than 750 hymns and it was the popularity of his music that would begin to threaten the dominance of psalms in New England. Four of his hymns are still included in “Singing the Living Tradition” today. People couldn’t get enough of those Watts lyrics! So much so that these “human composures” challenged the exclusivity of psalms as the only source of lyrics for Sunday morning. Eleanor Billings wrote,
“Isaac Watts began to publish hymns that no longer even pretended to come from the Bible but were wholly his own creation. Many more conservative folks found this to be blasphemy.”
Many congregants of New England were ready for Watts’ music. The 1720s had launched the singing school movement with books for teaching music, popular classes, and a loud call for change from ministers publishing pamphlets. Over the coming decades there are “occasional references to ‘thousands’ of singing schools and ‘great numbers’ of singing masters.” (Allen Britton)
Once groups were getting together in Singing Schools to practice all the time, they began looking for more interesting music to sing. If you’re going to attend classes to learn to read music, to learn to sing in harmony, to practice your intonation and experience the sound of a community singing in harmony together, it’s perhaps no surprise that both the lyrics and music of chanting the Psalms might begin to lose their luster. It seems that the rise of the hymn form was both a cause and effect of the singing schools. But the newfound interest in hymns was not without a backlash.
A generation after congregants had began attending singing schools at the behest of their ministers, their ministers were now scolding them for singing the ‘human composures’ that their newfound interests had led them to. The ministers who called for a reform in our music didn’t understand that changing the music would also change our identity. New music means new culture, which opens the door to new values…but not without a fight!
In the late 1700s a war at the intersection of culture and theology raged over this question of whether original lyrics could be used in church. And intellectual wars at the time were fought with pamphlets! Want some more amazing titles from this new round of pamphlet wars?
- Plain Reasons Why Neither Dr. Watts Imitations of the Psalms. nor His Other Poems, nor Any Other Human Composition. Ought to Be Used in the Praises of the Great God our Savior…
- A Letter on Psalmody. Shewing That Human Composures Ought Not to Be Used in Christian Worship
- A Discourse on the Divine Ordinance of Singing Psalms. Intended to Prove . . . . That the Scripture Songs Are the Only Forms of Psalmody, Which Ought to Be Used
- A Discourse on Psalmody; in Which It Is Clearly Shewn That It Is the Duty of Christians to Take the Principal Subjects and Occasions of Their Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, from the Gospel of Christ
The conservatives held out for the exclusive singing of David’s Psalms. The liberals thought praise and inspiration could come in other forms, including in the poetry of Watts. We might consider this a version of the claim that “revelation is not sealed,” a defining feature of liberal religion, as James Luther Adams later said.
Despite these many pamphlets and their catchy titles, we know how the story ends. One historian, Allen Britton, summed it up this way, “As usual, the liberals won out, and hymns began to supplant psalms as vehicles of divine praise.”
There are still certainly conversations, sometimes lively ones, in our congregations about what kind of music and what kind of lyrics are appropriate for church. But I have to agree with Britton here. Of all the arguments we’ll look back on, expanding the source of our song lyrics might be the most decisive of victories. UUs have largely agreed that revelation is not sealed and that inspiration can come from anywhere… Watts, Billings, Dylan, or Swift.
The transition from psalms to hymns was just the first major transition of our theology as expressed through music. Once we were singing hymns, hymn lyrics evolved as our tradition evolved. In 1959, Henry Wilder Foote, the great historian of UU hymnody, laid out four periods of Unitarian hymn-writing:
- Early 1800s: The first group of Unitarian hymn-writers whose names are known, including: John Quincy Adams, (1767–1848) Rev. John Pierpont (1785–1866), Prof. Andrews Norton (1786–1853), Rev. Frederic Henry Hedge (1805–1890)
- 1846: Samuel Longfellow and Samuel Johnson, publish “Book of Hymns” while still students at Harvard Divinity School. In 1864 they publish their larger and even more influential “Hymns of the Spirit.” They were strongly influenced by Transcendentalism, and drew on contemporary poetry of the time, expanding our sources of inspiration.
- The last third of the 1800s when our sung theology focused on a “broadly theistic interpretation of a universal religion.”
- 1900–1950: Foote defined this period by two writers: the ‘quiet mysticism’ of Rev. Marion Franklin Ham and ‘the stirring calls to social justice’ of Rev. John Haynes Holmes.
As far as I can tell, these four periods are defined by their changing lyrics, more than any shift in the music. Foote was writing in the 50’s, in what he still defined as the fourth period of Unitarian Hymnody. I might venture to say that we’ve had at least four more periods in the sixty years since then! Once we decided that the Book of Psalms wasn’t the only possible source for lyrics, Pandora’s Box was open. Ever since, our music has been able to expand as our theology has expanded.
I’ll also add that we often think of theology as the foundation of our congregations. Theology names our core values and our fundamental frameworks for understanding religion. We assume that the lyrics of our songs arise from our core beliefs. This is certainly true. But the singing school movement suggests that change moves in the other direction as well. When the culture of singing shifted, it changed the sources of our songs. Interest in new song form led to interest in new content. Culture follows theology, yes. But theology also follows culture.
For more on “What to Sing,” check out:
- History in the Meeting House. Eleanor Billings. 1986 Link here
- The Evolution of American Choral Music: Roots, Trends, and Composers before the 20th Century. James McCray. 2011. Link here
- The How and Why of Teaching Singing Schools in Eighteenth Century America. Allen P. Britton. 1989. Link here
- Theoretical Introductions in American Tune-Books to 1800, Allen P. Britton. 1949. Link here
- American Unitarian Hymn Writers and Hymns, Compiled by Henry Wilder Foote. 1959. Link here
- Plain Reasons Why Neither Dr. Watts Imitations of the Psalms. nor His Other Poems, nor Any Other Human Composition. Ought to Be Used in the Praises of the Great God our Savior… by Thomas Clark. 1828
Link here