Monthly column for hymns and songs

Worship & war

Before this series signs off (next month, after four years; believe it or not, it replaced Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in the paper), and before postmodernism is eclipsed by something else, let's try out a bit of pm-ism here. That is, the text you are reading and singing from may sometimes be crucially defined by its context or its readers, whatever the author thought it meant.

For example, however you chose to remember September 11, November 11 still reverberates at least in the older national British consciousness. 'Armistice Day' may have been transferred to 'Remembrance Sunday', but it is 11/11 which defines the relevant religious observance-for some, the last surviving vestige of a liturgical year.

The choice of hymns, even by those who choose to ignore the silence, carries its own message to insiders and outsiders alike. Earlier this year, as Iraq appeared to explode in death and destruction, I found myself at a cathedral service where only one congregational hymn was sung. Argue about that if you like; the point is that someone (the Dean?) had chosen Henry Kirke White's words ('altd.' as ever), 'Oft in danger, oft in woe'.

We had just prayed fervently for peace; for the wounded, the bereaved, the powers that be, the soldiers and their families, if not our enemies. The more thoughtful prayers in many churches that week reflected some deep divisions running through the church and the nation, about government policy and its military aims and methods. But the hymn seemed to push us firmly in one direction. We rose to sing, 'Join the war and face the foe... March in heavenly armour clad... Victory soon shall tune your song... Onward then in battle move' and similar blood-stirring themes.

Now Henry K.W., the young Cambridge student aged no more than 20, a keen evangelical protege of Charles Simeon, can hardly have been thinking of jets, tanks, missiles and gas masks as he jotted down those words, rooted as they are in Ephesians 6 and other 'spiritual warfare' chapters. But equally it was impossible not to relate his text on that particular Sunday to the events that, say, 99% of the congregation would be going home to watch on TV immediately after the service. They had watched the night before, they would watch the night after, and so on.

Unlike the aforementioned Doctor DML-J seems to have said, I cannot imagine the congregation on the mount hearing 'Love your enemies' without instantly thinking of the occupying Roman soldiers strutting along the roads and through the towns of Galilee below.

In other words, the impact of the verses of a hymn will be felt in ways which may go far beyond, or even oppose, the intention of the author or the editors. All hymns, not just the battle songs, need to be carefully chosen; and then not for a stirring first line only, or a rousing tune which the musicians or choir enjoy, but for their wider resonance in the lives of those who sing.

Don't abandon the battle

I am not urging anyone to abandon hymns which use battle metaphors, though some other ways of putting it are relatively under-used. But it may be helpful to imagine ourselves singing beside Christians from Iraq, Palestine, Israel, the USA, or even France. Some do anyway; all will one day.

And the worship area is not just the space up front between the pulpit and the organ. We enter it whenever we find our way out of the meeting place, whether the cathedral's great west door or the fire exit from the mission hall, to breathe the air and meet the people outside.

Christopher Idle

© Evangelicals Now - November 2003
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