Many hymnals getting modernized lyrics

"Peace on earth, goodwill to men," the angelic choir is reported to have sung from the heavens overlooking Bethlehem on that first Christmas Eve.

But some of the music of the season has been cursed more by conflict than blessed by peace. Some of the struggle sounds strangely current.

Pick up a contemporary Christian hymnal and you will find many songs that you will recognize, and yet not recognize, from your childhood. The words have been changed to "modernize" them. This makes the song easier to understand for people not familiar with it, but for those who have sung it so much they have memorized the words the changes are disruptive. Three hundred years ago the same thing was happening, and Charles Wesley hated it.

The composer of over 6,000 hymns, Wesley wrote in one of his hymnals, "Many gentlemen have done my brother and me (though without naming us) the honor to reprint many of our hymns. Now they are perfectly welcome to do so, provided they print them just as they are. But I desire they would not attempt to mend them."

One of Wesley's hymns began, "Hark, how all the welkin rings ... " Someone paid no attention to Wesley's request, changed the words, and now we sing with enthusiasm, "Hark, the herald angels sing!"

Another issue in Christian music is new styles versus the old traditional ones. The new styles are frequently closer to the style of secular music. The lyrics, too, are modernized in one way or another. Traditional Christian hymnody often began as a secular rebellion against tradition but as decades passed it became "christened" and now is identified with the church.

Isaac Watts, who lived in the early 1700s, composed songs that were free and original expressions of the Christian faith at a time when English churches only sang paraphrases of the Psalms. He was roundly criticized for his musical innovations. Today critics of contemporary "praise music" unfairly call it "7/11 music," singing seven words eleven times. In Watts' day one critic said Watts' compositions weren't hymns; they were "whims."

Thank God Watts persisted in his innovative composing, or we would never have had one of the greatest of all Christmas carols, "Joy to the World!," which is an interpretation rather than paraphrase of Psalm 98. Among other nonseasonal songs, Watts also gave us "O God, Our Help in Ages Past," and "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross."

John Mason Neale was a contemporary critic of Watts. A high church traditionalist, Neale longed for a return to the traditional buildings and music that had served the church for so long.

He worked hard to translate ancient Greek and Latin hymns into English. Among them was a series of Latin songs sung each day from December 17-23. Each song began with the word "O." As Neale rendered them, one began "O Come, O come Emmanuel;" it has become one of the most popular Advent hymns used by the Christian church today.

As Robert J. Morgan says in his two volume story of Christian hymns, Now Sings My Soul, "In today's hymnals, we find Neale and Watts side-by-side, the old differences having been forgotten."