current issue of _The Hymn_

[Karl Moyer]

Hi, fellow AGO-ers,

I take it that only a very few of our number belong to the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada, and thus that only a few ever read the society’s publications.  The current issue of The Hymn contains the texts of the plenary-session presentations at the society’s annual conference, held this past July in Waterloo, Ontario, an area settled in the late 1700 and into the 1800’s by quite a number of Lancaster County Mennonites, including Eby family ancestors of mine.  Present-day Kitchener was first called Ebytown, then for a while Berlin, and as of World War I, Kitchener.

The first plenary address was by Dr. Paul Westermeyer, who spoke to our organ-clergy dinner in September and is “Paul at his best”:   “Music and the Reformation: an Ecumenical Achievement.”   But the very next address was a two-person presentation on Calvinist use of the Psalms, with the second presenter no less than Dr. Emily Brink, editor of the Psalter Hymnal of some 20 years ago by the Christian Reformed Church, a fairly conservative Calvinist group identified with Calvin College, Grand Rapids MI.  (“Reformed” is a catch-word for Calvinist and often for Zwinglian reformation activities.) 

Non-society-members are able to purchase individual issues of The Hymn  for $10 from the society, at 711 West 151st Street, Overland Park KS 66223.   Other items in the current issue as well would make it a worthwhile purchase.

The executive of the society is Dr. Jan Kraybill, a terrific organist but also a fine scholar and champion of hymnody.   That Kraybille name is — yes!! — specifically identified with the former Kraybill’s Mennonite Church south of Mount Joy and the extant cemetery there with numbers burials of some of her relatives and some of mine as well.   Jan gets to Lancaster County every other blue moon. 

Just a thought.

Karl