Singing Old Hymns in New Ways: Jay McDaniel and Al Gephart

Singing Old Hymns in New Ways

Jay McDaniel and Al Gephart

Congregational singing is an important part of Christian worship. For Christians with open and relational (process) sensibilities, the lyrics of many traditional and beloved hymns—such as 'How Great Thou Art' and 'Old Rugged Cross'—can be problematic. These lyrics often convey images of divine coercion, substitutionary atonement, and sharp binaries between the saved and the unsaved. Yet, there is joy in singing them with others, partly due to the familiar melodies and rhythms. Moreover, a sense of fellowship emerges through singing "together" that is absent in the more solitary practice of listening to sermons. For many, the highlight of a worship service is not the sermon’s verbal message but the sounds of the music, which communicate their own non-verbal messages. Furthermore, for some people, under certain circumstances, traditional hymns can be life-saving. In the face of trauma, healing emerges from the music in ways that cannot occur otherwise. This leads us to the question: To sing or not to sing? Behind this lies a more theoretical question: How much of a hymn's meaning resides in its lyrics, and how much in its melodies and the fellowship they inspire? Al Gephart and I offer these reflections as springboards for your own contemplation.

- Jay McDaniel

Hymns are more than Lyrics

Jay McDaniel

Imagine that you are an open and relational Christian in church on a Sunday morning, and the congregational hymn you're invited to sing contains lyrics which, if taken at face value, you disagree with and think have been harmful to people. Let's say that it's "How Great Thou Art." You love the melody and the lyrics to the first verse, about the beauty and grandeur of the universe; they resonate with your heart. But you have particular problems with a verse that comes later:

"And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin."

You recognize that this verse affirms God "sending" Jesus to die for your sins, and you really don't think of God this way. It turns God into a rigid and legalistic moralist, and a bit mean-spirited at that. Why should someone have to be killed in order for your sins be taken away? Why is violence demanded, by God, in order for forgiveness to occur? Should you sing along?

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I know people for whom the answer is "no." They find too much of what they call bad theology in the old hymns: theology that focuses on God as a king on a throne needing to be flattered, or on Jesus as having died on the cross because God was unable or unwilling to forgive sinners without such a death, or on the entire non-Christian world as going to hell because it happens not to be Christian. When asked to sing hymns with such themes, they cannot, in good conscience, sing them. And they worry about others singing them, too, because they know that theology comes to people, not simply through a recitation of creeds or a hearing of sermons, but through the words of hymns.

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In considering this question for myself, a friend and guide, Al Gephart, comes to mind. He is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) who holds master’s degrees in theology and church and choral music. I have been reading and enjoying his essay titled "My Spiritual Journey Is Like a Music Crescendo" in "Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God." He tells the story about growing up in a conservative, fundamentalist religious setting:

"I grew up in a conservative, fundamentalist Christian home. I am grateful for the sense of God’s Presence that I experienced there, my introduction to the Bible, and to Jesus. At the same time, even as a teenager, I began to have many questions—questions about the Bible and evolution, about Jesus being God, and about Christianity as the only way of salvation. What about my friends who were not Christian? Or those who chose to attend more liberal churches? Were they all wrong?"

He then adds:

"Music was an integral, important part of my life, almost from the beginning. It was music more than anything that conveyed and lodged in my heart my early Christian faith. I loved to sing the hymns and choruses I learned at church. Hymns like “The Old Rugged Cross,” “How Great Thou Art,” “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine,” and choruses like “Safe Am I in the Hollow of His Hand.”

Over time, Al Gephart discovered process theology, and a host of other ways of thinking, that helped him move beyond his conservative, fundamentalist upbringing into what is a more open and relational approach to life.

He now finds himself able to appreciate wisdom in other religious traditions, to say "yes" to Jesus and salvation in ways that help him to become more open, not closed, to others; to appreciate complementary relations between faith and science; to appreciate the beauty of the natural world as a sacrament in its own right; and, above all, to find God in beauty, not in rules and dogmas. He is indeed an open and relational Presbyterian minister who, I might add, still loves and finds God in music.

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I do not know if Al Gephart still sings "How Great Thou Art" with gusto, but I know that many people do. "How Great Thou Art" was voted the British public's favorite hymn by BBC's Songs of Praise. It was ranked second (after "Amazing Grace") on a list of the favorite hymns of all time in a survey by Christianity Today magazine in 2001 and in a nationwide poll by Songs Of Praise in 2019.

I, too, sing the hymn all the time, when I do singalong music at senior citizen centers, rehabilitation centers, and memory care centers for folks with dementia. In these contexts my aim is not to entertain people but rather to share songs they can sing along with and, along the way, feel a moment of intensity and feeling and togetherness. When we sing "How Great Thou Art," we feel together, Just for the record, we sing "Old Rugged Cross, too.

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Inspired by Al Gephart's story, I ask myself: What is the meaning of a hymn, anyway? Certainly these hymns nourished his faith as a child. They nourished mine, too. I remember standing next to my father, in church, and hearing him sing.

It is tempting for those of a theological mindset to think of the meaning of a hymn as residing primarily in its lyrics and the ideas they convey or communicate. On this view, the melody and rhythm of a hymn are mere backdrop to the ideas, which are the basic point of the hymn: to give a "theology" by means of music. The assumption is that meaning is word-based and idea-centered. It is logos.

As a process thinker influenced by Whitehead, however, I think of meaning differently. I think the meaning of a hymn lies in how it functions in the social lives of people relative to the contexts of their lives, in how it is used. And following Whitehead, I think the meaning of a hymn lies in how it is experienced at multiple levels, emotionally and relationally as well as intellectually.

I am influenced by Whitehead's idea that "value" lies, not in ideas entertained by the mind, but in what he calls the subjective intensity of experience itself. John Cobb, a leading process theology, takes Whitehead's idea and suggests that value lies in what Cobb calls "richness of experience," a richness that includes harmony and intensity.

If the meaning of a hymn lies in the richness of experience it evokes in singers and listeners, then it is a serious mistake to restrict meaning to ideas communicated in lyrics or to prioritize them as more important than other elements. It is better to consider meaning in a more holistic way. The meaning of a hymn lies in the feelings evoked by its melodies and rhythms, the memories and cultural associations it brings when singing it, the modes of togetherness felt by the singers as they sing it or hear it, and the ways that they are inwardly touched (consoled, inspired, challenged) in the singing. The lyrics are part of the meaning, too, but they are but one part of the meaning of the hymn, and they may not be the most important. When I sing "How Great Thou Art" and "Old Rugged Cross" in memory care centers, the lyrics are incidental. As I sing the lyrics are almost like chants: theopoetic, but not theological. Everything depends on context.

This applies to a worship service, too. The kind of "richness of experience" evoked by a hymn depends not only on the musicians and the singer/listeners, but on the place of the music in the context of the liturgy. The congregational music is part of a larger dance of feeling and experience contained in a liturgy and its meaning lies in that dance. It's meaning depends on prayers, invocations, holy communion, confession, and the silence of a larger evolving whole.

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Back, then, to the question. Should I sing the old hymns or would singing be an act of dishonesty, of bad faith? Here I am again inspired by Al Gephart. At the end of his essay he points to the importance of beauty:

"There’s the beauty of nature; the beauty of a well-executed basketball play; the beauty of a small helicopter flying around the surface of Mars; the beauty of compassion shown to a stranger in need; the beauty of negotiations for peace. I look for it as I take walks and as I read the daily paper."

Along with other process theologians he finds God in beauty and sees love as a supreme form of beauty. In light of this, he finds the views of Ilio Delio especially helpful, and quotes her:

“I believe in one God, one human family, one planetary community, one body, one love, uniting all in beauty, for God’s infinite love is infinite, fecund, and beautiful. I believe I am entangled with all earth life and all living creatures, I believe this future is the relational unity of all things in God, I believe this earth has a future entangled with God, I believe the heart of God is love. Beliefs guide us, faith strengthens us, but love—well, love is the core energy of life. Where there is love, there is no death, only future. Love raised Jesus from the dead; love heals and makes whole. It is time to stop talking about the risen Christ and begin loving in a radically new way. The power in our midst of reimagining a new world is love.” (The Not-Yet God, 2023)

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I think Al Gephart would invite me to ask: "In singing this hymn, am I contributing to the cause of Love - the very love that raised Jesus from the dead, heals us and makes us whole."

I cannot answer for others or for Al Gephart, but for me the answer is: Yes, sing them with gusto, if it helps foster the spirit of love. In singing. you need not cross your fingers as if you don't mean it. But what you 'mean' is not that you agree with the lyrics, but that you sign on to the experience of singing together, for love's sake, sometimes despite the lyrics and sometimes with little regard for the lyrics at all.

I cannot help but wonder if a moment of singing hymns isn't, in its own way, a moment that contributes to reimaging the world in a new way, and perhaps even adding to the very future of the cosmos, because it adds beauty to the world. I realize that there is a need to create new hymns, too, of the sort Sheri Kling has written. Click here. I want to sing them, too. But I also want to sing "How Great Thou Art."

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Whitehead speaks of language as a lure for feeling. This includes the lyrics of hymns. They function in human life, not simply as statements of matters of fact, but as invitations to feel and imagine the world in new ways. I wonder if, as people sing "How Great Thou Art" and "Old Rugged Cross," they might experience lures for feeling that are in service to a more radical love, even as some of the lyrics might be problematic.

I have argued that the meaning of a hymn is not reducible to its lyrics. I also wonder if the meaning of the lyrics might be transformed by its melodies and rhythms, and by the context in which it is sung. Might even the problematic theologies be rendered less problematic, and even transformed, by the beauty of the melodies and rhythms and by the community of singers as they sing 'together.' Perhaps this is one reason why, in Al Gephart's early life, he sensed God's presence even in what he now thinks of as an overly conservative, fundamentalist setting. Perhaps the love to which he is now drawn was also present, there, if not in the sermons, then at least in the hymns, and profoundly so.

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Like most open and relational thinkers, Al Gephart is in process, and he is questioning many things. Aren't we all? He writes:

"Behind my questions and my doubts is the Lure of God drawing me forward to a broader, more inclusive worldview. What I hold to today is open to review tomorrow, for life is an ongoing process. It is a never completed, life-time adventurous journey of discovery with God. There is no doubt still more arm-stretching to be done."

Let our arms be stretched by the imaginative possibility that, after all, many of the old hymns some of us once sung, are singable again, with gusto, as creatively transformed by new ways of thinking.

Might even the Psalms be creative transformed? I ask this because I am a lay associate in a Benedictine community that sings the Pslams every day, and some of them are morally atrocious. But in their singing of them, they beatify the Psalms, they transform them into the purposes of love. They don't leave them behind. They don't call them "bad" theology, They sing them into new meanings. They sing them into love. I think Al Gephart would understand.

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The God in whom Al Gehart believes, and in whom I believe as well, is truly great. It is easy to sing "How Great Thou Art" to an ungraspable presence who is, in fact, unbounded love. And who is forever drawing us forward into wider horizons. MIght some of the old hymns be vessels by which this drawing forward occurs? Surely so. Then sings my soul, How Great Thou Art. Not great in the sense of being a puppeteer or a bully in the sky, but great in the sense of being sovereign love. To no lesser god may we be surrendered.

- Jay McDaniel

But Lyrics count, too!

Al Gephart

I have a slightly different take on hymn singing from what you wrote and want to get back to you before you post it. Perhaps it comes on the one hand from my fundamentalist past, knowing the hold this perspective can have, from my many years of planning and leading worship, and from my training in music as a singer and choral conductor.

Early in my ministry I bought into the McLuhan concept that “the media is the message.” It means that the whole worship experience speaks in verbal and non-verbal ways, not just what is said from the pulpit or in the words of the liturgy. So as a worship planner I wanted to be cognizant of that, trying to have the whole service have integrity with the message.

In hymn choice I was aware that both the lyrics and the music carried the message. It “spoke” both cognitively and affectively. For me this means that on the one hand, the message of a hymn can have a hold on us when the lyrics have lost their meaning. Likewise, as you suggest, it can also mean that we can “feel” a deeper message of a hymn, a call to love for example, and project that onto a hymn sung in the past when the lyrics no longer speak as they once did. Such a portrayal may even challenge the message it declares of God and Jesus.

I wanted the hymns I chose for the service each week to be consonant with the view of God, Jesus, and life I sought to expound from the pulpit. This meant that I deliberately did not choose hymns that presented a different view, for example, hymns that speak of divine omnipotence and absolute control, or that portray Jesus as sent from heaven for the express purpose of dying on the cross to save us all from our sins. I didn’t want those hymns teaching a contrary word, and more than that, lodging deep in the hearts of members. It was time to move on, as difficult as that process might be. The media, this process, was part of the message! I even found myself not choosing ancient creeds (Nicea, for example) that needed so much re-interpretation in order to fit with the message I sought to convey. I found other statements of faith that resonated better.

Hymns, I think, are time-bound. There is a continual perishing of hymns like there is of everything else. We can’t simply hold on to all of those in the past as our perspectives change and we come to new expressions of our faith. Some hymns must be let go. And isn’t that in itself an important message! Our growth, our “fall forward” involves a continuous letting go as we affirm new expressions. Ultimately, even our death is a part of this process. The love of God is the only great constant that ultimately secures and comforts us.

So how to deal with vestiges of the past that have meaning, particularly affective connections, when the lyrics no longer speak. There would be times when we would have a hymn-sing, or congregational hymn-choice moments. In these times we would often sing hymns that I would most likely never choose when I planned the service, but which we would sing with gusto and from the depths of our hearts remembering earlier times. Or now and then one of those hymns might sneak its way into a service, but not as a steady diet.

Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God

For decades, millions of Christians have been leaving church behind. Among those who have stayed, not only individuals, but entire congregations are rejecting traditions that fail to address the challenges of our contemporary world. They yearn, instead, for a profound relationship with the ever-present God who is loving, inclusive, persuasive, and uncontrolling.

This rich and diverse collection of sermons, essays, and worship elements explores how to preach, teach, and practice Open, Relational, and Process theological perspectives in local faith communities. It is a powerful resource for pastors, ministers of worship arts, lay church leaders, professors of preaching, worship, and practical theology, and anyone seeking a deep understanding of God that aligns with the Bible, science, and inclusive love and justice for all life on Earth.