Episcopalians (and former Episcopalians) of a certain age grew up with the Hymnal 1940. It's a miracle I still have mine, the navy blue, battered, hard cover copy my parents gave me on my birthday in 1967. In my immature handwriting, I've signed my name inside the cover in ink.
For reasons it isn't too hard to fathom, the words of a number of the warlike hymns have been coming to me in recent days. Hymns 549 to 570, plus others scattered through the book, are out-and-out conflict-focused. Indeed, some come under the specific "Church Militant" heading in the Topical Index. Seriously. "A Mighty Fortress", "Go forward Christian Soldier", and "Onward Christian Soldiers" are there, of course, but oddly, the lesser lyrics that noodled their way into my brain in the 1960s are resurfacing too: "Wrestle, and fight, and pray"/"Christians up and smite them"/"Fight the fight, maintain the strife"/"Fight the fight, Christian"/"Conquered hath our Leader"/"Sing my tongue the glorious battle, sing the winning of the fray".
Even as an eleven-year-old choir girl, these hymns were problematical. Most of them were sung as a processional or recessional, and I always tried to get into the spirit of the thing, marching behind the crucifer down the aisle. But I didn't think of Jesus then, or now, as "militant". I have no memory of any instances in the Gospels where he bore arms. Much is made of the fact that he upended the tables of traders and money changers in the temple; obviously, he was capable of anger and frustration. But did he actively encourage or take part in military action? No. Would he today? I don't think so. But this moment, I suspect, would be utter torture for him, as it is for any of us whose hearts are breaking at what we are seeing. When you care for other human beings, but know that more war only creates more war, the situation seems hopeless.
Still, we insist on singing from an old hymnal. There can be no glorious end to the kind of war we are teetering on the edge of. If these kinds of concepts are echoing in the brains of any of our political or military leaders, this is going to be a rough reckoning indeed. In a future "hymnal", there simply will be no songs glorifying conflict...not because it has been dictated from above, but because they are the kinds of songs we as individuals won't want to sing.
