Dissenting Praise

The introduction of hymns and hymn-singing into public worship in the seventeenth century by dissenters from the Church of England has been described as one of the greatest contributions ever made to Christian worship. Hymns, that is metrical compositions which depart too far from the text of Scripture to be called paraphrases, have proved to be one of the most effective mediums of religious thought and feeling, second only to the Bible in terms of their influence. This comprehensive collection of essays by specialist authors provides the first full account of dissenting hymns and their impact in England and Wales, from the mid seventeenth century, when the hymn emerged out of metrical psalms as a distinct literary form, to the early twentieth century, after which the traditional hymn began to decline in importance. It covers the development of hymns in the mid seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the change in attitudes to hymns and their growing popularity in the course of the eighteenth century, and the relation of hymnody to the broader Congregational, Baptist, Methodist, and Unitarian cultures of the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. The chapters cover a wide range of topics, including the style, language, and theology of hymns; their use both in private by families and in public by congregations; their editing, publication and reception, including the changing of words for doctrinal and stylistic reasons; their role in promoting evangelical Christianity; their shaping of denominational identities; and the practice of hymn-singing and the development of hymn-tunes.

ISBN 0199545243   Pages 320 ISBN13 9780199545247 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 638 Publisher Oxford University Press   Published in Oxford Imprint Oxford University Press   Height (mm) 238 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 158 Publication date 03 Mar 2011   Spine width (mm) 25 DEWEY 264.230942   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

Introduction; 1. Hymns, Psalms, and Controversy in the Seventeenth Century; 2. The Hymns of Isaac Watts and the Tradition of Dissent; 3. The Circulation and Reception of Philip Doddridge's Hymns; 4. John Rippon and Baptist Hymnody; 5. Finding Successors to 'the Poet of the Sanctuary': Josiah Conder in Context; 6. W. Garrett Horder and Congregational Hymnody: An Introduction to The Hymn Lover and its Author; 7. James Martineau and the Evolution of Unitarian Hymnody; 8. The Music of Dissent; 9. The Evolution of the Welsh Hymn

The importance of the hymn may have dwindled in popular culture, but it is still crucial in understanding cultural development and religious identity of the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. This is an ideal guide, and invaluable resource, for such scholarship. Felicity James, The Review of English Studies This book brings together leading historians of English and Welsh Dissent to celebrate and chronicle the Nonconformist love affair with hymns... there are delightful pen portraits of the leading figures in the development of dissenting hymnody. Ian Bradley, The Tablet The learned editors top and tail this volume of essays with a scholarly introduction and some useful bibliographies. They have chosen a strong team of experts, each of whom takes up the baton from his or her predecessor, thus creating something approximating to a continuous narrative. Michael Wheeler, The Church Times the sense of the personal, for it is this that is ultimately the most compelling aspect of Dissenting Praise. Francis Stewart, Literature and Theology Hymn enthusiasts and scholars will want this book and those of us who are Anglican will learn from it a great deal about Nonconformist hymnody. Royal School of Church Music

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