I may have mentioned that I am teaching a class on hymns on Wednesday evenings. I’ve done this class before, and it is always fun. Yesterday we were talking about hymns as theological statements.
You may never think about this. For one thing, you may never think about hymns at all. I bet there are people who don’t think about hymns from one year to the next. I found, when I was doing research for the music part of the current publishing project, that classrooms are apparently only talking about hymns in the context of slavery. I found this rather weird, as religious music is an enormous fraction of all available music in nearly every genre (I believe that gansta rap is an exception), and it seems slightly odd to ignore it entirely — but far more odd to make an exception for one group of people in one time and place. Anyway, this encouraged me in my belief that people don’t think about hymns nearly enough.
But hymns are theological statements, whether good ones or bad ones. And when I teach about this, I like to use for my bad example the wonderful hymn, “Jerusalem” by William Blake and Charles Parry.
Here are the lyrics:
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.
This is a wonderful hymn in the sense that it has a lovely tune (you’ll hear it if you click that link up there) and beautiful words. However, the Minister of Christian Education hit the nail on the head last night when she described it as “theologically weird.”
The first verse is asking whether Jesus ever hung out in England. You or I might assume that this is intended in a figurative sense, but there are those who believe that Jesus spent the years which aren’t detailed in the Bible in England.
Here is an interesting and serious discussion of this, from the British Icons project. Here is a more loony explanation of the idea, from someone who believes it.
Not long ago, The Empress was imprisoned in a conversation on this subject with a random customer who took it a step further. Not only did Jesus spend His formative years in England, studying with Druids and working in a tin mine with his great-uncle Joseph, but he also brought his mother with him to visit New York and lay down a fortune in copper.
Well, I have two cooking shows here at my house this weekend, so today will involve mostly cleaning, once I have done my computer work. I can sing “Jerusalem” while scrubbing.
I fall into the minority of people who think about hymns a lot, read books and articles about hymns, read books of hymns [especially new ones], and write hymns my own self. And in that context, I admit that I had no idea that hymn you quoted existed, and I agree that it is weird beyond description.
Best of luck with your cooking shows this weekend; at least you don’t have to drive to them….
weird theology is right, there are numerous hymms and worship songs sung even now that are just off. I refuse to sing them. I have purposely not sung in choir on some sundays because the music was just thologically wrong. during christmas I don’t sing most of the time. I just can’t do it, I feel like I’m singing a lie. It takes a worship leader or choir director with sound theology just a little bit of extra time when choosing music so why do they continue to choose stuff that’s just not right? It drives me nuts.
ryc: silent night, holy night – I don’t believe Jesus was born on a cold winters night.
Like a rose trampled to the ground, you thought of me above all. He wasn’t thinking of me, He was doing His Father’s Will. I was not foremost on His mind. yes, His crucifiction paid the price for my sins but to elavate me something I’m not is wrong.
and any 7-11 worship song. you know the ones. sing the 7 some words 11 times. Jesus is worthy of more than that. yes there are times of praise & worship that there are no other words to express who Jesus is, but every Sunday the same thing over & over, more like an anthem than anything else.
I know it seems somewhat trite and silly of me but it’s one of those things I just can’t work through, so rather than feel like I’m compromising I just don’t sing the words. Which believe is sometimes very hard. I love to sing to The Lord, I love to sing about who He is and what He has done. I won’t make it trivial.
I’ve heard the story behind the hymn although I suspect Blake probably was talking about Jerusalem in England more metaphorically. Sort of replacing the hell of the mills with more ‘heavenly’ buildings. We studied the english mills with respect to child labour when we were at primary school and for the poor little kids (and adults) who had to work there it was not a nice place to be – although ‘satanic’ is perhaps a little strong – poetic license I guess.
Oh, so your flax and our flax is not the same, that probably explains why I always had difficulty working out how our flax could get transformed into linen thread.
Jerusalem was one of the hymns we had to sing at school – I never liked it ‘cos I used to think the final verse was a little silly. The only hymn that I didn’t mind mouthing the words to (I never actually sang during these sessions) was ‘The Lord is my shepherd’. I liked the words but thought that they could have found a better tune for the words. That was my main gripe with all the hymns we sang at school, often the words were nice but all the music sounded dirgelike to me. I thought that if hymns were supposed to be celebratory then the music should also be.
Perhaps, but I have never actually heard any non-dirgelike hymns over here. Admittedly my experience of hymns is very limited – one year at Sunday School when I was about 5 – I only remember happy little tunes that we sung there, 4 years of high school assemblies – dirgelike hymns – and the occasional funeral – also with dirgelike hymns (which are probably more appropriate at a funeral anyway)
I like that hymn – Jerusalem – but mainly I suppose because I associate it with favorite movies set in Britian. I’ve never heard it sung here. Growing up Catholic, you don’t hear a large variety of hymns. Isn’t that funny? There were like a few tried and true that we sang over and over and over again.
I do enjoy the old-timey hymns that were featured in O Brother Where Art Thou, or that one hears on Garrison Keillor’s Prarie Home Companion. I find them enormously comforting, even though they’re not necessarily the kind of music I grew up listening to.