By Guest Blogger DeReau Farrar, Director of Music

A note from Rev. Sinkford:  Congregational singing is such an important part of our worship life at First Unitarian. Our worship leaders take care every week to select hymns that fit our worship theme and support the spiritual work we do in the sanctuary. We have a robust, on-going conversation about the music we sing, made particularly important as we introduce new selections. I invited DeReau Farrar to blog this week on this subject to share some of his thinking and the concerns that are part of our selection and worship planning.

A question has come up about why so many of the hymns we sing (usually 2-3 per month, on average) are from outside of our two hymnals. I love questions like these because they show that people are paying attention. They show that the worship life of this community is important to and having an impact on the people. This is part of why I so love this work.

I heard a talk given by Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed in Boston at the 2015 Unitarian Universalist Musicians’ Network annual conference. He carefully went through the hymnals of Unitarian Universalist history and explained how each new hymnal was a response to the deficits of the prior hymnal. He recognized that, as a progressive faith, our thinking is regularly changing and hopefully evolving. As such, as soon as a new hymnal is established, it is insufficient. He noted that we have not yet arrived, and we will never arrive.

Rev. Morrison-Reed’s lecture resonated very deeply with me as I have always struggled with our published hymn resources. The lecture, in many ways, gave me permission to struggle out loud and as a tool in my own worship leadership.

I see a very clear and direct line in Singing the Living Tradition (1993) from 16th-century Europe to 20th-century New England. This is inclusive of the legacies of European colonization, Protestant loyalism (which played out as classism), and American slavery. I think we as 21st-century Americans have a broader story to sing. The hymn supplement, Singing the Journey (2005) does a little better at inclusion, but does not fill in the gaps of our history. Our hymnals are missing any hymns that trace religion as it has developed in America. They also fail to speak to our contemporary understanding of the world.

In short, there are just some hymns out there that say ‘it’ better. And, there are some hymns out there that say ‘it’ with better integrity. As we are swiftly moving into a future none of us recognizes, and as culture and technology are taking us away from printed resources (there will likely never be another printed hymnal for wide distribution), I feel it is my responsibility to keep paying attention and to keep us always moving forward. I look forward to continuing to pair the hymns we love from Singing the Living Tradition and Singing the Journey with other resources the world offers, and it is my prayer that the hymns we sing continue to bring richness and amplified meaning to our worship and living.