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Singing the Living Tradition has been described as the closest thing we Unitarian Universalists have to a sacred text. When I heard that our newest hymnal, Sing Out Love, would be an online resource, I was flustered by the idea of this new format. But the more I’ve learned about the history of our UU hymnals, the more it feels like the obvious next step, and perhaps even a return to our roots.
Here are three of our UU music traditions that will be carried on and expanded by an online hymnal.
1. Revisions & Additions
One of the first ventures of the newly formed UUA after merger in 1964 was to create a new hymnal. Its publication was followed almost immediately by second-wave feminism, which called for a revision of old patriarchal language that filled our lyrics with words like ‘mankind,’ and ‘brotherhood.’ The result was constant editing of the hymnal and newly printed revisions.
A similar shift had happened in the late 1700s after the American Revolution, when monarchy metaphors for the divine were suddenly out of fashion and congregants went through their hymnals crossing out royalist references.
Moreover, new music is always being written. It used to be that adding a song to a hymnal meant publishing a new book, but adding to Sing Out Love will only require an upload. Revisions and additions reflect our living tradition. An online hymnal that can change as quickly as we do, honors that tradition.
2. Local Resources
UU hymnody has never been contained in one hymnal.
The Sunday School Movement of the late 1800s saw a blossoming of songbooks specifically for religious education. Our tradition includes more than sixty-one different UU Sunday school hymnals!
Hymnals for worship have been just as diverse. Throughout the 1800s, parish ministers regularly published hymnals for their specific congregations. A hymnal wasn’t the voice of a denomination; it was a local resource. There was an ecosystem of songs and books being shared for specific communities on specific occasions.
UU music historian Henry Wilder Foote drives this home: “It will be noted that in the course of the 19th century no less than thirty-six different hymn-books appeared, a far larger number than any other American denomination can show for the same period, and illustrative of the extreme individualism of the Unitarian churches.”
How local were the early hymnals? Well, the title of the very first Unitarian hymnal, published in 1782, gives a sense of it:
“A Collection of Hymns, more particularly designed for the Use of the West Society in Boston.”
Other titles included:
- The Springfield Collection of Hymns for Sacred Worship, 1835
- Services and Hymns for the use of the Unitarian Church of Charleston, 1854
- The Soldier’s Hymn Book for Camp and Hospital, 1863
- Isles of Shoals Hymn Book and Candle Light Service, 1908 (A Star Island hymnal)
Sing Out Love means your community can print out a custom collection of your favorite hymns on a specific topic for a specific season. Or you can copy and paste lyric slides for any occasion. In this way, perhaps the online hymnal will be more like the 1800s than the 1900s!
3. Porous Borders
Our hymnals have always been in conversation with neighboring traditions, sacred and secular, including folk music, camp meeting songs, shape note singing, other denominations, and African American influences.
The 1964 hymnal of the newly formed UUA was the first to more explicitly include folk music into our hymnody cannon. The 1993 hymnal included folk music, African American spirituals, and world music. But perhaps part of the shift here was in naming the influence.
Wondrous Love, hymn #18 in Singing the Living Tradition, is a journey that tells this story. The song was originally a pirate’s murder ballad called “Captain Kidd.”
I murdered William More
As I sailed, as I sailed.
The melody may have then been used in camp meeting revivals that often drew upon popular tunes. But the lyrics were changed to something a bit more reverent:
What wondrous love is this!
Oh, my soul! Oh, my soul!
The melody and the new words were first printed together in a shape note book in 1840. Through the popularity of shape note singing, the song was eventually included in Protestant hymnals.
From murder ballad, to camp meeting song, to shape note hymn, to Sunday morning hymnals: Our music has always been in conversion with the wider culture around us. Sing Out Love allows for numerous arrangements, instrumentation, notations, and contextual information for each hymn, improving that tradition of drawing on diverse sources of culture and wisdom.
I can think of nothing more traditional than an online hymnal that allows for updates and revisions, localized resources, and porous borders. Here’s to the old roots of our new hymnal!