To you,
A Revised Hymnary taken from the book The Collect'd Writings of St. Hereticus edited by Robert McAfee Brown
I'm working on a new hymnal. I'm going to keep the old tunes (grand old tunes, all of them) and simply supply new words for people who feel uncomfortable or hypocritical singing the old words. The words in my hymnal will reflect what people are actually thinking when they raise their voices on a Sunday morning.
The following offerings, then, are at least descriptively true. I won't go into any detailed defense of their literary merit.
Backward, Christian Soldiers
Like a fleeing army
Moves the Church of God;
Brother treads on brother
Grinds him in the sod.
We are not united,
Lots of bodies we:
One lacks faith, another hope,
And all lack charity.
Chorus:
Backward, Christian Soldiers,
Waging fruitless wars,
Breaking out in schisms
That our God deplores.
Some of the hymns need to have alternate versions to be used as local circumstances dictate:
Faith of Our Fathers, Wholly Faith
1. Liberal Version
Faith of our fathers, once so great,
We must revise or be out of date,
We must distinguish kerygma from myth,
Or they won't be worth bothering with.
Chorus:
Faith of our fathers we accept
(Save for the parts that we reject).
2. Orthodox Version
Faith of our fathers, keep it intact!
They wrote it down precisely exact.
Change no expression, no phrases delete,
Their propositions cannot be beat.
Chorus:
Faith of our fathers, keep it pure,
Relevance is a sinful lure.
3. American Version
Faith of our founding fathers! We
Now can express with clarity:
"God's on our side, he'll hear every plea
If we'll expand our economy".
Chorus:
Faith of our founding fathers! There
Is nothing quite like laissez-faire
