Home » Mind & Soul » Lutheranism » The Hymnal: A Lutheran Legacy Through the Ages

The Hymnal: A Lutheran Legacy Through the Ages

© John L. Hoh, Jr.

In the summer of 1988, I was a summer intern in Kalispel, Montana. One Saturday morning I received a phone call. The gentleman on the line had read our ad in the newspaper and was checking us out. He asked if we were a "liberal church."

I was somewhat unprepared for that question, so to buy time I asked what he considered "liberal." He then asked if we (the Wisconsin Lutheran Synod) had a new hymnal. In his mind, a new hymnal was a sure sign that a church was going "liberal."

Lutherans have become attached to their hymnals. The Wisconsin Synod used The Lutheran Hymnal from its printing in the 1940's to the mid-1990's when Christian Worship: A Lutheran Hymnal was introduced. Many congregations still use The Lutheran Hymnal.

The Service Book and Hymnal is still a favorite among Lutherans in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). An effort to produce an updated version of this hymnal, The Service Hymnal: A Lutheran Homecoming, shows how devoted some were to that red book. (The effort is featured in Praise Today, the March/April 1999 issue.) The Evangelical Lutheran Synod just came out with the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary; before that, they used The Lutheran Hymnary, a title first published in 1913, but not published in decades. To be sure, obtaining replacement copies became more difficult as the years passed and forced the need to create the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary.

A recent poll on these pages asked for the hymn preferences of you, the readers. The poll spanned from all new, Gospel-praise music to strictly traditional Lutheran fare. While the most votes went for an equal balance between the two, the overwhelming majority leaned toward more traditional Lutheran hymns and fewer modern tunes and texts.

Luther began this trend when he wrote his many hymns. Soon, other pastors were writing hymns and assembling hymnbooks. Many such volumes still exist in collections and were the means of preserving some fine hymnology written in Lutheran circles.

Hymnals have varied over the years. Most hymnals at the turn of the century were pocket-sized and did not contain the notes for the hymns, just the text. People carried their hymnals with them, thus the need for a smaller size. At mid-century, many hymnals used Gothic and Old English fonts, likely to reflect the German heritage. Remember, at mid-century many were still used to the German hymnals with its fraktur German script. Today's hymnals use more modern fonts, with a better sense of page layout, in general, than the previous generation of hymnals.