I guess I'm as well qualified to weigh in on this thread as anyone, since I'm a Unitarian Universalist Minister, have been a guest lecturer in a UU hymnody class and have even written a few papers on the subject. Singing the Living Tradition has some amazing material in it - I've been working with it professionally for over 10 years now and am still learning new songs. Some of them aren't the ones you're likely familiar with, either. Have you ever sung "I Walk the Unfrequented Road," "The Lone Wild Bird," "Just as Long as I Have breath" or "Do You Hear?" Amazing stuff!

The book does, of course, give us its moments of frustration. Sally Rogers's song "Love Will guide Us" is missing two verses, including an incredibly powerful one, so I have secured her permission to reprint the full words whenever I program it in a service. The Christmas carols, in hindsight, would have been better left unedited. The trouble, I think, was that in attempting to create a uniform editing principle, the hymbook commission missed the reasons we sing certain songs. Christmas carols, for most of us, are not about the details - few of us believe in the angels we sing about - they are about the tradition of singing.

Hymns are a living tradition (just as the title implies) and like folk songs, have always been modified to keep up with the times. If the language they use no longer has meaning for people, or offends too many people, the hymns die. Changing "Once to Every Man and Nation" to "Once to Every Soul and Nation" seems a small price to pay to keep alive such a marvelous song. But there are a few basic principles that should generally be applied:

The editor should err towards on the side of minimal change
The editor should avoid modifications that are idiosyncratic or completely change the meaning of the song
Changes should yield poetry that is as good or better than the original
Careful track should be kept of the number of changes in any given song - too many and the effort could fall apart
Songs like Christmas carols - which have meaning in the singing of familiar words and not the literal meaning of the words used - should be left alone if at all possible.

Some of these principles, incidentally, were developed out of folklore studies. Hymnody and folklore have much in common.

As far as certain songs, that's a matter of taste. I know that some congregations sing "Spirit of Life" nearly every Sunday, even though Carolyn McDade, the composer, wishes they wouldn't. For her, the song came out of a very specific situation and relates to a call to social justice work. In our congregation, we take care not to sing the same songs too often.

Well, I'm off for the weekend, folks. I'll be interested to see what becomes of this thread when I return!

Dan Schatz