How many of us sing hymns without knowing the story behind the hymn?
I had read about the story of this hymn over 30 years ago. A few days
ago I found some information on the web about the hymn. Some dedicated
soul went to the trouble of locating the book in which the hymn appeared. Many stanza's in many modern hymnals have omitted verses
that appeared in the original. The book in which the hymn appeared
was LYRA FIDELIUM. I searched unsuccessfully for that book over
10 years ago. I am glad someone was able to locate the book and offer
it to people on the web at no cost. The book appeared in 1866. The
book appears to be a confession of faith. It contains 12 hymns which
are associated with the 12 articles of faith in the Apostles' Creed.
I found some information about the hymn by stumbling accross an
article that appeared in a the church newsletter of St. Peter's Anglican
chruch in Nottingham. To find information about the hymn go to
www.stpetersnottingham.org. Do a google search on the hymn using key
words "Church's One Foundation." That will lead you to the article
about the hymn. To find more information go to the bottom of the page.
and click on the link to Luke Martin's site. This site contains three
articles. Click on the LYRA FIDELIUM article at the top. Then scroll
down to article 9. This will link you to the lyrics of the hymn.
The hymn was a one born of conflict. This is not a subjective "feel good" hymn. The author Samuel John Stone was contending for the historic Christian faith against the "liberals" or "modernists" of his day. That is why the hymn as it appears in the book speaks against
the "False sons and traitors." He also poked fun at evolutionary theory and the liberal view of the Bible in other writings. I suspect he might even be accused of being a "fundamentalist," though he would be better classified as a High Church Anglican. I think it was a bit ironic that the
liberals of our church body (Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod) sang this hymn in protest against the conservatives as they left our denomination to form their own church? I wonder if the liberals of our denomination knew that the author had written the hymn against the liberals of his denomination? To be fair, I did get annoyed when
one of our conservative members concluded his article on why
he was a Protestant with the words from the hymn "Faith of our Fathers."
This hymn was written in memory of the Roman Catholics who suffered
martyrdom under the "Protestant" British King Henry VIII. I think people it would help if people knew the story behind the hymns. Not
knowing the story behind the hymns can lead to amusing ironies of
circumstance. Maybe God has a sense of humor in allowing for these
ironies.
For those of you trivia buffs, I did find 3 articles when I did
a google search using the key words Robin Hood at the St Peter's Nottingham website. I don't know why only 3 articles showed up.
One would assume that a larger number of articles would show up.
Guy
# posted by GuyTak @ 12:07 PM
