Earlier this year, NPR told the story of Teresa MacBain, a United Methodist pastor who had stopped believing in God. In March, when she just couldn’t keep it to herself anymore, she told the American Atheists Convention that she was one of them.
Coming out as an atheist felt good. But when she got home to Tallahassee, Florida, she discovered that a video of her coming-out speech had gone viral. Her church and community shunned her.
I was saddened but not surprised. Many people attend seminary because they are seeking answers to serious questions about the faith. When they do pastoral care, those questions become sharper.
What really caught my attention about MacBain’s story was this: “I miss the music,” she told NPR. “Some of the hymns, I still catch myself singing them,” she said. “I mean, they’re beautiful pieces of music.”
RE: “Coming out as an atheist felt good. But when she got home to Tallahassee, Florida, she discovered that a video of her coming-out speech had gone viral. Her church and community shunned her.”
How bigoted and divisive those church people were to reject their newly-announced atheist pastor!
; > )
The article is quite good, though.
Hey, if she went to the typical United Methodist seminary, any orthodox faith she arrived with would have been driven out of her before she was handed her MDiv and her annual conference BOOM (board of ordained ministries) would have confirmed this before ever allowing her to become an elder in full connection.
Humph! Screwtape is dancing a jig. I pray that the faith that undergirds the classic hymns will draw her back to faith. I find for myself that there is a hymn that fits almost every quandary. The tunes help me remember the concepts. I also find that I have memorized the words of service music, such as the Gloria, because they fit the tune. May music soothe her savage beast.
In the Faith,
NW Bob
A great pleasure of this article was its debunking the execrable “Imagine” of John Lennon : just hypocritical cant about the joys of living with no possessions from a fabulously wealthy, worldly rocker. And a dreary tune too.
I’m not inclined to the view that the Early Christians lacked many hymns. What has come down to us may be negligible (due to the extreme distance in age from us, those ancient documents are unlikely to have survived), but there are numerous references in the sources to the first believers singing hymns. Good evidence I think that they once existed, although they are no longer extant.
Those haunting holy songs might just be enough to recall the fallen back to the faith.
I too found it quite odd that the article harped on early Christians not singing! After all, it is recorded that Jesus and his disciples sang a hymn on the night of the Last Supper before going to Gethsemene. And you have the record of Paul & Silas singing in prison. The command in Ephesians to sing Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs… and the various fragments of hymns in some of the Epistles.
I would think that all pretty good evidence that early Christians sang!
Yes, a good article.
But Karen B. makes a good point about singing in scripture.
i suspect there are more references in the Church Fathers to singing as well. Eusebius about a century before Augustine wrote: “The unison voices of Christians would be more acceptable to God than any musical instrument. Accordingly in all the churches of God, united in soul and attitude, with one mind and in agreement of faith and piety we send up a unison melody in the words of the Psalms.” (commentary on Psalms 91:2-3)
St Hilary and St Ambrose both composed hymns.
Methodism at it’s best has a sweet piety and community concern that make it a compelling religion. It can slide into sentimentalism, just as the social concerns can slide into the social gospel. Since the union of the northern and southern Methodist Churches in 1939, they have slid into theological modernism, but there are still pockets of historic Wesleyan faith out there. I especially like the hymns of Charles Wesley, and can easily believe that they “haunt” this woman. May God grant her grace through music, since she can’t seem find it in theology.
As I understand it, the early Church had a hymnal, which we call the biblical book of Psalms. Until very recently, psalms had a prominent place in the Catholic Mass; hymns have replaced the proper psalms and antiphons in general usage, but there is a movement to reverse that trend.
I’m glad to see that the trend is being reversed, and I’d like to see it duplicated in our Anglican churches, while not neglecting the hymns.
Yes, seems to ignore the hymns in the NT canon, too, but I suspect that since they emphatically DID NOT HAVE A PRAISE BAND sheet music score to be known by, the author was just trying to be seeker friendly by suggesting our hymn time is really where it is AT. /cynicism