Edith L.
Blumhofer and Mark A. Noll, Singing the
Lord's Song in a Strange Land: Hymnody in the History of North American
Protestantism. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004. 264 pages.
ISBN 0-8173-1396-6. Reviewed by Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., for the Journal of Southern Religion.
Singing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land, edited by noted scholars Edith L.
Blumhofer and Mark A. Noll, is a collection of essays organized around an
effort to study the hymnody of American Protestant groups in relation to more
general issues of religion and society. The collection grows out of a project
on American hymnody sponsored by the Institute for the Study of American
Evangelicals at Wheaton College. The essays vary widely in focus, and only a
couple deal directly with the American South. But all, taken together, offer
methodological and conceptual perspectives that will be of interest to students
of Southern religion.
The volume
begins with a brief introduction by Blumhofer and Noll outlining the major aims
of the book, and a valuable opening essay by Stephen Marini describing a
database he has developed using over 200 evangelical hymnals published in
America between 1737 and 1969. Marini finds major shifts in evangelical hymnody
between the pre- and post-Civil War eras--shifts he accounts for, in part, as
products of the War itself--and argues that the key themes in evangelical
hymns, and changes in those themes, provide important avenues for recovering
concerns among believers. His conclusion that the changes represent a shift in
orientation "from witness in the fallen world to testimony among the
redeemed remnant" (32) is persuasively argued, and has major implications
for understanding religious development in the South.
Kay Norton's
essay on one of the first important Southern hymnals, Jesse Mercer's 1810 Cluster of Spiritual Songs (destined to
go through several editions), locates Mercer's work in the world of the
antebellum South, highlighting the importance of religious interactions between
white and black Christians. Insightfully comparing Mercer's selection with one
of its more important predecessors, A
Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs of Various Authors, compiled by the
founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Richard Allen, in 1801,
Norton demonstrates how hymnody can reveal the common religious heritage of
white and African-American believers. Looking forward to the classic Slave Songs of the United States, issued
in 1867 by Charles P. Ware, Lucy McKim Garrison, and William Francis Allen, she
demonstrates the continuing vitality of shared religious traditions.
Norton also
provides insights into issues of gender, especially as she documents the
inclusion of women hymn-writers and of often strikingly gendered language in
Mercer's Cluster. She also stresses
the important role of singing in giving women a voice in otherwise
male-dominated religious services. Norton also tries to integrate Native
Americans into her story, though the connections she draws with Mercer's
compilations are weak, and not really convincing.
The remaining
essays, though less directly related to the South, offer important clues for
research on Southern topics. Thus, for example, Barbara Murison's examination
of the creation of hymnbooks by Canadian Presbyterians presents a fascinating
picture of how complex processes of official, denominational hymnbook making
can be. Darryl Hart, in a study of twentieth-century Presbyterian hymnals, also
explores the treacherous world of denominational controversy while documenting,
here, the centrality of hymnody to denominational self-definition.
Three essays
address questions of identity through explorations of hymnody and language.
Scott E. Erickson looks at the hymns created and used by Swedish immigrants;
David Rempel Smucker focuses on the Mennonites--some in Virginia--as they moved
from German to English hymnody during the nineteenth century. In a particularly
interesting essay, Daniel Ramírez shows how Protestant, especially Pentecostal
inroads into traditionally Catholic Latino communities in the United States and
northern Mexico produced significant efforts to adapt hymns and song practices
for Mexican and Mexican-American audiences, as well as opportunities for
religious agency among believers themselves.
Readers
interested in the South will also find value in Chris Armstrong's persuasive
and provocative reading of Holiness hymns as, in his words, "emotional
scripts" (178) for the faithful. Placing emotional concerns at the center
of Holiness aims, Armstrong shows how both ministers and the laity turn to
hymns to express central beliefs--not only singing them in services, but also
quoting from them in a variety of devotional settings, from sermons to personal
testimonies. Providing an important expression of both faith and identity,
hymns assume a rhetorical power, Armstrong shows, going far beyond their
specific role in worship.
Readers will
also find useful a California story told by Daniel Fuller, Philip Goff, and
Katherine McGinn. This is the story of the extraordinarily effective use of
music on Charles E. Fuller's "Old Fashioned Revival Hour," an
American radio mainstay from 1937 to 1969. Drawing imaginatively on a treasure
trove of letters from listeners, the authors show how Charles Fuller used music
to create a community of the faithful that was national in scope--and a
foundation for techniques media-oriented revivalists continue to use. The
authors emphatically do not intend to reduce Charles Fuller's efforts to a
matter of media savvy. But they do call attention to the commercial potential
of sacred music in ways that anyone interested in religion in the South should
find relevant.
In all, and
despite the wide variation in focus among these essays, they make some common
and salient points for students of American religion, including religion in the
South. One, certainly, is to stress the importance of hymnody as an object of
study, at least where American Protestantism is concerned. Although perhaps a
bit too focused on textual analysis and not enough on issues of performance and
use (a point Armstrong's essay helps drive home), these essays emphasize that
hymns represent crucial statements of what believers believe and, more, of what
their religion means to them. Reflecting and shaping Protestant, and especially
evangelical concerns, hymns have simultaneously enacted and expressed feelings
of community and of individual faith in ways that other forms of religious
expression cannot fully match. As these essays show, whatever aspects of
religious belief and practice we hope to understand, we ignore hymnody at our
peril.
Dickson D.
Bruce, Jr.
University of
California, Irvine