\nIs laid for your faith in God\u2019s excellent word;
\nWhat more can be said than to you God has said,
\nYou who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?<\/blockquote>\n
My first thought was, \u201cEwww! Were the hymnal editors allergic to pronouns?\u201d My second thought was, \u201cNo; they\u2019re only allergic to masculine pronouns.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gender-neutrality in hymns has been a topic of discussion for several decades if not more. I find some forms of it to be utterly unobjectionable (writing hymns that refer to both men and women) and others to be mildly so (rewriting older hymns to refer to both men and women). However, I have serious problems with taking hymns that refer to God as Father and King and rewriting them so that God is no longer even masculine.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/father-and-son-194x300.jpg\")
First, the only way to justify such a change is to perform some dramatic surgery on the Bible too. How many times in Scripture is God a He or a Him? How many times in the New Testament is He the Father? How many times in the Psalms is He King? Reading out of a Bible that says such things on the one hand and singing hymns that deny their truth on the other creates massive cognitive dissonance.<\/p>\n
(Yes; I am aware that there are Scriptural texts — Isaiah 49:15, for instance — that compare God to a woman. In I Thessalonians 2:7, Paul compares himself to a woman. That doesn\u2019t mean that Paul was feminine.)<\/p>\n
To be quite frank, we live in a society that needs to spend more time considering the patriarchal authority of God, not less. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s coincidence that the same folks who deny God\u2019s masculinity also reject what the word of God has to say about sex and gender roles (and many other things). At that point, regardless of what they might think about their \u201cworship\u201d, they are not prostrating themselves before Him in any meaningful sense. We don\u2019t need hymnals that encourage us to abandon reverence and subjection. We need the opposite.<\/p>\n
Finally, it shows a great deal of disdain for the hymnists of earlier eras, their convictions, and their work. I\u2019m as sure as I can be that if I had asked Robert Keene (the probable author of \u201cHow Firm a Foundation\u201d) if God was masculine, he would have replied incredulously, \u201cOf course!\u201d, and he certainly would not have approved stripping out the evidence of His masculinity from his hymn.<\/p>\n
Such lack of respect is par for the course for our amnesiac society. We are very concerned about diversity and honoring the views of people from the different cultures of our time, but we have zero interest in (dead white male) voices from the cultures of the past. In fact, we\u2019re so willing to stifle them that we\u2019ll do a hack job on a great hymn, rendering a beautiful line ugly and graceless, just to make sure that it expresses our viewpoint rather than the author\u2019s. Diversity that ain\u2019t.<\/p>\n
In Romans 8:15, Paul notes that we have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, \u201cAbba! Father!\u201d If, on the other hand, we no longer are willing to cry out, \u201cAbba, Father!\u201d, well, that too reveals a great deal about the spirit that is in us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Matthew W. Bassford The other day, I found myself going through some hymns of hope and comfort that a hymn blogger has been posting daily through the coronavirus pandemic. The style (organ plus choir) isn\u2019t my thing; from my perspective, you\u2019ve got a nasty instrument drowning out the good parts. However, the hymns themselves…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27],"tags":[1206,307,90,520],"class_list":["post-23309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-gender-neutral","tag-genders","tag-god","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":46799,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-song-leaders-can-pick-good-hymns\/","url_meta":{"origin":23309,"position":0},"title":"How Song Leaders Can Pick Good Hymns","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"December 23, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Matthew W. Bassford via\u00a0His Excellent Word Over the past month or two, I've heard from a few people who were wondering why I was writing so much about good and bad hymns. What's the take-home? What's the so-what? I have an extremely strong view of congregational autonomy, so I'm\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":53005,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/hymns-and-opportunity-cost\/","url_meta":{"origin":23309,"position":1},"title":"Hymns and Opportunity Cost","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 9, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"by Matthew W. Bassford As a rule, people have trouble understanding the importance of what they can't see. We prefer buying a big-screen TV to saving for retirement, so we benefit from ideas that help us to reckon with the unseen. Of these, one of my favorites is the concept\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":50032,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/evaluating-new-songs\/","url_meta":{"origin":23309,"position":2},"title":"Evaluating New Songs","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"July 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Mark Roberts in\u00a0Abundant Life\u00a0via\u00a0Meditate on These Things For the longest time, it seemed brethren were fairly certain Sacred Selections contained just about every hymn that needed to be sung. Like it or not, that has certainly changed. Many congregations are now using some other hymnal other than Sacred Selections.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/07\/song.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":67424,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/ten-of-the-best-known-early-english-hymns\/","url_meta":{"origin":23309,"position":3},"title":"Ten of the Best-Known Early English Hymns","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"May 17, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"by Wayne S. Walker Our English word \"hymn\" comes from a Greek term (humnos) meaning \"a sacred song\" and is defined as \"a song of praise, adoration, thanksgiving, etc., especially one sung at a religious service.\" We often use the term generically to refer to any religious song, but hymnologists\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":86059,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/psalms-hymns-and-spiritual-songs\/","url_meta":{"origin":23309,"position":4},"title":"Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 25, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"by Wayne S. Walker via\u00a0Biblical Insights, Vol. 15 No. 1, January 2015 We know from the New Testament and can infer from later writings of church leaders that Christians of the first century did sing in their worship, but we do not know precisely what songs they sang or exactly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":62473,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/reflecting-on-hoods-in-my-hymnal\/","url_meta":{"origin":23309,"position":5},"title":"Reflecting on “Hoods in My Hymnal”","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 3, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"by Matthew W. Bassford The other day, Steve Wolfgang sent me a link to this article, \"Hoods in My Hymnal.\" In it, the author points out that James D. Vaughan, founding father of the Southern gospel genre of hymnody (though not the author of \"Love Lifted Me\", despite what the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}