Category Archives: From the Organ Bench

I Love a Parade!

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Have you ever thought about how many parades are associated with season of Lent? There is, of course, the Mardi Gras (French: “fat Tuesday”) parade which is the culmination of the season of the Carnival (Latin: “removing the meat”) preceding Lent. But think about the local parades; the very local parades, right in your own parish. On the first Sunday in Lent, and again on the 3rd Sunday, we find the choir and sacred ministers parading around a kneeling congregation as we sing the Great Litany. Weekdays in Lent, we parade around the aisles of the nave having devotions at the stations of the cross. The Sunday before Easter finds us parading around outdoors as we move en masse into the nave carrying palm leaves. Maundy Thursday ends with the Reserved Sacrament being paraded from the high altar to the altar of repose. Easter Vigil begins with the sacred ministers parading up the center aisle bearing the newly kindled Light of Christ. And then there is just something extra thrilling about the grand entrance of the choir and clergy on Easter Sunday morning. This season, which calls us to our knees in penitence, sure has a lot of people on the march!

Of course, we don’t really march in church; we process. There are marching songs and then there are processing songs. And there is a difference. Marching songs are generally associated with secular parades. The tempo keeps the parade moving at an acceptable pace and the rhythm keeps the participants in step with each other. Marching songs are intended to enforce discipline on the parade participants for the benefit of the spectators. They may draw the spectators into emotional empathy with the performers; but they serve mainly to enhance the spectacle. Processing songs are designed to blur then line between spectator and participant. The purpose of these sacred parades, or processionals, is to help us transcend from a temporal earthly physical experience to an eternal heavenly spiritual experience. We always sing, we don’t just listen. The songs we sing are fraught with symbolism and often are not in “march time.” Those who are in motion never move in time with the music. Even their clothing prevents us from being distracted by their movement. As they seemingly float from one place to the other, we can be transported with them. A procession is a parade in which even the spectators can become virtual participants.

So, for those of you who might want to become more active in your worship, here follows a little primer on some of the processional music that is used at this time of year. We’ll start with what is not only the very first Anglican processional in history, but also the first English-language liturgy (predating the English mass itself). The so-called “Great” Litany was completed on June 11, 1544 by Archbishop Cranmer and has been in the Prayer Book since 1549. Bishop Cranmer purposefully made the music simple so that everyone in the congregation could be actively involved. The intention was to begin each church service with a comprehensive prayer that would bind the assembly of individuals into one corporate body under the protectorate of God. This 461 year old processional is in the service music section of our hymnal at S67.

An even older processional is one that is often used during the Stations of the Cross: the Stabat Mater Dolorosa, or Song of the Sorrows of Mary. This song was originally used for private devotions; but it is also one of the “sequence” hymns which used to be sung during the Gospel processions in the Roman church. It’s most notorious use as a processional was by the 14th century “Flagellanti” who used to parade around town scourging themselves in penitence. The Stabat Mater came into English use very late because of the difficulty of translating the original Latin into good English verse. Our version, “At the cross her vigil keeping” (Hymnal 159) is adapted from the first English translation of 1863.

The origin of the processional hymn that we sing on the Sunday before Easter is lost in history and found in legend. First, let me explain why I use the term “Sunday before Easter.” It’s really the sixth Sunday of Lent. Decades ago the fifth Sunday of Lent was called Passion Sunday, because the Passion Gospel was read on that day (foreshadowing Jesus’s final days on earth). The sixth Sunday of Lent was called Palm Sunday because of the commemoration of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem (which set into motion the historical events of Holy Week). For almost a quarter century now, Passion Sunday and Palm Sunday have both been observed on the same day. Palm Sunday events take place in the parish hall and on the way into the nave. Once the entrance procession is over, it is officially Passion Sunday. This is why the choir never sings anthems about shouting hosanna or waving palms on this day. But we all sing “All Glory, Laud, and Honor” (Hymnal 154) together as we enter the nave. Legend has it that Bishop Theodulph of Orleans, while falsely imprisoned, was improvising the verses of this song from his jail cell as King Louis I walked by on his way to church one Palm Sunday. King Louis was so moved that he ordered St. Theodulph freed and the song has been sung on Palm Sunday ever since.

The song we sing as the reserved sacrament is carried in procession to the Altar of Repose on Maundy Thursday was written by the great 13th century theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas. “Now my tongue, the mystery telling” (Hymnal 329) was inspired by a 13th century setting of another hymn which we sing during Lent, “Sing by tongue the glorious battle” (Hymnal 165) by the 6th century poet Venantius Fortunatus. Traditionally the first four verses are sung as the reserved sacrament is bring moved and the final two are sung at the place of reservation. You could liken this to music being sung on the way to a grave site and music being sung at interment.

One final thing you might find interesting about processions is that, according to some liturgists, not all processions are processions. I was originally taught that a procession had to begin at the altar and return there, as does the Gospel Procession (which symbolizes Christ’s leaving his Father’s throne to be in the midst of us). That would mean that hymns sung as the clergy and choir enter and leave the sanctuary are nothing more than traveling music. Other liturgists take exception with this view, asserting that we should all be processing in our hearts and minds with the clergy and choir as they approach the throne of grace; and likewise, we should think of our exit from the church as a procession into the world with the full intention to love and serve the Lord in the coming week. Maybe it just depends on whether you’re a spectator or a participant in the great Christian parade. Maybe a lot more depends on that, too.

The Unsung Song

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We all know that Lent is supposed to be a time of deprivation and devotion. Through fasting and prayer we emulate Christ’s 40 days in the desert as he prepared to begin his earthly ministry. One of our goals is supposed to be that we shall emerge, at Easter, prepared to take on new ministries of our own.

Liturgically, one of the things that we traditionally give-up during Lent is the “Alleluia”. Or last least we think we do. In point of fact, at St. Mark’s we do not. Why? Because we don’t sing it to begin with. The “Alleluia” that we are supposed to be giving-up is the Alleluia Verse which properly precedes the Gospel in the Mass. At St. Mark’s, as in many other parishes, a hymn is used in place of the Verse. All the extraneous alleluias that we are so careful not to sing during Lent certainly help remind us by their absence that we are in a penitential season. “The Alleluia,” however, as something precious to be given-up, is likely a foreign concept to most of us.

“Alleluia”(or Hallel-u-jah) is one of only a few Hebrew words which has remained unaltered throughout Christian history. The word, meaning “Praise the Lord”, first appears in the Psalms. It was a congregational response in early Hebrew Temple services. Christian usage derives from the 19th chapter of the Book of Revelation. We know that it was used in early Apostolic worship before the proclamation of the Good News. It may be the text of the first Christian “pop” music. Saint Jerome tells of farmers, tradesmen, and even children singing it to extemporaneous tunes. According to St. Augustine, it was also the first “sea-chanty,” having been sung by Roman oarsmen. The Roman historian Apollinaris tells of Christian soldiers singing Alleluia as a battle-cry as they marched against pagan barbarians.

The Alleluia before the Gospel became increasingly elaborate as Christian worship evolved. In Medieval times, there were sometimes dozens of Alleluias sung before the reading. Singing this song of the angels was seen as a privilege and a way of becoming one with the Eternal Word. To not sing the song was perceived as a great deprivation. It symbolized a deepening of the great chasm between earthly understanding and heavenly understanding. It carried the foreboding of a disconnect from God. Thus, in order to incite the people to increase their efforts to know and do the will of God, singing the Alleluia was forbidden during Lent.

In Europe there were elaborate “depositio” ceremonies associated with the temporary cessation of the Alleluia. The word would be burned into a plaque, placed into a coffin, and carried in a grand liturgical procession (complete with pall-bearers, torchers, thurifers, and crucifers) out of the church to be buried in the cloister. Before Easter Vigil, the coffin would be dug-up and ceremoniously carried back into the church so that the Alleluia song could live again. One less elaborate ceremony, popular in France, was for choir-boys to write the word on old-fashioned wind-up tops and hurl them spinning out of the church into the graveyard. The tops would remain in the graveyard until Easter, when the boys would retrieve them back into the church.

There are two songs in our hymnal which were written for use in the formal ceremonies. “Sing Alleluia forth, in Duteous Praise” dates from the 10th century and “Alleluia, song of gladness” dates from the 11th century. We may not feel the devotion that the early church felt when we sing “Alleluia”. We may not feel as deprived as the church in the middle ages felt when we don’t sing it. Might this mean we are spiritually less alive than they were? Or might it mean that we’re just a little more indifferent about our worship than we could be? It’s something to think about as we prepare, during this Lent, to emerge from our own spiritual graves at Easter.

Rediscovering our Roots

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This Lent, we shall be changing the service music from the “Willan” setting written in the 20th century by Healey Willan, organist/choirmaster of the Anglican Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Toronto, to the “Merbecke” setting, written in the mid-16th century by London organist, composer, and scholar John Merbecke.

The setting was created for the First Prayer Book in the Anglican Church, that of King Edward VI. It fell into disuse after Queen Mary I ascended to the throne; but regained popularity during the Victorian era. In the Episcopal Church, throughout most of our lifetimes, the Willan setting has been the most commonly used for Ordinary Time. The Merbecke setting has been most widely used in Lent and Advent, owing to its somber and austere style. Where Rite I is still the norm, this remains the case today.

When Archbishop Thomas Cranmer asked John Merbecke to provide service music for the new prayer book in 1549, he specified that it was to be simple and able to be sung by everyone. He admonished Merbecke that there was to be “for every syllable only one note.” Cranmer wanted the people to have no excuse for not participating in the Liturgy. This Lent, we want to encourage your full participation as well. To that end, you will find links to audio files for three pieces from the Merbecke setting (Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei) to help you learn or recall this music, as you may have need.

[wpaudio url=”http://stmarks-music.s3.amazonaws.com/kyrie.mp3″ text=”Listen to the Merbecke Kyrie” dl=”0″]
[wpaudio url=”http://stmarks-music.s3.amazonaws.com/sanctus.mp3″ text=”Listen to the Merbecke Sanctus” dl=”0″]
[wpaudio url=”http://stmarks-music.s3.amazonaws.com/agnus_dei.mp3″ text=”Listen to the Merbecke Agnus Dei” dl=”0″]

John Merbecke was born around 1510; but nothing else is known of him until 1531 when he appears on the roster of men employed to sing with the boy choristers at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. He began his service there in the court of Henry VIII, during that time when the Church of England was being established as separate from the Church of Rome.

He was appointed organist of St. George’s in 1541. Two years later, his fortunes took a turn for the worse. The Church of England was becoming aggressive in its efforts to protect the English people from both the errors of Rome and those of the emerging European Protestants. Merbecke, however, could not resist collecting and reading the writings of the radical new Protestant thinkers, particularly John Calvin. In 1543, he was found to be in possession of such material. Along with two colleagues at St. George’s, he was arrested, charged with heresy, and condemned to death by burning at the stake.

Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, pleaded Merbecke’s case before the King Henry VIII, and he received a reprieve. Released from the Tower, Merbecke returned to his post at St. George’s where he remained during the reigns of Edward VI, “Bloody” Mary I, and Elizabeth I until his death in 1585.

John Merbecke shares a feast-day in the Anglican/Episcopal calendar on November 21 with two of his contemporaries. One is Thomas Tallis who, as music director for the Chapel Royal, went “on the road” with final four Tudor monarchs when they were not “at home” in Windsor Castle. The other is William Byrd who served as organist for the Chapel Royal through the Elizabethan era.

Beware of the Scarecrow in the Cucumber Patch

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Most of the Christmas trappings that clutter our otherwise spiritual experience of the season seem to have come into full flourish during the Victorian era. Take, for example, the all-American Christmas tree. It may have started in 7th century Germany with the English missionary monk, St. Boniface, using a fir tree to teach the concept of the Trinity to the pagans, but until the mid-1800’s few people outside Germany knew what a Christmas tree was, except for a few German immigrants in the United States.

It was Queen Victoria, with her German-born husband Albert, who introduced dainty candle-lit Christmas trees to the English. Then President Franklin Pierce set one up in the White House. Once we Americans got hold of the idea, the little table-top “tannenbaum” quickly became a ceiling-scraping candle-laden fire-hazard that would have put fear into the heart of a Druid. By 1882, one of Thomas Edison’s associates, Edward Johnson, had created a somewhat safer tree. He hand-wired 80 red, white, and blue light-bulbs together and wrapped them around an evergreen tree creating the first “laboratory” electrically lighted Christmas tree. The first public display of Mr. Johnson’s idea came in 1895, when Grover Cleveland had one installed in the White House. As electricity became more widely available to the general public, Christmas trees spread like wildfire, so to speak.

Christmas music also came into full bloom in the Victorian period. Like the Christmas tree, it can be traced back to the 7th century. A strafing run through of the Christmas section of the hymnal can show us the evolution. Our hymnal, prior to 1980, included one of the original 7th century Christmas hymns, “A Great and Mighty Wonder.” This hymn by St. Germanus, originally in Greek, is still sung by the Eastern Orthodox church at Vespers on Christmas Eve. The earliest Christmas hymn still in our hymnal is “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.” This hymn, although originally in Latin, is English in origin and dates from the 11th century (when Latin was the official language of the Western Church). The text is pure theology and the mood is most mystical. It seems to have been inspired by the opening of St. John’s Gospel. It is not, however, directly derived from scripture; so it would not have been sung at mass. It was sung at Compline.

The earliest Christmas hymn in our hymnal which was permitted to be sung at mass is “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night”. It was written in the late 1600s by an Irishman, Nahum Tate. The text comes directly from the Gospel of Luke. Throughout the first half of the 18th century, this was one of only six hymns (two others for Easter, plus three communion hymns) that could be sung at Divine Worship in the English church. Psalms and Canticles were the only other music which the church allowed.

All that began to change with the emergence of the Methodists. Charles Wesley gave us “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” in the mid-1700’s. Notice the tense change. We have shifted from “shepherds watched” (past tense) to “angels sing” (present tense). Wesley isn’t focusing us on what happened centuries ago at Christ’s birth, he is focusing on Christ’s birth as an event that is not bound by time and space. Wesley is trying to make Christ’s birth as real to us as it was to those who witnessed it live and in person. Another hymn from this period that expresses the same attitude about the meaning of Christmas is “Christians Awake, Salute the Happy Morn” by a friend of the Wesley brothers, John Byrom. It was written as a Christmas present to his daughter in 1749. This hymn can be seen as a sort of bridge between the 17th and 18th century perspective on Christmas. It includes biblical accounts of shepherds and angels, but the beginning and ending verses exhort us to involve ourselves on a personal level in Christ’s birth. John Byrom, by the way, was the inventor of “shorthand” and John Wesley’s journals were written in shorthand.

As we move into the early 19h century, we encounter one of the most beloved Christmas hymns world-wide: “Stille Nacht”. The stories about the Lutheran pastor and his organist writing this for Christmas Eve in 1818 because the organ was out of commission and using a guitar to accompany it are all true. This may be the first occasion of a purely sentimental hymn being used in worship. It’s like the Christmas equivalent of “Were you There”, which some folks like to sing on Good Friday. It may not do much to stimulate the intellect; but it can really get you in the gut. There’s a somewhat interesting story about how the song made it out of an obscure Austrian village church into the churches of the global village. It seems that when the organ repairman came to fix the organ, he asked what Christmas services were like without an organ. The pastor and organist told him their tale and then sang their little song for him. As the repairman went on his rounds throughout the neighboring villages, he related their story and song. The episode soon faded into distant memory until 1831 when a group of folksingers, the Zillerthal sisters, sang the song at a fair in Leipsig. A music publisher heard their performance and included it in a collection of Tyrolean folksongs he was getting ready to print. Austrian folk music, by the mid-19th century, was becoming all the rage in European and American music halls; and that’s where “Silent Night” became a hit song, on the theater stage. Now it is sung in almost every language of Christendom. The American standard translation was published in 1865.

By the time we are into the late Victorian period, the cup of Christmas sentimentality is overflowing. It is from this period that we get the almost maudlin “Away in a Manger”. (The story of Martin Luther, in the 16th century, writing this little lullaby for his children to sing is pure fiction.) But a new Christmas message is beginning to emerge: the social Gospel is being spread. After a trip to the Holy Land, the Rev. Phillips Brooks wrote “O Little Town of Bethlehem” for the Sunday school children at Holy Trinity, Philadelphia. Mr. Brook’s organist, Lewis Redner, wrote the tune. Many hymnals excluded the original 4th verse because of its then controversial social message. It was reintroduced in our 1940 hymnal and remains in the 1980 hymnal. In case you’ve forgotten, it’s the verse that talks about misery crying out as charity stands watching. Another hymn from the period with an even stronger social message is “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” by Edmund Sears. It has verses dealing with weariness, sadness, woes, strife, and warfare; not what we really want to think about when we’re trying to enjoy Christmas. The hymn does end with a hopeful allusion to Christ’s second coming, But still, once you get past the first verse, it’s kind of a Christmas buzz-kill. But that may be the whole point of the song.

We can get so caught up in all the sentimentality of Christmas that it becomes easy to either consciously or sub-consciously choose to ignore what the Incarnation is all about. Does it please our Lord to see us engaged in gross sentimentality or festive revelry at Christmas? Does Jesus really want a birthday party, or does he expect something else from us at Christmas time? It may interest you to know that some Christians denominations do not celebrate Christmas. They cite numerous biblical injunctions against it. One of the passages used against the Christmas tree, for example, comes from the prophet Jeremiah. In the 10th chapter, he says “For the customs of the peoples are false: a tree from the forest is cut down… people deck it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move. Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field.” Could our Christmas trees, wreaths, and poinsettias be tempting us into idolatry? Think about the songs “O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree” or “The Holly and The Ivy.”

Jeremiah may or may not be calling our Christmas decorations idolatrous scarecrows; but his prophesy does warn us about idolizing some of our Christmas traditions. It wouldn’t seem like Christmas without them, but giving some of them up could actually be a sort of Christmas present to Jesus. There might also be other gift ideas in the Victorian Christmas hymns; like making a personal effort to bring help and comfort to those who are in misery, weariness, strife, or need?. Shouldn’t Christmas be about making sure there is more joy in Jesus’ heart than there is in ours?

Ready, Set, Shop!

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We’re all familiar with the names of William Bradford, Chief Massasoit, and Squanto; right? The events that made up that famous three day festival in 1621 (probably during the month of October) have been familiar to us ever since we re-enacted them in grammar school pageants. It’s a lovely tale, and there is some truth to it; but there is a grown-up version that most of us have never heard. So, if you want the rest of the story, read on.

“Thanksgiving” for thousands of years has been a meaningful event to peoples all around the world. In ancient times, hunter-gatherers offered “thanksgiving” as a daily event (if the day went well). To land-cultivators, “thanksgiving” was more of a seasonal event offered at the time of harvest (if the crop came in). We give thanks at every meal by saying grace. We say the “Great Thanksgiving” at every Eucharist after all have communed.

So why is the great American Thanksgiving such a big deal? Besides the fact that, as an annual national event, it’s unique in all the world (okay, Canada has one too but it’s just a harvest festival marginally observed on the 2nd Monday in October); the simple answer is that Thanksgiving is a big deal to us because we’re shopaholic gluttons!

In more modern times, most national days of thanksgiving have been one-time declarations in celebration of the defeat of an enemy in time of war. Granted, Governor Bradford’s colonial thanksgiving declarations were of the idealist variety; but he only declared them twice. The second one was a summer-time celebration giving thanks for a rain-storm that broke a long drought. No indigenous people were invited to that one. More than 50 years then passed before another day of thanksgiving was declared. This was to celebrate the Charleston, Massachusetts militia’s victory in a war with the local indigenous peoples.

The next time there was a national day of thanksgiving was 110 years after that. It was declared in celebration of the victory at Saratoga. Another 11 years passed before we had another thanksgiving. Congress asked George Washington to declare a day of thanks for the successful establishment of the U.S. government, and he set the date as Thursday, November 26th, 1789. No other president called for a national day of thanksgiving until after the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln, in his eloquent proclamation of 1863, did not, however, call for a victory celebration. His was an appeal for God’s healing of those who were suffering as a result of the recent “unavoidable” unpleasantness and God’s blessing on those who were striving to move the nation forward out of its despair. Lincoln set the date of Thanksgiving as the last Thursday in November.

Every president for the next 75 years honored that tradition. It was Franklin Roosevelt who, in 1939, moved the date up to the fourth Thursday of November. And he did this, by his own admission, to lengthen the Christmas shopping season! Even though Macy’s had been doing their Thanksgiving Day parade since 1924 to officially kick-off the Christmas shopping season, there were now undertones of a governmental sanctioning of the season.

But let us back-up to Lincoln’s time. This is when then the holiday become a celebration of all-American gluttony; well at least in the north, where the population was not suffering from the privations of reconstruction. Believe it or not, thanksgiving events heretofore had been characterized by prayer and fasting! The harvest festivals, like the pilgrims celebrated, often concluded with a nominal feast but only after a period of prayer and fasting.

The modern eat-until-you-burst American Thanksgiving Feast is the invention of a 19th century lady named Sarah Hale. Some have referred to her as the Martha Stewart of her day. Victorian homemakers eagerly anticipated her columns in popular publications like “Godey’s Lady’s Book” and “The Boston Ladies’ Magazine.” The Victorian ideal of over-decorated homes and over-served meals came to full fruition in her stylized Thanksgiving that set the benchmark for our celebrations of today.

It is also from the Victorian era that we get one of our best known Thanksgiving songs. (I’ll bet you thought we’d never get around to music!) The thoroughly Anglican “Come, ye thankful people, come” was written by the Very Rev. Dr. Henry Alford, who became Dean of Canterbury Cathedral in 1857. The tune, known as “St. George, Windsor,” was written in 1858 by Sir George Elvey who was the organist at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle during Queen Victoria’s reign. This song is a true harvest song; unlike some others, which are actually military victory songs. “We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing,” for example, is a song that the Pilgrims may have actually sung in 1610.

The protestant English colonists had actually come from the Netherlands, where they had fled to escape Anglican discrimination. In the Netherlands they would have likely heard this song being sung, as it was quite popular. It had been written as a “thanksgiving” song in celebration of the victory of the Dutch army over Spanish conquistadors at the Battle of Turnhout in 1597. Another great victory song which we associate with Thanksgiving is “Now thank we all our God.” This was written by a Lutheran Pastor named Martin Rinkart toward the end of the Thirty Years War. It became immensely popular in Germany after the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Its association with our Thanksgiving likely comes from German immigrants in the 19th century who regularly sang it as grace after their meals. (Note the term “after”.)

So there you have it; all the baggage that our modern American Thanksgiving brings with it. It may not all be pretty; but then most baggage isn’t. It’s scarred, beat-up, and reminds us of what we went through to get where we are. Even those who don’t feel they have much for which to be thankful, can at least thank God for having made it this far and thank him even more for the future place he has in mind for us all to go. If we are truly thankful, maybe we’ll demonstrate our thankfulness by finding opportunities to share that good news as we enter the upcoming shopping season. Remember, the gift of God’s love is already paid for and it’s one-size-fits-all. Shop on!

Famous Last Words

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Rev. Dudley A. Tyng

It is the antebellum period in American history. In the South, life goes on as it has for over a century. The “unpleasantness”, as the gentry would come to call it, has not yet fouled the honeysuckled air with the smoke and ash of war.

In the North, however, the air is thick with the fallout of the industrial revolution. Everyone and everything, it seems, must either change or be changed. Society is in an almost constant state of agitation. It is here that we meet the wealthy and powerful Tyng family: Stephen, an Episcopal priest, and one of his two priest sons, Dudley.

Father Stephen Tyng, rector of St. George’s in New York City, is one of the driving forces behind the emerging “low-church” movement in the Episcopal church. “Revivalism” is not yet old-time religion, it is the latest religious fad. Ministers are preaching a “social gospel”, exhorting their congregations to become more political and militant. Spiritual renewal and moral rearmament are popular sermon themes. Son Dudley is eager to carry the banner of this new reformation forward into his generation.

After graduating from seminary in Virginia, Dudley serves as priest-in-charge of several hinterland parishes before being called to the rectorship of Church of the Epiphany in Philadelphia. This parish thinks they know their new priest well: they had seen him grow-up while his father, Stephen, was their rector. Times have changed, though, and Dudley is a man of his of his time. He finds common ground with many of the dynamic and progressive young Protestant ministers in the city; but he seems unable to find common ground in his own parish.

His supporters praise him as “bold, fearless, and uncompromising” in the face of controversy. His foes condemn him as someone who just seems to seek out controversy. His style is tearing the parish apart. The vestry requests his resignation.

Some of Dudley’s parishioners leave with him and form a new parish, the Church of the Covenant. This parish will become famous in years to come as one of the “mother churches” of Reformed Episcopal Church when the Episcopal Church splits in 1874. In the meantime, Dudley and his fundamentalist clergy friends are busy planning an event billed as “A Mighty Act of God in Philadelphia”.

At this city-wide revival, Dudley achieves almost celebrity status. One evening, he preaches to a crowd of nearly 5000, and some 1000 respond to his altar-call. A few days later he retreats to his country estate for some rest and recreation.

Now, gentleman farmer Dudley has acquired the latest thing in agricultural equipment: an automated corn-shucking machine. Hands-on chap that he is, he has a go at operating it. In the process, he gets his sleeve caught in the works and his right arm is severed. A physician is summoned; but there is little he can do. Since antibiotics have not yet been discovered, infection sets in and Dudley lies dying. When asked if he has any parting words for his fans and admirers, he replies, “just tell them to stand up for Jesus”. With that, he dies.

The following Sunday, one of Dudley’s Presbyterian colleagues, Rev. George Duffield, closes his sermon with a poem he has just written, in tribute to Dudley, entitled “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus”. The local Baptist newspaper prints it the following week. Someone then gets the idea to start singing the poem to the tune of a popular song by George Webb, “Tis Dawn, the Lark is Singing”, and rest is history.