Let Justice Sing

Paul Westermeyer, PhD, is Emeritus Professor of Church Music at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, where he taught, directed music, and administered a master of sacred music degree program with St. Olaf College. Previously he taught at Elmhurst College for twenty-two years. A former editor of The Hymn and national chaplain of the American Guild or Organists, from 1996 to 1998 he served as the president-elect of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada.  His writing includes many articles, The Church Musician, and With Tongues of Fire.

• ContentsAbbreviations   7Introduction   91.  Content: The Twentieth Century   11Theme of Justice   11Hymn Writers   11Communities and Groups   14Hymnals and Hymnal Committees   15Justice and Twentieth-Century Christians   17Justice   18Can We Sing It?   22Justice Omitted   15Taking God's Place   262.  Content: Before the Twentieth Century, I   28The Psalms   28As They Stand in the Bible   28In Metrical Versions   31The Seventeenth Century   31Tate and Brady   31The Eighteenth Century   33Watts   33Excursus   34A Case Study   38Psalm 23   39Canticles   39"Hymns" of the Mass   40Greek Hymnody   42Latin Hymnody   443.  Content: Before the Twentieth Century, II   38The Sixteenth Century   48Luther   48The Eighteenth Century   52A Case Study   52Wesley   57Excursus   62The Nineteenth Century   65Catherine Winkworth   65John Mason Neale   67White Gospel Hymnody   70African American Spirituals   74Summary   804.  Context   81Worship   81Beauty and Need   85Physical Things   87Music   88Sentimentality   90Counter-Cultural Issues   91Subtlety   92Specificity   925.  Hymnody and Justice   95Violence and Being Silenced   96Song, Justice, and Health   97Does Justice Sing?   100The Whole   102The Practical Reality   107Bibliography   111

This work is informed by careful, critical thought, rooted in a theology of the cross, and sensitive to the challenges faced by musicians, pastors, and congregations as they seek to sing justice in a complex, pluralistic age. Mindful of the Scylla of a private piety and the Charybdis of a political agenda, Westermeyer helps us steer a course which, by staying close to Word and Sacrament, thrusts us into the world for which Christ died, not only to sing justice, but to do it. This is an important book on a critical subject and should serve the church well.Robert A. Hausman