mnn727 Posted March 9, 2015 Posted March 9, 2015 One nuance about our hymn book that is sets it apart from all other hymn books is the diversity of subject matter. It is not all about praising god. It should be.
Scott Lloyd Posted March 9, 2015 Posted March 9, 2015 (edited) I'm not going to take your overly picky bait Scott, but I must respond to a couple. I expressed myself with earnest candor. I don't know why you regard that as baiting. The gospel and the church are certainly intertwined and not totally separable. However, the gospel (sometimes in its fullness) has always existed. The church has not. The Church is the vehicle by which the gospel is proclaimed and taught in all the world and the ordinances of salvation are administered to mankind. Without the Church, the gospel is of limited application to anyone; without the gospel, the Church has no purpose for being. As I said, the one is indispensable to the other. And yes, I have been a member much longer than 1985. Perhaps I'm older and more experienced in church than you think? Just because your wards didn't sing the hymn doesn't mean others didn't. I granted that there may have been pockets of the Church where the hymn was sung more frequently. It was established through surveys that some hymns in the 1950 hymnal were not very familiar to or well-used by the membership. "Come Thou Fount" was one of those that didn't make the cut. Doesn't make it a bad song. But it does counter the notion that it was left out because of some sort of anti-Protestant prejudice among the Church leadership. Ezra Taft Benson insisted on the inclusion of "How Great Thou Art." He didn't believe Billy Graham should have a monopoly on it and told him so at the funeral of J. Willard Marriott. There are a number of factors that affect the frequency with which a hymn is sung in the Church. As I've said elsewhere, there are a number of hymns in the current hymnal that deserve to be better known than they are. The church was still very Utah-centric in 1985 and has only recently started to make moves away from that (with board members from other areas, etc.) If honoring the legacy of the Mormon Pioneers is what you regard as being Utah-centric, I would earnestly disagree, for reasons I have already articulated. Perhaps people where you come from didn't talk about the new hymnbook, at the time. I heard quite a bit of comment about what was added and what was left out. I didn't particularly care, I just heard it. Of course people talked about it. It was a topic of conversation all over the Church. I don't know what this has to do with anything I wrote. One of the first stories I wrote after hiring on at the Church News in 1985 was a "second-day story" following up on the release of the new hymnbook. I would link to it, but that was in the days before newspaper articles were digitized and put on the Internet, which wouldn't come into being for another decade or so. Edited March 9, 2015 by Scott Lloyd
Pahoran Posted March 12, 2015 Posted March 12, 2015 Jesus, Once of Humble Birth. For many of the same reasons expressed in the OP. Note the soft cadences of the "Once" lines, and the triumph of the final "Now" in each stanza. The fact that it was written by Parley P. Pratt is a bonus. Regards, Pahoran 1
Scott Lloyd Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 Jesus, Once of Humble Birth.For many of the same reasons expressed in the OP. Note the soft cadences of the "Once" lines, and the triumph of the final "Now" in each stanza.The fact that it was written by Parley P. Pratt is a bonus.Regards,PahoranYes. What a glorious declaration of victory and deliverance! The text is brilliant and the musical setting sublime.
Scott Lloyd Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 (edited) I love the hymns with texts by Cecil Frances Alexander: "There Is a Green Hill Far Away," "Once in Royal David's City," "He Is Risen!" and one not in the our hymnbook, though it is in the Children's Songbook, "All Things Bright and Beautiful." Cecil Frances Alexander was an Anglican Sunday school teacher in Ireland who wrote verse to teach the children in her classes concepts about Jesus. Her words are beautiful in their simplicity, and, in every case mentioned above, have been set to appealing music. Edited March 13, 2015 by Scott Lloyd
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