Poetry and Worship

There are a couple of very stimulating posts on poetry and worship at Gathering and Scattered and Dancing Scarecrow. And I appreciated this incisive quote from the latter, 'Too much modern worship is prosaic. The majority of modern worship songs are as "dumbed down", repetitive and unimaginative as a Stock Aitken & Waterman, Hit Factory pop record. Worship, if it is to reflect divinity, must strive for the poetic glories, whether they be Bob Dylan or Beethoven, Duffy or Shakespeare.'

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Many thanks for great refs, Geoff. I remember years ago seeing a 1700's volume of Wesley hymns on a bookstall in Cambridge. Wesley's intro explained that his hymns weren't just churned out by the yard like others. Book contained about 1500 hymns churned out by the yard, including about 30 of the greatest poems ever written in English. Maybe that's just how folk arts work.

A few years ago, our organist also gave me a photocopy of a worship song called "Jesus." The words were "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, (line ending),Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. It was Copyright 1984, I think. More a mantra than a poem?

[PS first coment was just this one with a typo!]
Keith Wallis said…
Great links, thanks for posting.
Nice blog you have, thanks for posting

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