Baptist Hymnody in the Northern United States: The Case of E. H. Johnson's Sursum Corda |
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Authors: | Daniel Jay Grimminger |
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Institution: | Daniel Jay Grimminger, teaches music and religion at Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio. He holds a PhD (University of Pittsburgh), Doctor of Church Music (Claremont Graduate University), and MTS (Trinity Lutheran Seminary) degrees. He is currently a contributing editor for The Hymn: A Journal of Congregational Song. |
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Abstract: | Abstract : Northern and southern Baptists in the United States differed at the turn of the twentieth century. Through their hymnals, especially Sursum Corda edited by E. H. Johnson, they embraced a form of historicism that attempted to recover an earlier time in the church. Gregorian and Anglican chants served as vehicles of historicist interest as did the parts of the historic Mass and traditional English hymns prevalent in Johnson's book. Northern Baptists also leaned toward an ecclesiology that held the ‘church as sacrament’. Hymn texts in Johnson's Baptist hymnal form a bridge between two ecclesiological outlooks by employing a pastiche of sacramental texts and texts based on a memorialist understanding of the Eucharist. This essay employs an interdisciplinary approach to looking at American hymnody involving theology, history, musicology, and liturgics. |
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Keywords: | Baptists ecclesiology Eucharist sacramental theology liturgical music historicism |
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