Word: hymnals
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...nothing sacred? After church leaders set about updating the United Methodist Hymnal in 1984, their most controversial acts were to excise one of the most popular hymns in the Protestant repertoire, Onward Christian Soldiers, and to strip verses from The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The literal-minded rationale: a pro-peace church should not use "militaristic imagery." Outraged parishioners would have none of it. The two hymns were restored -- banners, watch fires and all -- after the revisionists were inundated with 11,000 protest letters...
...Other well-worn lines have not fared so well in the new hymnal, the most thorough overhaul since 1878. The latest version, 3 million copies of which are being shipped to churches, carries only half the 547 hymns contained in the previous, 1966 edition. Of those, 162 survive with rejiggered words. The most significant alterations involve not war and peace but the battle of the sexes. With women destined to form half of Methodist clergy early in the 21st century, the 16-man, nine-woman hymnal committee desexed many a familiar line that was deemed to perpetuate male bias...
Feminist clout also shows up in the book's liturgical section. In the new wedding ritual, for example, the father no longer gives away the bride. Another change in worship concerns the Lord's Supper. The abstemious Methodists specified in their 1966 hymnal that only "the pure unfermented juice of the grape shall be used." Teetotalers attending last year's Methodist conference failed to get that clause inscribed into church law, and the new hymnal omits the rule. So congregations may use wine if they wish, but most Methodists still opt for grape juice. Score one for tradition...
RELIGION: The new Methodist hymnal scores sexism...
...Romanticism, Friedrich's Monk by the Sea, 1808 -- a tiny figure contemplating infinity, culture lost before the magnitude of nature. In Kiefer's painting this is almost reversed; the main motif is a lead book without writing, its silvery pages full of light and as big as a medieval hymnal, an object as imposing as the seascape behind it. Is this the Book of Creation? Of Revelation? The unnamable form...