April 7 – Hymns and Spiritual Songs
It’s pretty amazing that short-lived traditions become so ingrained we can’t consider doing anything else. When you consider that Christianity has been around for over 2000 years, and hymn-singing in church has only been strongly adopted for less than 300 years, it seems funny that people insist the ‘traditional’ style of worship is the best way to sing to God.
Martin Luther tried to insist that hymns be used in worship. He wrote several to get things started. The Anglicans didn’t actually use music in their liturgy. By 1562 there was a collection of Psalms that had been metered out for singing and in 1696 a New Version showed up, but if it wasn’t from the Psalms, it might not be a good idea to sing it.
In 1623, a hymnbook was produced, but no one used it.
By the 1700s, people were still only singing Psalms and generally this wasn’t happening in the Anglican churches.
Isaac Watts was a pastor and decided that the people needed something to sing. The Psalms were great, but they didn’t teach much about Christianity. He published “Hymns and Spiritual Songs” in 1709. He published “Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament” and said that he made David speak like a Christian.
Watts wrote more than six hundred hymns. He wrote from the Psalms – “Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun” from Psalm 72 and “Joy to the World” from Psalm 98. Some of his other hymns are very well known: “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” “O God Our Help in Ages Past,” and “I Sing the Mighty Power of God.”
He became known as the Father of English Hymnody and his hymns were unmatched until Charles Wesley came along.
It wasn’t until 1861 when the Anglican Church finally published a hymnbook, “Hymns Ancient and Modern” that they began to incorporate hymn singing into their services.
April 7 - Hymns and Spiritual Songs
April 6 - The Devil Made Me!
April 6 – The Devil Made Me!
A little girl with epilepsy, a group of people ready to believe the Devil was at work, religious zealots, a court run by those religious zealots and fear all add up to a year of incredible pain for many people from a small area of Massachusetts.
In 1692, the Puritans were facing new generations of people who didn’t believe in Jesus. They saw evil everywhere they turned as people moved away from the church and began living lives without religious fervor.
A small pox outbreak had just occurred; the threat of Indian attacks was always at hand and the Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter had just been revoked. The colonists were in terror and believed that God’s wrath was coming down on them for some reason or other. Witchcraft just had to be the reason.
A local pastor – Samuel Parrish – had a daughter who had a seizure. The local doctor couldn’t find anything physically wrong with her and after a great deal of pressure, she began accusing women in the community of witchcraft. It was the only thing that made sense to anyone. Soon there was mass hysteria and by the time a year had passed, over 150 people had been accused of witchcraft.
Many of the accused simply acquiesced, admitted that they had done it and repented. They were set free. There were, however, nineteen people that couldn’t be forced to confess to something they hadn’t done. All of them ended up being hanged for the crime of witchcraft. One man was killed by stones pressing on him as they tried to force him to confess and at least thirteen others died while in prison.
Increase Mather was one of the pastors that began to be concerned that perhaps innocent people were being condemned. As more and more became outspoken, the Governor finally stepped in, dissolved the accusing court and pardoned the remaining people still in prison.
The Puritans in America were never able to quite get over this blot on their reputation as Christians. There was never any hard proof that the condemned had performed witchcraft, it was all hearsay and hysteria.
April 5 - Providence
April 5 – Providence
The Puritans were all for religious freedom until it smacked them in the face.
Roger Williams was offered a position as a pastor and teacher at the Congregationalist Church in Massachusetts, but he refused it based on the fact that he believed civil judges shouldn’t enforce religious beliefs. He began preaching among the Native Americans which was fine with everyone until he pushed a little harder by declaring that the Natives were the true owners of the land. That got him banished from Massachusetts.
The year was 1635. Winter was coming. His wife was pregnant and his daughter was just two. He didn’t have a horse and he had to get out of town fast. He left them in safety and traveled for 2 ½ months until a native tribe gave him shelter.
The next year, he purchased a small bay just to the south of Massachusetts and brought his family and several friends to live there. He named it “Providence” and wrote a charter declaring that a person of any faith would be welcome there.
Three years later, he became the first Baptist in the New World and founded the first Baptist church in the thirteen colonies. Eight months later, questioning his beliefs, he left the Baptist church.
One of the first people to arrive in Providence was a woman named Anne Hutchison, who fled Boston because of the strength of her beliefs. She led a group of six women who met weekly to discuss the Sunday sermon. Pretty soon large numbers of people began to gather with her.
Soon, her intelligence and boldness got her into trouble when she claimed that Christians weren’t bound by human law. As she attempted to explain Paul’s doctrine of grace, she missed his teaching on obedience to civil authorities. She was accused of treason. During her trial, it became quite clear that she was much more knowledgeable of the Bible than her accusers and they couldn’t prove any charges against her. However, she managed to send them over the edge by her claim that God had spoken to her. They banished her. She took her family and left for Providence.
Rhode Island would always be the smallest of the colonies, yet this was the birth of the idea that civil government should never favor any religious belief.
April 4 - Enslaved
April 4 – Enslaved
As hideous as it may seem to us today, slavery has been part of mankind’s history for eons and continues in many parts of the world.
When Europeans came to the New World, they discovered sugar. This became an immensely profitable industry, but they needed workers and didn’t want to pay them. The natives became prey. The settlers were supposed to be teaching the natives about Jesus, instead they became slaves to greedy profiteers.
In 1510, Bartolome de Las Casas was the first priest to perform Mass in the New World. He built a plantation in Haiti to help his income and enslaved many natives. But, in 1514, he had a change of heart – released his slaves and returned to Spain to campaign for their rights. A code of law written by him limited Spain’s power over the natives, but these were ignored for the most part.
In Mexico, the diseases that the Europeans brought with them killed nearly 90% of the people there. Spanish and Portuguese settlers could no longer run their plantations, so they began importing Africans – even using scripture sometimes to justify their doings, connecting Africans with “Canaan” from Genesis 9:25.
Another man, Pedro Claver, saw how heinous slavery was and began working against it. Though he had no idea how to speak any of the African languages, he became a Jesuit priest and worked among them. He baptized any of them who wanted to become Christians and helped the Africans in any way that he could.
In Paraguay, Jesuit priests built settlements for the Mexicans who had lived through the European diseases and slavery, offering them safety and care. In 1628, though, Portuguese and Spanish plantation owners attacked the Jesuit missions and enslaved the people again. The Jesuits moved further inland, ending up by arming the missions and teaching the natives to defend themselves. They protected nearly 150,000 natives, but in 1767 were forced by Spain to leave the New World.
Slavery was too comfortable a vice to lose … and as the New World grew … many more men, women and children would have their humanity stripped away in the name of progress.
April 3 - Music of the Spheres
April 3 – Music of the Spheres
The year 1685 saw the birth of two of two great composers – Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederic Handel. They never met each other, though they were born only one hundred miles from each other and would create some of the most incredible music the world would ever hear.
Bach came from a family of musicians. His father and brother were his teachers. He began his professional career as a violinist, but soon became a church organist. He had twenty children, four of whom also became well known composers.
Bach was a devout Lutheran and inscribed every single one of his works with phrases of praise to God. His compositions were prolific, but many were undiscovered until Felix Mendelssohn discovered them and made them popular in the 1800s. As a church musician, composing music was part of his daily work. He was temperamental and was very confident in his own talent.
Handel’s father was a barber-surgeon who forbade the study of music. This caused him to sneak into the attic at night to practice. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, but was eventually persuaded to allow him to study music. The court at Berlin offered to help Handel in his quest for music education – when his father refused, the pressure continued until he relented.
Another prolific composer, Handel’s earliest works were mainly secular – opera and instrumental pieces. He composed a new opera each season for demanding audiences. He moved to England from Germany. In the summer of 1741, over just 24 days, he wrote the score to the “Messiah.” He borrowed from earlier works of his own and used a libretto written by Charles Jennes. The text is primarily from the Old Testament, the Book of Common Prayer with the words for the “Hallelujah Chorus” coming from Revelation.
Handel died a wealthy man and is buried at Westminster Abbey.
April 2 - A Man Called Christian
April 2 – A man called Christian
One of the treasured of Christianity’s classics is “The Pilgrim’s Progress” written by John Bunyan.
The author was a simple man, with nothing more than a grammar school education. His father was a tinker, pushing his cart down the roads of England, fixing metal pots in homes along the way. John began as a tinker, but was soon conscripted into Cromwell’s army.
After he left, he married a woman who tried to help him reform his life. He had his ups and downs, much like anyone who tries to live rightly, but fails miserably. He and Mary were so both so poor, that her entire dowry consisted of two books. They had no household items at all, not even flatware or dishware.
In 1653, he was baptized by a Baptist pastor and soon began to dive into the scripture. He read the Bible and Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs” as well as Mary’s two books over and over. He laid his old life aside when he was completely convicted of God’s assurance of grace. He then became a traveling preacher, but would not refuse communion to anyone based on their denomination.
Though King Charles II had promised freedom of religion, the Anglican Church was truly the only acceptable church in England and anyone who believed differently was punished. John spent 11 years in jail for his preaching without permission. In 1672, a Declaration of Indulgence was made and granted leniency to non-Anglicans.
John was released from jail, called as a pastor to another church and received a license to preach. But, in 1675, he was again jailed and this time while there, wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” This little book struck a chord with many Christians as they recognized themselves in the actions of the lead character who travels from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City.
A man who was never considered a scholar wrote several other books, but “The Pilgrim’s Progress” was his most famous and has touched many lives. He died in 1688, just months before a new ruler would bring religious tolerance back to England.
April 1 - Christian Artist
April 1 – Christian Artist
In a time when religious art was growing, a young man from Holland began to look at it quite differently. Catholic artists generally painted the saints. Artists tended to paint scenes from the Bible with the people viewed as nearly god-like, much like the Greek and Roman art that depicted the various pantheons of deities. Protestants believed that the Bible alone should be used for religion and avoided artistic depictions.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, a Protestant, discovered his passion in art and after training with many famous artists, began to develop his own style which blended very earthy images with scriptural references. He painted portraits of street people, his family, even inserting himself into his paintings. A beggar in a turban became a king of Israel, an old Jewish man became Paul the Apostle. In one of his paintings, he put himself as one of those who crucified Christ.
Rembrandt did not paint to teach people about Jesus Christ, he painted because it was his passion. He painted secular and sacred themes, but there was always a sense of God in his art.
He saw humanity in a very realistic sense and when he painted Biblical stories, the sense of emotion and human sin is portrayed. When he painted landscapes, he showed the ugliness and the beauty of nature.
Rembrandt met with great success as a youth, he taught most of the great artists of the period in Holland. He married well and had extensive art collections. But, he was unable to manage all of this and after having outlived his wife, son and two mistresses, he ended up dying alone and being buried in an unmarked grave.
He has been called a ‘great prophet of civilization’ due to his love for and understanding of humanity. His art gave us a very Protestant view of Scripture and a gorgeous look at how this man saw the way mankind interacted with Scripture.
