Baptists for a pandemic: 1. Thomas Grantham

I have been reading about some Baptists who I think are very useful for our pandemic season.

First, and on one level most interestingly, I begin with Thomas Grantham.  That I hadn't heard of him on July 12th will be obvious from my blog of that day.   But that is to my shame.  For Thomas Grantham was very well-known in the 17th century.

It is important to note that what I am about to reveal is not at all unique to Thomas.  He was the most famous advocate of the position because at the time because he was, well, famous.  His book Christianus Primitivus was one of the great early Baptist theologies.

Thomas Grantham represents a marked strand in Baptist history that rejected congregational singing.  As Baptists, more than most, we are bewailing our loss of freedom to sing in the pandemic.  It is peculiar to note that our forefathers were quite strongly opposed to the practice.  One cantor singing a Psalm was the preferred rule.

We imagine Thomas Grantham to be very 'strict', but that turns out to be false.  Thomas Grantham held the view that 'Christ died for all', which was a 'General' Baptist 17th century interpretation, creating an openness and evangelistic edge that many stricter Baptists (and others) rejected.

The next time I complain of a year without congregational singing I will remember that some of the most formative years of Baptist fellowships were decades without congregational singing.  So no excuses for us complaining that we can't go on like this!

How can I keep from singing?

It has been a surreal experience to return to the church building for Sunday morning worship these past two weeks.  Certainly things were feeling pandemically safe, but then again so is the local cemetery (for its residents).  We have some imaginative ideas for worship in the weeks ahead: but singing with our voices seems a distance away.

It is easy to OVERestimate the importance of singing.
The viral rise of the Contemporary Christian Music industry (CCM) has left most of us wondering how we ever found God without five of this year's new songs being sung.  Yet astonishingly we did.  You don't have to be a Quaker to object that God is at work when songs are silent.  Countless believers have spent years or lifetimes imprisoned or isolated in such ways as to render congregational singing a distant dream.  The Bible enjoins and reports praying far more often than singing (especially in the New Testament!).

But it is easy to UNDERestimate the importance of singing.
Most religions have some kind of music and song, but Christianity is full of it.  Whole service forms are based around singing, and whole church traditions defined by its forms (Anglican Evensong, Hillsongs, Gaelic Psalms).  One look at our church building gives the clue that singing is part of it . . .

. . . the organ, the choir stalls, the piano, the drums, the screen (mainly for projecting song words).
Singing, in Christianity, is an expression of the fundamental joy of a saving faith.  It is not a necessary rite; it is more than that.  Christianity is a new song.

Psalm 102

St Andrew's Day (today) is Scotland's national day because of alleged stories of ancient saint's relics being taken to and enshrined there.  Thankfully, Scotland has given the world higher spiritual input than this.  Not least, psalm singing.

So,  

• Is it imaginable that God could ever be praised without a band or an organ?  And if so, how poor would that be? Well, that might work actually always bearing in mind the lack of organs and guitars in first century Galilee.
• Could Psalm 102 possibly be intended for singing? A Psalm perhaps, but all that sense of misery in it - and not even an added chorus bit? But yes, the Psalms are for singing.
• Can groups of people do the singing by themselves?  No choir or lead  vocalist? Apparently so.

1 To this my prayer O listen, LORD!
And let my cry for help reach You.
2 In day of grief hide not Your face.
Your list'ning ear toward me O bend;
The day I call, Your answer send,

3 For all my days go up in smoke,
And like a hearth my bones are burned.
4 Like grass my heart is crushed and dried;
I daily food forgotten leave;
5 My skin and bones together cleave.

With sighs and groans my frame resounds.
6 I'm like a desert pelican,
Or like an owl in ruined wastes.
7 I lie awake, as on the roof
A sparrow stands, alone, aloof.

8 All day my foes their taunts repeat;
Those filled with anger curse my name.
9 I food with tears and ashes mix,
10 For You on me in anger frown;
You raised me up to throw me down.

11 An ev'ning shadow are my days;
Like grass I wither soon away.
12 But You, Jehovah, sit enthroned
Forever; Your memorial
Abides through generations all.

Ordination

Yesterday we had a fantastic service in which one of our young men was ordained into Christian ministry. Hundreds of people came, and the Word of God was preached from Exodus 3, drawing us to the greatness of God who calls us.  If anything made the day a little less golden for me personally it was the reflection that whenever I've come to such days marking my pilgrimage points I always seem to be given Scriptures that are at once deeply meaningful and somewhat, well, disconcerting.

It started at my Baptism when, being baptised as a believer, I was blessed with 'endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ'.  I suppose one unspoken practical advantage of the Baptism of Infants practised in other traditions is that you don't get to comprehend any ominous texts if they're spoken over you.

On to my Ordination. The speaker chose for his sermon Ezekiel chapter 2, here translated in The Message,

"Son of man, stand up. I have something to say to you." The moment I heard the voice, the Spirit entered me and put me on my feet. As he spoke to me, I listened. He said, "Son of man, I'm sending you to the family of Israel, a rebellious nation if there ever was one. They and their ancestors have fomented rebellion right up to the present. They're a hard case, these people to whom I'm sending you—hardened in their sin. Tell them, 'This is the Message of God, the Master.' They are a defiant bunch. Whether or not they listen, at least they'll know that a prophet's been here. But don't be afraid of them, son of man, and don't be afraid of anything they say. Don't be afraid when living among them is like stepping on thorns or finding scorpions in your bed. Don't be afraid of their mean words or their hard looks. They're a bunch of rebels. Your job is to speak to them. Whether they listen is not your concern. They're hardened rebels. Only take care, son of man, that you don't rebel like these rebels. Open your mouth and eat what I give you."

When I looked he had his hand stretched out to me, and in the hand a book, a scroll. He unrolled the scroll. On both sides, front and back, were written lamentations and mourning and doom.

My ordination speaker was a good preacher (in the technique sense) though as it happens I can't remember a thing he said - just the forbidding chapter and the preacher himself.  The preacher, who for internet purposes will remain anonymous, a few years later did that 10th/7th commandment thingy of coveting his neighbour's wife and then some.  Not so long after he did it again somewhere else after undergoing the restoration/repentence routine, thus unintentionally giving me a lifelong demonstration of the very characteristics God warned Ezekiel about.

If the Word of God sometimes tastes to the ear like unpalatable cold remedies, it's because God knows the preachers who preach it and the hearers who listen.  As he kind of said to Ezekiel, "Swallow that, it'll do you good".

Brrrrrr

Tonight we had our second slot for carol singing at our local shopping centre. We understood that we would be joined by another church but, because they wanted to survive until Christmas, they didn't arrive.

Our survival was threatened by the temperature - which was below freezing - and the somewhat inexplicable design of the centre whereby the roof runs out before the shops do. This afforded us a site with a wind ambience resembling the deck of a ship, and a floor temperature mirroring a polar research station.

Cinema-goers hurried by wondering what we were doing there (they would have wondered all the more had they been able to identify our average age underneath our multidinous layers of clothes.) A Shopping Centre operative looked over at us, wondering what we were doing there. On another evening he may have checked our credentials, but tonight he was content that the only offence we might be committing was against our circulatory systems. We wondered what we were doing there. We were, in short, a wonder. A bone-chilled, finger-frozen, teeth-chattering wonder.

Health and Safety considerations would have demanded that we instruct any member of the public who had stopped to listen to us to move on lest they sued us for their frostbite - this might even have been a consideration if someone removed their gloves to accept a leaflet.  In the event no-one was irresponsible enough to risk their well-being by stopping.

With a neat sense of timing one of my aunts had sent a Christmas card that arrived this morning.  It pictured a brightly-lit village church.  In a blizzard.  The choirboys are walking through the snow toward the sanctuary.  The very essence of Christmas, I thought, when I opened the card.

But now I know it is a fraud.

You can stand in the freezing cold.  You can stand and sing carols. 

What you can't do, is do both at once . . .