This year has seen the release of two new hymnals for mainstream Presbyterian and Reformed churches.

Last week my copy of the new hymnal Glory To God arrived in the mail. Now having a copy in my hands I did what I always do when I acquire a new hymnal, new or old… I analyze it. I will get to the numerical analysis in a moment but let me make a couple of prefatory comments.

First, I purchased the red pew PC(USA) edition published by Westminster John Knox Press, one imprint of the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation of the PC(USA). I don’t think that having the purple edition or the ecumenical edition will make a difference for this analysis because, as I understand it, the PC(USA) versus the ecumenical only makes a difference in the liturgical bits, not the musical. (But that is not to imply that the musical stuff is mutually exclusive from the liturgical.) In the narrative discussion below I will refer to this as the “New Hymnal.”

It is of standard hymnal dimensions and I found it to be only 34 mm thick. Since it is a full 7 mm thinner than the current The Presbyterian Hymnal (which I will refer to at the “Old Hymnal”) it is replacing you can be assured that it will fit nicely into your pew racks. But don’t worry, this is not at the loss of material as the New Hymnal has 1018 pages, a 42% increase over the Old Hymnal. The difference is of course in the weight of the paper it is published on so if your congregation makes heavy use of the hymnal, as opposed to using them as a decorative feature of the pew racks as you sing off the projection screen, you might want to think about a shorter replacement cycle.

The other thing I had to laugh at is that the New Hymnal has the subtitle “The Presbyterian Hymnal,” as it seems a bit presumptuous that there is one Presbyterian hymnal. But this is nothing new. That was the title of the Old Hymnal and the Presbyterian Church in Ireland names theirs The Irish Presbyterian Hymnbook. But if both the Old Hymnal and the New Hymnal are both “The” Presbyterian hymnal, is that a contradiction or does the new automatically supersede the old?

The second new hymnal of the year is Lift Up Your Hearts: Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs published by Faith Alive Christian Resources, the publishing ministry of the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America. If you ignore the subtitle this is a popular title for worship books and should not be confused with another collection of music issued a few years ago.

This edition is about 3 mm thicker than Glory to God but published on what feels like only slightly heavier weight of paper. It also comes in a nice red binding but with silver lettering, no denominational seal or logo and lightly printed gray wheat pattern on the front. That same wheat pattern is used inside the hymnal on title pages before each section. It has no complete liturgy printed in it but numerous prayers, responses and other liturgical pieces scattered throughout it.

OK, if you are only here for the discussion you will probably want to skip down below the table now. But for the hymnal geeks, as the title suggests, here is an analytical breakdown and comparison of the contents of these two new hymnals with a few others.

I want to clarify at this point that this is a first-order technique that I use that allows me to get a feeling for the content and tone of a hymnal within three to five minutes. It uses particular markers (sources) as indicators of larger trends. For a more detailed, and time consuming, analysis there is a second-order analysis which would do component analysis on the full contents. A third-order analysis that drills down into the words of the hymns themselves – included or omitted verses and altered words – as well as the musical settings of each is even more enlightening but much more time consuming.

As I said, I have picked out certain authors and translators whose inclusion or exclusion provides a quick guide to the particular bent of a hymnal. Some of them will be immediately obvious, like heavy inclusion of Martin Luther for the Lutherans and of Charles Wesley for the Methodists. For Presbyterians the ratio of Isaac Watts to Charles Wesley is usually greater than one. Also for Presbyterians, the heritage of exclusive Psalm singing shows through in generous inclusion of pieces from earlier Psalters.

The recognition of translators is also important and John Mason Neale is an indicator of the inclusion of earlier songs in Greek and Latin (e.g. All Glory, Laud and Honor) while Catherine Winkworth was a translator of German language works (e.g. Now Thank We All Our God).

For music from the Revival tradition the lead indicator is the number of songs by Fanny Crosby, but I also include those by Philip Bliss. And modern hymn writers are important and there are some subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, differences in styles that lean towards one tradition or another.

So here is a breakdown of the hymnals Glory To God and Lift Up Your Hearts in comparison to a number of past and present Presbyterian hymnals as well as The Hymnal For Worship and Celebration which is frequently cited as the most popular non-denominational hymnal in the US today and its revision the Celebration Hymnal.  The two hymnals of focus in this piece are highlighted to help you track the variations. The nicknames “The Green Hymnal” and “The Red Hymnal” are included as I have found that will immediately identify them to Presbyterians of a certain age.

First, a couple descriptive comments:

1. Yes, A Mighty Fortress is our God does not appear in the Irish Hymnbook

2. In looking at the new hymnals I find that going forward I need to include Taizé music/prayer as a category. While it has not been included in hymnals I have looked at before, Glory to God has 21 pieces and Lift Up Your Hearts has 18. None of the other hymnals I include in this analysis has any pieces from the Taizé Community but the Irish Hymnbook has 10 from the Iona Community I mention below.

3. If you are not familiar with it, the Trinity Hymnal, as well as the Trinity Psalter, are published by Great Commission Publications, the publishing house of the OPC and the PCA.

4. I will admit that Psalters are a pain in the neck to tally in this first-order model. Unlike authors where you look in one place, Psalters have a variety of names and in some cases the pieces are listed by author and not the Psalter.

5. It is worth noting that the Old Hymnal contains a section of about 100 Psalms, some of which are metrical Psalms taken from Psalters and some of which are Psalm paraphrases. That explicit section has been eliminated in the New Hymnal.

As I look at the table above the thing that jumps out at me first is the increase in the content of the hymnals. You can see that most of the 20th Century hymnals I track above tended to have just a bit more than 600 musical numbers. However, in the last couple of decades the musical content has increased up into the 800’s. Doing a quick calculation this means that there is enough material to go about five and one-half years with three hymns per Lord’s Day without repeating one. (This ignores the fact that there are only 76 hymns in the Advent and Christmas categories in the New Hymnal which at three hymns per worship service and seven days of celebration in each cycle would last you only three years without repeating.)

However, while the total size has increased dramatically the indicators that I have tracked have only changed slightly with some of the older sources declining slightly and some of the more recent increasing slightly. The one exception is the recent decline in works translated by Catherine Winkworth suggesting that works from non-English European traditions are being displaced, possibly by works from other traditions. The appearance is that in general hymns which have stood the test of time are being retained while new material is being added. This is noted in the appearance of the Taizé music I mention above. In addition, Lift Up Your Hearts has 21 pieces by John Bell of the Iona Community and Glory to God has 18.

It has struck me that some of this added content is specific to the hymnals. For example, in Glory to God at least two members of the editorial board have multiple numbers in the hymnal — Alfred Fedak has 25 pieces and David Gambrell has 14. It is worth noting that Fedak has 13 in Lift Up Your Hearts along with 11 by their editorial board member Martin Tel and seven by another board member, Joel Navarro. In fact, several of the board members and an editorial assistant have at least one contribution to the hymnal. (And one board member has his name spelled differently on the board list and in the index of authors, but I digress.)

The point is not that this is a problem with conflict of interest, and this is not a new occurrence as Isaac Watts and John Newton each published collections of their own works. But it will be interesting to see if, like Watts and Newton, some of the contributions from the “in house” writers stand the test of time. (And yes, I do realize that the total output by Watts that is in any of these hymnals is less than 2% and that it will take a long time to see if the new works “stand the test of time.”)

But, relative to the markers that I have been using, these two hymnals have retained much of the tone of Protestant and Reformed hymnals with the use of early and Reformation era music to a degree that the popular non-denominational hymnals do not. The non-denominational works are also much lighter on Psalter works, pieces from other racial ethnic traditions and works of traditional modern hymn writers (e.g. Duck and Wren). The new hymnals also continue the trend of sparingly using the revival era hymns that the non-denominational hymnals heavily use as well as music that might be categorized as praise songs. The praise style pieces are not completely missing and where these two hymnals show the greatest divergence is that Lift Up Your Hearts appears to have a slightly more contemporary praise feel than Glory to God with a piece by William Gaither, if this marker is indicative of the hymnal as a whole. In addition Lift Up Your Hearts has a solid number of works by contemporary-style modern hymn writer Keith Getty. (And no, I am not going to go there today.)

As I indicated above, the real story here does not appear to be significant abandonment of the pieces, or at least the sources, that have appeared in previous hymnals. Rather, it is first a broadening to include alternative and diverse sources and traditions of music. Second, it is a selective inclusion of more modern works with Glory to God leaning towards the traditional modern and Lift Up Your Hearts leaning towards the contemporary modern.

Let me conclude by noting that the editorial boards for hymnals live in the same tension that all who are concerned with the future of the church are in. On the one hand is tradition and doctrine and a denominational hymnal says something – it is carefully put together to reflect the theological stance and values of the denomination, at least to the extent the editorial board reflects it. On the other hand, there is societal expectation and there are certain hymns that have stood the test of time and the audience expects to see them in the hymnal and, to some extent, with a particular set of words. My favorite example of this is the hymn Rock of Ages by Augustus Toplady. Toplady was, as one paper puts it, an “extreme Calvinist” who first published the poem in his Gospel Magazine in one of his regular articles strongly arguing against the Arminian theology of John Wesley. Yet today it is regularly found in Methodist hymnals as it has become part of the standard set of hymns people expect to find in a hymnal.

It is clear that the editorial boards of each of these hymnals made specific choices to reflect the underlying doctrine of their respective denominations. Choices were not made to include popular hymns just to boost sales. But it should be remembered, at least in the case of Glory to God, that the final product did not have the explicit approval of the General Assembly. That body only approved the creation of a committee that would create the hymnal. So does it really reflect the denomination at this moment, especially if there is an ecumenical edition?

The marked expansion of the contents of the hymnal may have an interesting consequence, intended or unintended. Studies have shown that a typical congregation has a standard pool of only about 150 pieces that they sing outside of special seasons like Advent and Christmas. With a hymnal that is expanded by upwards of 30% it is more likely that any given congregation will find their special 150 hymns in the hymnal and may be more likely to buy it. It could be that the expansion of the contents, which was partly intended by the editorial board to give any particular congregation a greater range to sing from, will actually do more to increase the number of congregations that buy the book.

Finally, I was a bit tongue in cheek at the beginning where I commented about the hymnal being a nice pew rack decoration but never used if the Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs are always projected on a screen in front of the congregation. But more and more this is becoming the case and where a congregation does this they create their own virtual hymnbook which can be subjected to the first through third-order analyses I talk about above. The use of projection particularly allows for the type of modifications that a third-order analysis highlights with eliminated verses and different musical settings easily accomplished. This takes us into the realm of not only every church having its own specific musical reflection of its doctrine, but one that can be tweaked at a moment’s notice. Not only is the landscape different for each congregation but it can be a constantly shifting landscape as well.

It will be interesting to see how widely each of these hymnals finds acceptance. Early in the pre-order period that was a comment that about 600 congregations had already ordered their new copies. That is about a 6% market penetration in the PC(USA). Given all the options today in terms of hymnals on the market as well as the option of dispensing with hymnals all together when the words are projected I would be interested in what sort of adoption ratio there is by GA next summer.

So that is what I see at a first-order level here. As I get into it more it will be interesting to see what other trends I find.