Baptists and Hymn Singing
2009 marks the 400th anniversary of the formation of the first English Baptist Church, in 1609, by a group of Independent (Congregationalist) Christians who had fled to Amsterdam in Holland to escape the persecution of dissenters in England. There, under the leadership of their pastor, John Smyth, they accepted the doctrine of believers’ baptism and so became the first English Baptist Church, but not in England. Some of the congregation returned to England in 1612 and established the first English Baptist Church on English soil, on the outskirts of London. What follows traces the important contribution that Baptists made to hymn singing.
For centuries Christians attending church services did not sing; they listened to the clergy chanting in Latin, but they had no voice themselves. The Reformation of the 16th Century changed that and gave singing back to the congregation. Lutherans were fortunate. Martin Luther, the German reformer, was not only a brilliant theologian; he also had a superb command of the German language and was a fine musician as well. His hymn, A mighty fortress is our God, words and music by Luther himself, is sung by most denominations. Catholic priests in Germany even complained that he was singing the people into Protestantism. Luther’s attitude was that God’s people should use whatever they could to praise him, as long as it was not contrary to scripture. John Calvin, the Swiss reformer, had a more austere approach. In his judgement Christians should use only what was contained in scripture; that meant the singing of metrical psalms only, and that became the congregational songbook of English Protestants.
Paul told the Ephesian Christians that they should use “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Ephesians 5:19) and one of the very first English pastors to promote the singing of hymns as well as the metrical psalms was the Baptist, Benjamin Keach. Tailor, turned schoolmaster and then Baptist pastor, Keach insisted on the use of hymns by his congregation. He split his church over the issue. Some who left his congregation did so “. . . being dissatisfied with the setting up of a common form of set singing after it had been exploded by the Baptized churches as a human[e] invention.” They disagreed with Keach on the principle of hymn singing. We could have understood it if they had disapproved of what they were asked to sing. Up to that time, there were no hymns to speak of in English.
Early attempts at hymn writing were terrible. One unknown writer attempted his own version of what Jonah might have sung in the belly of the great fish (Jonah 2). His offering began:-
Ah me, this is an awesome place,
Without ere coal or candle.
Nothing but fish’s tripes to eat,
And fish’s tripes to handle.
Keach, strong in principle though he was, was equally weak in production. He wrote several hymns for his congregation. Here are a couple of his efforts:-
Our wounds do stink and are corrupt,
Hard swellings do we see;
We want a little ointment, Lord,
Let us more humble be.
Repentance like a bucket is
To pump the water out;
For leaky is our ship, alas,
Which makes us look about.
The arrival of the Congregationalist Isaac Watts (When I survey the wondrous cross) and the Wesleys, especially Charles (O for a thousand tongues to sing . . And can it be . .) gave the English churches some of the grandest hymns. Baptists overcame there objections to hymns singing and embraced the hymns of Watts, but were reserved, at first, about Wesley.
Baptists were to the forefront in promoting the principle of hymn singing, but produced comparatively little of worth in the way of hymns, and fewer still that have been adopted by other denominations. John Bunyan, a Baptist contemporary of Keach and also an enthusiastic promoter of hymn singing, wrote, in his epic Pilgrim’s Progress, the song Who would true valour see, which has appeared in many hymn books. John Rippon, an outstanding Baptist leader of the 18th – 19th century produced a massive collection of hymns and music, but only two of the hymns in his Selection have been accepted by other denominations: All hail the power of Jesus’ name (of which Rippon was co-author) and How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord (ascribed to ‘K’ in the Selection) appear in the The Australian Hymn Book. “K” was probably Robert Kean, Rippon’s precentor. (Baptists had accepted hymn singing, but not the use of musical instruments in church.)
It was a disappointment to discover how little Baptists have contributed to hymns of the church. Perhaps in the next generation, the history of hymn writing will note that Graham Kendrick (Shine, Jesus, Shine and many other popular contemporary hymns) is the son of a Baptist minister.
My disappointment at how little of worth other denominations have found in our Baptist hymn books was modified in watching Songs of Praise one Sunday in March this year. In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, the programme came from an Irish Catholic Cathedral which was packed with Irish Catholic worshippers. Appropriately we were given snippets from the story of St. Patrick, there was Catholic liturgy and there were Catholic hymns. Then came the climax. That great congregation rose and sang lustily, to the ever popular Londonderry Air (Danny Boy), the great hymn, I cannot tell why he, whom angels worship,.
The author of that hymn was W. Y. Fullerton, the Home Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society. We had made it after all!
G.B. Ball
‘Gerry Ball was Senior Pastor of MOBC from 1984-1990, having served as a missionary with the Australian Baptist Missionary Society in East Pakistan and as principal of Burleigh College in Adelaide. He left MOBC to take up the position of Senior Pastor at Gordon Baptist Church and was President of the Baptist Union of NSW from 1998-1999.’
