We Believe: Faith, Community, and the Holy Act of Singing

Sponsored by David English

Singing together in worship is an expression of Christian unity. The study of congregational song is an exploration of Christian identity. Who are we, together, when we gather for worship? How are we formed and shaped by the songs that we sing? What, in fact, are the songs that we sing, considering that cherished ecumenical hymns have myriad textual and musical variations across traditions, and that different Christian traditions have peculiar core repertoires of assembly song?

Every hymnal, in a sense, represents an effort to respond to such questions. The Chapel Hymnal: An Ecumenical Collection of Congregational Song, forthcoming from Duke University Chapel and MorningStar Music/ECS Publishing Group, seeks to respond to these questions through the lens of Duke Chapel’s identity as a vibrant center of ecumenical Christian worship rooted in the love of God in Jesus Christ. Assembly song at Duke Chapel centers the Biblical psalms and the broad communal core of Christian hymnody, while also celebrating the particularities of diverse Christian traditions and cultures through inclusion of their unique hymnic repertoire in worship.

This sectional will: describe the process used to establish robust editorial criteria for The Chapel Hymnal, and share those criteria; highlight the hymnal’s advisory panel of scholar-practitioners (including numerous Fellows and members of THS) representing diverse Christian traditions; introduce the hymnal’s psalter, newly translated and pointed for chanting; model the hymnal’s potentially novel paradigm for presenting songs from the global South; and review the research used to determine core repertoire—both ecumenical and “tradition specific”—featured in The Chapel Hymnal.