Whitehead, James

English

Wilfrid Laurier University

ConsensusVolume 22Issue 2 Essays Ecumenical and Historical Article 711-1-1996Music and PersecutionJames WhiteheadFollow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensusThis Sermons is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended CitationWhitehead, James (1996) "Music and Persecution," Consensus: Vol. 22 : Iss. 2 , Article 7.Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol22/iss2/7Music and PersecutionJames WhiteheadMennonite Conference of Eastern Canada,Kitchener, OntarioTexts: Psalm 96:1-6; Luke 21:7-19The focus of the chapel services this week is music, and thePsalm you have just heard set the tone, calling us to “sing tothe Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing tothe Lord, bless God’s name; tell of God’s salvation from dayto day.” And this theme is further highlighted by the com-memorations of St. Cecilia, portrayed as a patron of music,and the great English hymn writer Isaac Watts. I was struckas I read Psalm 96 and then turned to Luke 21:7-19 and saw,“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and perse-cute you; they will hand you over to the prisons and you willbe brought before kings and governors because of my name.”Being a Mennonite, the juxtaposition of the themes of musicand persecution brought to mind two scenes, ranging from oldEurope to twentieth century Canada.One of the things I have appreciated most during my twoyears here at the Seminary has been the opportunity to sharetraditions and viewpoints with people of many different de-nominations. Isaac Watts is a perfect example of the gloriesthat can be found in the English music tradition and those ofyou who are Lutherans have a wonderful musical legacy. Eachdenominational tradition brings out of its faith and experiencea unique and valuable perspective to its music. I would like toshare with you some reflections from a Mennonite perspectiveon music.The first scene reaches back to the year 1537, where 60 An-abaptists are imprisoned in the Oberhaus castle dungeons nearPassau in Germany. Their crime is their refusal to adopt the124 Consensusstate religion. In an attempt to keep up their courage and notrecant their faith, they make up hymns and sing them to eachother. Now this is a strange thing, I suppose, when you stop toconsider that 16 century Anabaptists do not sing during theirworship services, since they are held mostly in secret, in iso-lated barns and in woods during the early hours of the morning,so as to attract no attention. Attention will bring the author-ities. And whether the authorities are Catholic, Lutheran orReformed, it will mean arrest, imprisonment, torture and pos-sibly execution. Why is it that these women and men, whoare unaccustomed to singing in worship, express their inner-most faith in song? When all else is taken away, why is it onlysong that remains? Within the next five years, nearly all ofthem will die from torture and starvation, but they will write51 hymns which form the nucleus of a hymnal called the Aus-bund, first published in 1564. This Sunday, if you join the OldOrder Amish of this area for worship, this is the hymnal fromwhich they will sing.Jump ahead to the early years of this century. The Men-nonites who had emigrated from Prussia to Russia during theprevious century at the invitation of Catherine the Great haveseen their dreams die. With the coming of the revolution, theirworld has collapsed. A civil war is raging. Mennonite coloniesat Molotschna and Chortitza have changed hands 23 times.Crops are destroyed; cattle and horses stolen; villages razed;hospitals, church buildings and schools abandoned; women andgirls raped repeatedly by the armies and outlaw bands; the menrounded up and executed or kidnapped. Social disintegrationand crop failure are compounded by typhus, starvation, andvenereal disease. Some of the survivors, starving and carry-ing almost nothing, flee the country, trickling through Europeinto North America. Each family, nearly destitute and miss-ing several members, often the traditional bread-winner, stepoff a ship in this new world and without any prompt, fall ontheir knees and begin singing. They sing because their heartsare filled with grief and loss—and hope and expectation. Thehymn is “Now thank we all our God with hearts and hands andvoices, who wondrous things has done, in whom this world re-joices, who, from our mother’s arms, has blessed us on our waywith countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.”When I plan worship at my church, I know that if I choosethat hymn, perhaps a dozen people—the children and grand-Music 125children of that first generation of refugees—will be unable toget through it without breaking down with emotion. While I! do not have any Russian Mennonite ancestors, their experiencebecomes my experience. In that moment, as we sing, we definewho we are.IMusic communicates something fundamental from the hu-man soul which even the most eloquent speech cannot. ItIencompasses speech, melody, breath, body movement, intel-!lect, emotion and life. For a people hounded sometimes to theIvery brink of extinction, forced to emigrate frequently whenjwe failed to fit in, and kept on the fringes of society by forcesjboth external and internal, we have rarely had the luxury ofI academic theological expression. Perhaps for these reasons, weIhave produced few prominent theologians or systematic theolo-gies. Practical considerations have always had to take prece-dence over abstract ones. It is our music, the music we havewritten and the music we have adopted, that holds first placein our hearts. When we sing to God, it is with a primal instinctthat expresses our faith and life and experience and identityand being in one unity. One Mennonite writer has suggestedthat “our hypnology shapes our theology” and perhaps thisexplains why it recently took us ten years of work and carefulconsideration to produce a new hymnal. Our music may beour highest form of expression.Our years of persecution seem largely behind us now. Welive in relative comfort and security. I don’t know what thatwill mean for our music, whether it is good or bad. But Christ’swords from Luke 21 still remind us that a life of discipleshiphas more to do with persecution and suffering than with com-fort and security, something which I suspect will remain in ourconsciousness for some time. But the message remains essen-tially the same. And that message is to declare God’s glory andmarvellous works among the nations and the peoples, tellingof God’s salvation from day to day and trusting God to giveus words and a wisdom that will witness to God’s love for cre-ation, God’s love for justice and God’s love for peace as thedivine reign moves toward fulfilment.

Music and Persecution

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Music and Persecution

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