O Little Town Of Bethlehem

[poliphilo]

I have sympathy with the vicar who decided he didn't want to be singing "O, Little Town of Bethlehem" this year. He'd been to the real Bethlehem, seen what a shit-hole it is, got involved with the politics- and couldn't square his experience with the fantasy version in the carol. 

"How still we see thee lie"? Actually, no. 

It's the job of a priest to point this sort of thing out.

Christianity isn't just bubblebath for the soul.  There's also the social gospel.

Myth and ethics: a powerful- and volatile-  combination. 

Besides, there are plenty more carols to chose from.

Comments

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Heh. I followed some more links from your link and found this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1093875/Three-starving-children-Two-addicts-shaking-And-poor-homeless-refugee-Church-updates-Twelve-Days-Christmas-21st-century.html

No objection, except that "five repossessings" doesn't scan!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't object either- I just think it's a bit wet.

And, as you say, it would be better if it scanned.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

There are differences between religions and their purposes, so I shan't make a sweeping generalisation, but:

Christianity - and especially non-orthodox Christianity such as Evangelical Lutheranism (e.g. Church of Denmark) and the Anglican Church - seems to have little justification if it does not engage with the current social issues at any given moment in time. It can't all be pretty and twee; some times a religion that bases itself on a social critic who ended up tried for his social and political AS WELL AS his religious beliefs, needs to step up to the plate and say "look, we have something to say about this!".

Of course, most of the time I personally disagree, and so be it. But if the C of E stops having opinions - even if they're fragmented and unruled by a central coordination - then it's just a bunch of pretty songs and impressive buildings. And in that case regular civil servants could do the job just as well as vicars and priests.

In short, I agree with you. I just took the long road in saying so...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Church of England seems to be in steady decline. There was a time when I thought this was a good thing. I don't any more.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Just for clarity (and out of interest), do you mean non-Orthodox (ie non Russian / Greek) or non-orthodox (in which case I'm not sure how the Anglican church fits that description.)?

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I suppose I meant any Protestant church, including the Anglican church even though I'm not sure it's theologically correct to refer to it as "Protestant". I can't help thinking that the Catholic church is somewhat orthodox, what with the apostolic succession and all, but that's just my personal non-dictionary definition. ;-)

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Ahh - my perception is that in Britain, the Anglican church is pretty much the definition of 'orthodox' :-)

(edited for mis-spelling)

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

True, and I suppose the C of E actually upholds a claim to apostolic succession, and in part the belief in transubstantiation, both of which in my thoroughly Lutheran brain seem like emblems of orthodox Christianity.

Mind you, I never really grasped the tenets of the C of E so I might be completely off the mark.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Anglican church thinks of itself as both "Catholic" and Reformed". Or in other words, it's all you other guys who are marching out of step.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I would think that's a case of taking it rather literally, yes? Isn't O Little Town about how Bethlehem was when Jesus was born, not how it is now? :P

What do I know, though, I'm just a lapsed Catholic. -_-

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, I agree. I wouldn't have "banned" the carol myself.

But I do wonder whether Bethlehem then was all that different from how it is now. Judaea was, after all, under Roman occupation.

The Bethlehem in the carol is a mythical town in a mythical landscape.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a tale with a strong mythical component...

I don't know. I am just reminded of the arguments I had in Catholic school with the teachers there about whether Catholicism should take social action. I was arguing against priests getting political in the homily because it destroyed the sense of mythic power of the mass by interrupting it with reality. Which is not to say that priests can't become activists, I suppose... but that they should recall that myth and ritual, and their ability to elevate the spirit and one's sense of one's own life's significance, is in itself a great power, and one that we are losing access to as modern skepticism and cynicism removes it from the realm of the "thinking" person.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I trained for the (Anglican) priesthood at a time when everything was geared towards stripping the mystery out of ritual and making it more accessible. We jettisoned our lovely old services in Tudor English and turned the mass into a sort of holiday-camp singalong- only without the fun. We were driven by a fanatical belief in the rightness- the inevitability- of all this reform- and we were terribly, terribly wrong.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I miss the mass in Latin, the elevation of it to something outside the norm: like poetry, the mass in Latin communicated before it was understood. And I despise the new American habit of building churches that look like auto dealerships. There is no sense of the numinous, the mysterious or the divine about any of it... it's very workaday human.

I don't go to God for that.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The 20th century was seriously unfriendly to organised religion and its mysteries. The western Churches tried to accomodate themselves to the prevailing mood- and ended up impoverished.

Sometimes I dream of being a country parson, reading my services from Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer, Sunday by Sunday, in my tiny, (unheated) 11th century church.

[mamadar.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that be the life? To be a parson the way Herbert was?

upasaka once worked for a Lutheran church that maintained their original building as a historic site. No heat, no artificial light, and a hand-pumped small pipe organ. (No loo, either, I think.) I have a photo somewhere of my stepdaughter at the age of about ten, leaning on the bellows during a concert we gave there. She did a fine job as the blower.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The hero of Parade's End (the novel I've just been reading)- a soldier serving at the front in WW1- has a persistent fantasy about taking holy orders and retiring to a country parish- preferably George Herbert's Bemerton. I really can't think of a more attractive life.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

And thus is paved the road to Hell - or at least irrelevancy.

I was raised United Methodist, even groomed for the clergy at one point, but abandoned them for the Episcopal Church. Then the Episcopalians, in that same sense of tone-deaf and misguided reform, forced "Rite 2" on us by fiat.

I think I'm a half-assed Chan Buddhist these days. I did a stint in the Gnostic Catholic Church, in which I was elevated to the clergy, but it emerged that their leadership were a bunch of clueless wankers as well.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think the churches panicked. They saw they were losing ground- and decided the way to win people back was to dumb things down. It was the wrong decision.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

If Graves is to be believed - and too often he isn't - Bethlehem has always been a shit-hole. He pokes fun at it in King Jesus, as I recall.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love Graves- a very fine poet- and very silly man.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Graves is something of a guilty pleasure. I love his poetry. I love his novels. And I love his scholarship, which I enjoy knowing full well that a substantial portion of what he's feeding me is utter crap.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

I agree that he is right to point out the problem, and to avoid singing it himself. I'm not sure if he's entitled to make a blanket rule for his congregation. Are we sure that it was his own action and not something that he suggested?
In my experience, the media likes to portray clergy - Anglican or catholic - as autocrats, even when the decision has been taken by a parish council
I've always taken it as poetic licence, and part of the general mawkishness of carols - like "No crying he makes" - it wouldn't have been all that still with all those cessor candidates milling about and all the inns full!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

When I was a vicar I used to chose all the hymns. I'm not sure why. It might have been better to devolve that duty to the choirmaster.

I don't much like hymns- and never did. I love anything medieaval- and Watts and Wesley are OK- but most Victorian Anglican hymns are horrible. 20th century hymns are even worse.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

In most of the parishes I've known - Anglican and Catholic - since the 80s, it's the choir leader who chooses the hymns, to fit the readings.
According to the Church Times, he simply said that he wasn't going to sing it - no banning of it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's a sensible course I think. My choirmaster probably allowed me to do it out of laziness. He wasn't a very good choirmaster.

It's a silly story really. A mountain out of a molehill.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

My ministers have always chosen the hymns to be sung at Sunday service. That way they go with the lectionary and/or the sermon/scripture themes.
"O Little Town" was written by Phillips Brooks, who was rector of Trinity Church in Boston, Massachusetts. There is more than one version to the story of how he came to write it.
I share one of them on my LJ page.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've always regarded hymn singing as a chore. That's mostly because I can't sing.

O little Town is one of the better Victorian carols, I think.