Monthly column on hymns and songs

She was all smiles in the porch - nearly. An occasional visitor because her family lived nearby. Nothing to show that she was seething. But I too had relatives in the congregation that morning, and because they weren't deaf, I received over lunch a reported summary of her real opinions.

Why, she had demanded as we found number 321, did we have to sing songs from Urdu, of all things? Or words to that effect. Our Urdu-speaking son was amused. Goodness me, she might have added, are these (nickname deleted) even flooding our hymn-books now? And we used to be proud to be British!

Let's take soundings, one from the last century and two from this. William Young Fullerton, a name to be reckoned with in Baptist history, has soared well beyond denominational or evangelical divides by his superb hymn 'I cannot tell why he whom angels worship'. It is no disgrace, but an honour, that Christians of all traditions agree that as a composition worthy of the 'Londonderry Air' this has never been bettered.

Just before that hymn was born, Fullerton wrote: 'Years ago in Damascus I remember how the incongruity of bringing Western ways to Eastern minds struck me when I heard a Syrian congregation drawl out a psalm tune precisely as it used to be sung in my Northern home.' He was raised in Belfast. He hasn't finished: 'The East has still a good deal to teach us Westerners. It has already begun the lesson.'

UK multi-culturalism

Fullerton's conclusion was not that each nation should stick to its own hymns. (Cut out the American ones and where are we?) But that when the gospel we received 'goes back to its early home, and passes through the alembic of the Eastern mind once more, it will come back to us with a new glory.' Alembic? - means of refining or distilling. If he could see now the South London or Central Leicester neighbourhoods where he served, some things would amaze and grieve him, while others would astonish and delight him. Their multi-cultural Christian faith would surely be among the latter.

My second witness is a Toronto Presbyterian. 72 years on from Fullerton, Andrew Donaldson says to his fellow North Americans: 'People need to know - theologically, communally, emotionally - why they are singing a song from Mozambique. One evident reason is that our sisters and brothers in Mozambique (and many other countries besides) have been singing from our hymnbooks for generations. It's time we sang from theirs.'

These days, many of us are standing or kneeling next to Christians whose roots are in Somalia, Chile, India or Korea. 'Singing their songs as well as our own is a constant reminder to welcome others. It is a way of practising hospitality.' And that is only a start.

Our third witness is Australia. Lawrence Bartlett (now in glory) was speaking to us last summer in Bradford, where Christians have much to contribute to global understanding. Words and music from other countries, he said, give insight not into their geography and history but into our shared faith in Christ. We need one another's hymns. We must not bend them all into our idiom, as we have tried to do too often. If we don't like multi-culturalism now, however will we cope in heaven?

The lady in the porch should have been 'years ago in Damascus' with Fullerton, or maybe earlier still. There is a world of difference between inter-faith worship (fundamentally impossible) and international worship (fundamentally inescapable). It is good to find Northern Irish, Canadian and Australian voices in harmony. But to hear Baptists, Presbyterians and Anglicans singing from the same hymn-sheet - Hallelujah!

All nations, praise!

UK multi-culturalism

Christopher Idle

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