Gospel Hymns & Social Religion/The Well-Tempered Lyre
Cook, Bruce
Rich, rising anthems of faith GOSPEL HYMNS AND SOCIAL RELIGION Sandra S. Sizer Temple, $15, 222 pp. THE WELL-TEMPERED LYRE George W. Ewing Southern Methodist, $15, 298 pp. Bruce Cook NOT SO...
...As she sketchesoout her methodology sh conjures with such powerful names a Clifford Geertz, Levi-Strauss and Ken neth Burke, thus raising expectation high...
...Sandra S. Sizer simply tries to cover too much ground...
...close reading of the hymns, that the en tire revival movement represented an ef fort to reconcile a variety of drives am intentions that were in apparent opposi tion...
...to: W for Waning of life that's soon done...
...The good thing is that, enthusiastic though he is for the monstrous collection of kitsch he has assembled here, Ewing makes no excessive claims for it...
...In the Garden," "Bringing in the Sheaves''—did I remember them all...
...He may sometimes seem sly and ambiguous regarding his material, but he is fundamentally the critic and scholar when it comes to judging the worth of it all: Temperance verse, like the movement that produced it, is a multiform and many-colored matter but the thousands of samples exhibiting every aspect of the campaign—the good and the bad, the early and the late, the famous / August 1980: 443 emphasis seriously weakened Protestantism, dissipated its powerful energy so that now, nearly half a century after the battle was finally fought and lost, the Protestant faith shows no signs of recovering the strength described by Sandra Sizer in her book...
...By this phrase I mean to suggest a pespective which employs insights and methods from several disciplines, especially those varieties of anthropology and literary criticism that emphasize cultural phenomena as linguistic phenomena intimately related to particular social settings...
...Connoisseurs of bad verse—those of you out there with the crooked smiles who treasure that compendium of poetic horrors, The Stuffed Owl—will love The Well-Tempered Lyre and probably want to put it up on the same shelf...
...B for Beginner, who takes just a sip...
...Fundamentally, then, the problem was reconciling the yin and the yang the contemplative vocation and the activist mandate...
...The thesis of her monograph, Gospel Hymns and Social Religion, is that the great, burning energy of nineteenth century revivalism was best and most completely expressed in its hymns...
...Each Christian was expected to feel the pull of each and try, in some way, to respond to both...
...All this is set forth in Gospel Hymns and Social Religion in good, dense academic fashion...
...His book, The Well-Tempered Lyre, is so generous in quotation and so comprehensive in selection that, though something more, it is nothing less than a well-annotated anthology of the propaganda in song and verse that fueled the fiery passion that burned against the Demon Rum...
...It is all here...
...Author Sizer chooses her examples well and presents her materials in such a convincing way that one has the feeling that, yes indeed, this must have been a basic, if not the basic dilemma of revivalist Protestantism...
...Delighted...
...Commonweal: 444...
...X for his exit regretted by none...
...Youth of this nation, such weakness is crime...
...Zealously turn from the tempter in time...
...Or be introduced to this classic of its kind...
...C for Companion, who urges him on...
...D for Demon of Drink that is born...
...And she will use the hymns, she says early in the book, to reveal to us the spirit and style of the movement...
...And the detours that she takes us on through the thickets of controversy surrounding the Abolitionist Movement and the drive for prohibition prove to be even less rewarding...
...Right-to-Lifers, take note...
...A stands for Alcohol, deathlike its grip...
...Where else are you likely to get the chance to read that masterpiece of sexual blackmail, "Lips' That Touch Liquor Must Never Touch Mine'' in its entirety...
...It was an early example of one-issue politics, one-issue religion—and oh, the harm that it did...
...Bruce Cook NOT SO long ago, my daughter, who was raised Catholic, sang in the choir in a local production of Our Town And so it happened that the other night after supper she treated us to the repertoire of Protestant hymns she had learned for the occasion...
...We are offered a long look at evangelical literature with the novels, Ten Nights in a Barroom and Barriers Burned Away...
...She explains: In short, I am promising what might be called a "historical sociology of religious language...
...does what she says she is going to do ii the long second chapter that follows he introduction...
...Sandra S. Sizer would probably share that view...
...For I grew up Methodist, and it seemed to me then, anu it still seems to me today that the very essence of the religion—certainly the best of it—was contained in those rich, rising anthems of faith that the congregation sang with such spirit...
...And so on, right through the alphabet...
...I listened for a while, then surprised everyone by joining in...
...George W. Ewing, on the other hand, keeps his focus narrow and his gaze concentrated quite specifically on the Temperance Movement...
...The question was how they coulc manage to remain humble, weak, am receptive before the Lord, and yet be the aggressive lions they had to be in order tc Commonweal: 442 do God's work out there in the sinful world...
...She could have continued profitably along this line in the chapters that follow...
...Her "historical sociology of religious language" does not work nearly so well with fiction as it does with lyrics and verse...
...Indeed I did, and I am not ever likely to forget them...
...Yet, strictly speaking, she onl...
...In it, she suggests through...
...I was, perversely, at this and the countless other such gems of the genre included in the book...
...However, she shunts us off in quite different directions...
Vol. 107 • August 1980 • No. 14
