The Emergent Psalter

Isaac Everett

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780898698343
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

"Isaac Everett's Emergent Psalter is clearly a work of love. Springing from the life of a young, emergent congregation, it embodies the best of old and new, and it is a sign of maturity in our important movement."
—Tony Jones, author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier

Many alternative and emerging church communities have begun exploring ancient music and liturgical traditions despite a lack of high-quality, published liturgical music, which does not require (or even desire) an organ and a four- part choir. The Emergent Psalter serves to provide that resource. The psalter itself consists of musically notated antiphon melodies with chord symbols followed by the printed psalm text which is read aloud.Featuring music written for two emerging communities (Transmission in New York and Church of the Apostles in Seattle), this book is an excellent resource for anyone producing alternative worship service or thinking of starting one.

PART I

Overview

New Traditionalism in the Emerging Church

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in ancient forms of liturgy and spiritual practice, especially within the emergent church,¹ although analogous trends are occurring within Roman Catholicism, Evangelical Protestantism, and even American Judaism and Islam.² My generation has been given credit for the renewal of all sorts of liturgical practices, including lectio divina, praying the rosary, and consulting spiritual directors.³ As a recent article in U.S. News and World Report stated:

You see this [trend] quite clearly in the so-called emergent communities, new, largely self-organizing groups of young Christian adults who meet in private homes, church basements, or coffeehouses around the country. So free-form that many don’t even have pastors, these groups nevertheless engage in some ancient liturgical practices, including creedal declarations, public confession, and Communion. They may use a piece of a bagel as the body of Christ, but the liturgy is a traditional anchor in services that may include films, skits, or group discussions of a biblical topic.⁴

This return to ancient practice does not necessarily coincide with a return to theological orthodoxy. In fact, emerging Christians are discovering that the mystery and ambiguity of ritual meshes with a postmodern worldview in a way that their past experiences of worship haven’t. This renewal of tradition doesn’t signify a renewed commitment to religious institutions, either, which are often mistrusted by emerging Christians. Rather than adopt a single liturgical tradition wholesale, emerging Christians are drawing from a variety of traditions to create a personalized, a la carte spiritual practice,⁵ and I’ve seen emergent communities rediscovering everything from incense to altar calls. One common thread, however, is an emphasis on practices that “integrate body and spirit,” focusing on actions rather than words, which engage an entire community in collaborative, interactive worship.⁶

This kind of liturgical innovation is vital to the continuation of any tradition. As Tom Driver writes, “The ability to innovate while at the same time echoing ancient custom is what keeps any tradition alive.”⁷ Ritual doesn’t thrive on endless repetition or on preservation for its own sake, and religious communities that “tenaciously hold to all traditions and refuse to accommodate to the changing environment” are often the quickest to disappear.⁸

The emerging church, of course, is not an organization—it is a loose network held together through word of mouth, blogs, and personal relationships, so there isn’t any corporate infrastructure that can facilitate or fund liturgical exploration. Communities frequently lack professional leadership of any kind, whether musical, pastoral, or administrative, and very few emerging Christians have the time and training necessary for creating original music. Additionally, communities that meet in homes tend to lack access to musical instruments, and the only way music is incorporated into worship is by playing canned music in the background. As a result, most of the liturgical output of these communities is in the form of prayers, litanies, and reflections; with a few exceptions, the emerging church has yet to create a musical identity for itself.

It is my sincere hope that this situation will change, for communal singing exemplifies emergent values; it is an ancient practice, it is a physical practice, and it is a communal practice. This project grew out of a desire to address that need, to make an ancient musical practice accessible to small groups of Christians who meet in homes, cafes, and subway tunnels and who don’t have the benefit of a choir, an organ, a sound system, or printed bulletins. My own rediscovery of psalm singing came through Transmission,⁹ a small emerging house church that meets in upper Manhattan, and Sanctuary, an alternative worship service held by an Episcopal Church on Manhattan’s East Side, and most of the music in this book was written for them over the course of the past five years.

The translations of the psalms in this volume are about 80 percent from the Book of Common Prayer and about 20 percent my own. The versification most closely adheres to the Bible. I have also put the psalms into inclusive language as much as possible without destroying the original meaning.

1 Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 224.

2 Jay Tolson, “A Return to Tradition: A New Interest in Old Ways Takes Root in Catholicism and Many Other Faiths,” U.S. News & World Report (December 13, 2007), 1.

3 Lauren F. Winner, “Gen X Revisited: A Return to Tradition?” Christian Century (117, no. 31, November 8, 2000),1146.

4 Tolson, “A Return to Tradition’ 1.

5 Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, 222.

6 Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, 220.

7 Tom F. Driver, Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 213.

8 Roger Finke, “Innovative Returns to Tradition: Using Core Teachings as the Foundation for Innovative Accommodation:’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (Volume 43, Number 1, March 2004), 5.

9 http://www.transmissioning.org

A Brief History of Psalms and Antiphons

Christians have been singing psalms in worship since the very beginning of Christianity, and the practice began even earlier, at least as early as the Second Temple Period (536 BCE –70 CE). Many of the psalms contain evidence of musical origins, declaring the psalmist’s intention to sing and play for God,¹⁰ and making references to psalteries, harps, and other instruments. Although the psalm’s superscriptions are a later addition, the fact that many of them refer to the psalms as a

(a song or a hymn) suggests that they were written to be sung.

It is likely, in fact, that the biblical Psalter was not compiled merely for personal devotional use, but rather as a hymnbook for the second temple.¹¹ Echoes of liturgy can be found within many of the psalms, especially those which record rituals for entry into the temple, such as Psalms 15 and 24.¹² Further, numerous psalms contain repeated refrains that might have been written as congregational antiphons, such as Psalms 42-43 and 135. It is possible, of course, that not every psalm was written for liturgical use in the temple;¹³ for example, Psalm 30 seems to have been originally written as the celebratory prayer of an individual, likely in response to a recovery from illness.¹⁴ The superscription of the psalm,¹⁵ however, suggests a liturgical use “at the dedication of the temple,” which the Talmud¹⁶ associates with the Temple Dedication Festival, i.e., Chanukah. It is unclear whether this psalm, and others like it, were originally written for individual use and were absorbed by the temple cult or whether they were first written by professional poets on behalf of the Temple. In either case, by the time the biblical Psalter had been compiled, the majority of them had been co-opted for liturgical use.

The Mishnah contains even more accounts of psalms in temple liturgy, reporting that one psalm was assigned for recitation in the temple for each day of the week:

These were the Psalms which the Levites used to recite in the Temple; on the first day of the week they used to recite The Earth Is the Lord’s (24); on the second day, Great Is The Lord (48), on the third day God Standeth In The Congregation of the Mighty (82); on the fourth day, God of Vengeance (94), on the fifth day, Exult Aloud Unto God Our Strength (81), on the sixth day, The Lord Reigneth (93), and on the Sabbath, A Psalm, a Song for the Sabbath Day (92).¹⁷

Although the Mishnah was compiled in the second century, the Septuagint echos five of these seven assignments (days three and five are absent), suggesting that they actually reflect Second Temple Era liturgy and are not later additions. The Mishnah further agrees that the psalms were sung, not read,¹⁸ and adds that the Levites would blow trumpets after each section.¹⁹

There is less written in the Mishnah about synagogue worship, but we are told that the Hallel Psalms (113 through 118) were occasionally used in morning services. More importantly, The Jewish Encyclopedia states that, rather than being sung by priests,

In the synagogues the Psalms were chanted antiphonally, the congregation often repeating after every verse chanted by the presenter the first verse of the Psalm in question. “Halleluyah” was the word with which the congregation was invited to take part in this chanting. Hence it originally prefaced the Psalms, not, as in the Masoretic text, coming at the end. At the conclusion of the Psalm the presenter added a doxology ending with “and say ye Amen,” whereupon the congregation replied “Amen, Amen.”²⁰

Psalms were also important and recognizable to the early Christians—the New Testament contains no fewer than ninety-three quotes from more than sixty of the psalms.²¹ Luke depicts Jesus quoting Psalm 110 from memory,²² Peter quoting Psalms 16, 132, and 110 from memory,²³ and Paul quoting Psalms 2, 16, and 89, also from memory.²⁴ Paul observes that when the church at Corinth gathers, “each one has a Psalm, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation,”²⁵ implying that the psalms were used in early Christian worship.

The first explicit mention of psalms in Christian liturgy, however, is made by Tertullian, who in his second-century Treatise on the Soul describes a charismatic woman in his church and says, “Whether it be in the reading of Scriptures, or in the chanting of Psalms, or in the preaching of sermons, or in the offering up of prayers, in all these religious services matter and opportunity are afforded to her of seeing visions.”²⁶ Tertullian doesn’t, however, indicate how the psalms were chanted. For this we must turn to the Apostolic Cons...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Overview
• Part II: An In-depth Analysis of Four Psalms and Their Antiphons
• Part III: The Psalter
• Bibliography