Out of the Depth
After months of absence for ill health, with sickness that made me doubt I would ever again be able to play a wind instrument, I was gratefully able to return to church and take up my place as the tuba player in the little orchestra that accompanies the hymns. I had always been thankful for the opportunity, for it relieved me of negotiating the verbal distractions of the popular Evangelical hymnal the congregation uses, whose feminist editors have been gnawing away at original wordings that use male terminology to refer to Christians collectively or to the human race. Now it’s “Rise up O Church of God” instead of “Men of God”; On Christmas it is “Good Christian Friends [instead of ‘Men’], Rejoice.” In “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” gone is Charles Wesley’s potent “Pleased as Man with men to dwell,” for “men” is replaced with the properly even-steven “us.” Even the old revivalist favorites have been gone over. In “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus,” “Ye that are men now serve him,” is now neatly de-sexed to “Ye that are brave now serve him.”
Not each and every wording offensive to the privileged sensibilities of people who hate the notion of male priority taught by St. Paul has yet been changed. There will doubtless be new editions; this is a work in progress. I must say, however, it has not been my experience that the people who wish to make this particular alteration to Christian doctrine are easily put off their game, and until Evangelical Christianity is able to identify the egalitarian editors of Celebrating Grace as attacking what they claim to celebrate, Evangelical churches will predictably keep buying the hymnal—for it is very long and now has plenty of “praise music” in it. Lex orandi, after all, is lex credendi; people like what they are used to, and the stealth hymnals may be expected to make the same changes in old beliefs as the stealth Bibles attempt—but perhaps more effectively, music being what it is.
A Strong Masculine Voice
I have no authority in this church but am something of an odd duck with opinions of his own, who is treated politely and cordially by his brethren. But one thing I can still do for them is play my tuba, and I play, when the music calls for it,
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S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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