Monday, June 23, 2008

Hymns In the News

And how often does that happen?

From the Times of London:

"Should these or any other activists attempt to breach the security around the conference at the Renaissance Hotel in west Jerusalem the 1,100 delegates have been instructed to start singing the hymn All hail the power of Jesus' name."

But do they all know
which tune they should use if the emergency arises?

UPDATE: Naturally this news story has provoked some discussion on the internets -- see "What hymn (or other song) should be sung when YOU disrupt GAFCON?" (contains the usual online mix of thoughtful and irreverent answers)

4 comments:

Leland Bryant Ross said...

Compromise is an Anglican virtue (or was till this Gafcon bunch came along), right? So they should sing all three in medley (MIDI), as I did with the Esperanto version in my online hymnal.

Of course, most any CM tune will do if those three are unavailable. I vote for Pisgah (with the embellishments missing from the Cyber Hymnal MIDI). YouTube Organ Version and Bowed Dulcimer Version. This is the tune we usually sing Watts's "When I can read my title clear" to.

Leland aka Haruo

C.W.S. said...

Since this is the crowd of so-called Anglicans that do not believe in compromise I am sure there must be only One Approved Tune.

On further refliection, I speculate that the conference attendees must have received in their welcome packet the music for the hymn, along with general hotel info like emergency exits and ice machine locations. Oh, and the approved text, too - you can't tell me that all those bishops know all the words to all the verses!

C.W.S. said...

Though it wouldn't surprise me if they just sang the first verse over and over and over.

Leland Bryant Ross said...

The approved Anglican tune for it is definitely Miles Lane. Coronation (the leading tune in most non-Anglican traditions), Diadem and Ladywell vie for second place, and there are also hymnals, mostly rather ancient, indexed at Oremus that use St. James, St. Magnus, Zwingle [sic], St. Asaph, Mirfield, Laus tibi, Christe and University. I sang two or three verses of it today to Pisgah while waiting for a bus, but there was no hint of biblically conditioned homophobia in my singing, though I did sing the crown-the-male-pronoun version rather than the New Century servant rewrite. ;-)

Leland aka Haruo