Nephi’s Blunder

The Lord commanded Nephi to cut off Laban’s head.
After some reluctance, he chopped and made him dead.
Murder was good: Laban was a wicked man.
Nephi and his kin got brass plates as God planned.

Photo by Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash

Chorus:
“I will go; I will do the thing the Lord commands.
I know the Lord provides a way; he wants me to obey.
I will go; I will do the thing the Lord commands.
I know the Lord provides a way; he wants me to obey.”

The Lord told Abraham he must kill his only son.
He took Isaac with him to get the Lord’s will done.
When ready to kill, at last his knife he drew,
Broke in then an angel: “God was testing you.”

Chorus

The Lord commanded Thomas to exclude kids of gays.
Never to baptize them in all their youthful days.
Thomas and Russell knew they were in a bind.
Finally years later, Russell changed God’s mind.

Chorus

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Ruin a hymn title by switching out one letter.

I’ve often seen threads on AskReddit where commenters are asked to change the expected storyline of a movie by changing one letter in its title, or something like that. I thought it would be fun to try with LDS hymns. I’ve also added a note about what I think each revised hymn would be about. If you’re so inclined, please feel free to contribute your own in the comments!

Oh, May My Soul Commute with Thee – Wouldn’t your commute be improved by having Jesus riding shotgun? (He could probably take the wheel when needed.)

Amazing Grade – A student rejoices at passing a class they had expected to

Image credit: Clipart Library

fail.

Bark all Ye Nations – A celebration of Peter’s long-lost revelation about taking the gospel to the canines

Now Let Ur Rejoice – A celebration of Nanna, the patron deity of ancient Ur

An Angel Frog on High – Angelic frogs are the next logical step after angelic salamanders.

Oh, Code, All Ye Faithful – An exhortation for believers to learn to write computer code

The Wintry Day, Descending to its Clone – A complaint about how many identical dreary winter days a person may have to endure in a row

The Morning Freaks – A lament about how people who love mornings run the Church

Have I Done Any Goop? – A maker of slimy substances wonders at the value of their work

Rook of Ages – A hymn about the timelessness of chess

The Icon Rod – Lehi’s dream is reimagined with a rod made of religious icons.

Abide Sith Me! – A Jedi who has turned to the dark side of the Force encourages themself to hold strong to the evil they have chosen.

Sweet Is the Dork – In praise of socially inept but kindhearted people

Because I Have Beer Given Much – The next round’s on me!

Nope of Israel – A hymn of praise for people who leave the Church

Mary, did you know . . . you need to cover up?

As part of the Church’s “Light the World” campaign this year, they released a set of images for people to share. One of them was a modified version of a painting of Mary and baby Jesus that had a number of edits made. See below to see the original and the modified versions. (I’m not sure who to credit for noticing this or making the comparison image. I’ve seen it mentioned in a bunch of Facebook groups and I think on the Mormon Reddit, but I’m not sure who made the original observation.) In honor of the covering up of any hint of Mary’s cleavage in the edited version, I’ve rewritten the song “Mary, Did You Know?”

 

Mary, did you know that your wicked breasts
Would cause good men to stumble?
Mary, did you know that your sinful chest
Made men’s composure crumble?
Did you know that your cover up
Would save men’s souls from sin?
These parts of you were secretly, morality’s linchpin

Gender-Neutralizing the Hymns: A Proof of Concept

How difficult would it be to make our hymns gender-neutral? If I could make one change to our hymnal, I’m with Mike C. in this 2014 post: this is the change I’d make. Incidentally, I would also be in favor of making our scriptures gender-neutral, but I expect modifying the hymns would be a much easier sell at this point (not that either is likely to happen soon). My reasoning is the same in either case. As it’s become less acceptable and less common in the world in general for words like “man” to be used to refer to humanity in general, women’s experience at church becomes more and more of a contrast with the rest of their lives. Virtually every reading of scripture and many singing of hymns just emphasizes again to women how unimportant, how peripheral, they are in the Church. Of course I’d rather we changed the actual structure of the Church to make women more equal, but while that’s not happening, modifying our hymns would be a good step.

There’s even precedent for gender-neutralizing hymns, at least a little. Douglas Campbell documents in this 1995 Dialogue article that in the update to the current 1985 hymnal from its predecessor, a few hymns had some of their language changed from gender-exclusive to gender-neutral. Still, I realize that such changes are unlikely to be made wholesale. I can’t imagine Presidents Nelson or Oaks signing off on such changes, for example. Perhaps in a few more decades when we get our next new hymnal, the GAs of the day might consider it.

In this post, I’m going to look at a very mundane question that has always kind of lurked in the back of my mind on this topic. If we actually did want to change the language of our hymns to make them gender-neutral, how difficult would it be? I looked at 20% the hymns in our current hymnal (all hymn numbers that are evenly divisible by five, so 68 of the 341) and tried my hand at rewriting the gender-exclusive words into gender-neutral words. My goal was just to see how easy or difficult the exercise was.

First, I made a list of all the gender-exclusive words in these 68 hymns. There are 379 in total, or about five and a half per hymn. Most of them, though, are references to Jesus or God (e.g., Father, Son, Lord, and King). I’m not considering these types of usages. I’m only interested in gender-exclusive words that refer to people in general, or to Church members. This table shows the breakdown of the 379 words.

It’s just the 55 words from the second and fourth rows, then, that I attempted to gender-neutralize. All but two of the 55 are male gender-specific words. To be complete, I tried to gender-neutralize them all, male or female. One other note, in case anyone is ever interested enough to try to retrace my steps: if a word occurs multiple times in a hymn because a line is repeated (like in a chorus), I count each repeat as a separate instance.

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Some thoughts on hymns and the hymnal update

Image credit: Clipart-Library.com

In preparation for the release of the new hymnal, I’ve been working on a comparison of the current (1985) hymnal with its predecessor (first published in 1948; I’m using a slightly revised version from 1973). In this post, I’m just sharing some random things that came to mind while doing this comparison.

Hymn Titles

  • “Though Deepening Trials” is a clunky title for a hymn. In my experience, over half the time, people say the first word as through, which I think is completely understandable. Though is just a limp and unexpected word to begin a hymn title with. The problem, really, is that the first line is used as the title. From the 1973 hymnal to the 1985 one, several hymns had their titles switched from being the first line to being their most core or oft-repeated line. For example, “Ere You Left Your Room This Morning became “Did You Think to Pray?” and “When Upon Life’s Billows became “Count Your Blessings.The problem is that “Though Deepening Trials” doesn’t have a chorus or oft-repeated phrase, which is why, I assume, the 1985 hymnal compilers left its title as-is.
  • “Glorious Things Are Sung of Zion” always sounds to me like damning with faint praise. “What do you think of Zion?” “Well, I’m not a fan, but I’ve heard glorious things are sung of it.”
  • The title “Again, Our Dear Redeeming Lord” always makes me chuckle, because if you just added a question mark to the end, it sounds like something a long-suffering servant would say when their master kept making annoying demands. I imagine it being said by the servant in the Parable of the Vineyard in Jacob 5, when he was so tired of the Lord wanting to go back to the vineyard over and over and over.

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Hymn Tempo in 1973 and 1985 Hymnals

This is what then-apostle Spencer W. Kimball had to say in a report of a 1955 mission tour (my source for the quote is Ardis Parshall):

Music: It is generally sung too fast.

If you’re like most Mormons I know, your complaints typically run in the opposite direction: Music is played and sung too slowly in church. This has certainly been my experience. I recall in the ward my wife and I lived in when we were first married a couple of decades ago, the hymns were so slow in sacrament meeting that I took to timing them and comparing to the suggested tempo in the hymnal and whispering complaints to my wife about how big the differences were. And that was before smartphones, so I had to do the math in my head! Along the same lines, you might notice that in my Conference review posts, I typically note particularly fast musical numbers for praise.

I was thinking about this issue while I’ve gathered some data from the hymnal in preparation for the release of the Church’s new hymnal. Like in my last post, I’m looking at the 1985 hymnal and the previous hymnal (the copy I have is from 1973, but it was largely unchanged from 1948). It occurred to me that, because many hymns appear virtually unchanged in both hymnals, I could line them up next to each other and see if the compilers of the 1985 hymnal generally suggested faster or slower tempos than the compilers of the previous hymnal did. This would be an indicator of whether they thought music was being played and sung too fast or too slowly.

For example, “The Spirit of God” appears in the 1973 hymnal with a tempo of 100 beats per minute (bpm), and in the 1985 hymnal with a tempo of 96-112 bpm. It is in 4/4 time in both hymnals, and the tune is the same. As you probably know, the 1985 hymnal always suggests a tempo range. The 1973 hymnal just suggests a single tempo, although I’m guessing it was with the expectation that there would be variation around it in practice.

I was able to find 250 matched pairs of hymns to compare across the two hymnals. I matched them on both title (taking into account that sometimes the titles changed for the same hymn) and composer, to be sure that I wasn’t comparing hymns set to different tunes. I used the 1985 hymnal as the starting point, and looked for a matching hymn for each in the 1973 hymnal. A few hymns appear more than once in the 1985 hymnal and therefore also more than once in the set of 250. For example, “Come, Come Ye Saints” is #30 in the 1985 hymnal, and also #326, for men’s voices.

This graph summarizes where the 1973 tempos fall in comparison to the 1985 tempos for the 250 matched pairs of hymns.

The most frequent result is that the 1973 tempo falls within the 1985 interval (the middle bar). But when it doesn’t, it’s much more common that the 1973 tempo is slower than the 1985 interval than that it’s faster. When the 1973 tempo is at the end of the interval, it’s over four times as likely (26% vs. 6%) to be at the slow end as at the fast end. When it’s entirely outside the interval, it’s over ten times as likely (22% vs. 2%) to be outside at the slow end as outside at the fast end. Another way of summarizing the same data, although it’s not shown in the graph, is that the average fraction of the 1985 tempo range that is faster than the 1973 tempo is 72%. Overall, it seems clear that the compilers of the 1985 hymnal were generally trying to speed the hymns up.

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Mood of Hymns for Men vs. Hymns for Women

I’m getting ready for the Church to release the new hymnal, although I realize it will be a while still before it comes out. In preparation, I’ve been looking at some comparisons of the current 1985 hymnal with the one that preceded it. From Wikipedia, it looks like the previous hymnal was released in 1948, revised in 1950, and added to just a little in 1960. The copy I own has a copyright date of 1973, but it looks like it’s just the 1960 version (although I can tell that its preface from 1973 because it is signed by the First Presidency of Harold B. Lee, N. Eldon Tanner, and Marion G. Romney).

One difference between the two hymnals that I’ve noticed is in the hymns to be sung by men versus those to be sung by women. More particularly, the difference is in the moods used to describe how the hymns are to be sung. By “moods,” I mean the one- or two-word adverb descriptions written at the top of the hymn. For example, the current hymnbook says that hymn #1, “The Morning Breaks” is to be sung triumphantly. In the 1973 hymnal, the moods for men’s hymns aren’t too different from the moods for women’s hymns. In the 1985 hymnal, the moods for men’s versus women’s hymns are more markedly different. Because there are a lot of different mood words assigned to the hymns, I lumped them into three groups for convenience in display. Mood words like boldly I called “high energy.” Mood words like reverently I called “holy.” And mood words like peacefully I called “low energy.” Here’s a graph comparing the hymns for men and for women in the two hymnals.

The total number of hymns specifically for men or for women was much larger in the 1973 hymnal (47 for men; 41 for women) than in the 1985 hymnal (19 for men; 10 for women). As you can see, in the graph, I’m showing percentages instead of counts to make the comparisons easier to look at. (Note that six of the 41 women’s hymns in the 1973 are excluded from the comparison because they either have no mood description, or they have a tempo word in place of a mood description.)

In the 1973 hymnal, there’s some tendency for men to be assigned more high energy moods and women more holy and low energy moods. In the 1985 hymnal, this difference gets much larger, as over two thirds of men’s hymns have high energy moods, and only 10% of women’s hymns do. This isn’t at all a surprising difference to run into. I am disappointed, though, to see that the hymn selectors’ ideas of traditional gender roles, with active men and passive, worshipful women, is translated into the hymns they select and the moods they apply to them. I hope that the new hymnal doesn’t feature such a difference, but I’m guessing that it probably will.

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Because I’ve Been Infected Much

We here at ZD have learned that the following hymn has been submitted to the Church by a group of devoted anti-vaxxers for possible inclusion in the new hymnbook. It is sung to the tune of “Because I Have Been Given Much.”
Because I’ve been infected much, I too infect.
I’ll pass a virus on before you can detect!
In me the germs will reproduce,
I will then quickly let them loose,
So they can put themselves to use!

Photo by Michael Maasen on Unsplash

.
Because I’ve learned to never share another’s load,
And never to someone in need compassion showed,
I will not ever wear a mask,
I will be angry if you ask,
Don’t say it; I’ll take you to task!
.
Because I have such natural immunity,
I have no need of helping my community.
COVID vaccines I will eschew,
Washing my hands I will skip too,
If someone dies I hope it’s you!

Joseph Smith’s First (or Second) Prayer

Rumor has it that the folks assembling the new Church hymnal are planning to embrace the multiple accounts of the First Vision with a completely rewritten version of the hymn “Joseph Smith’s First Prayer.” We here at ZD are pleased to present this draft leaked to us from hidden sources deep in the COB.

1. Oh, how lovely was the morning!
Or perhaps ’twas afternoon!
Bees were humming, sweet birds singing,
Or the birds may have ceased to croon,
When within the shady woodland
Joseph sought the God of love,
Or he may have wandered, unplanned,
When he got word from above.

Photo by Axel Holen on Unsplash

2. Humbly kneeling, sweet appealing—
’Twas the boy’s first uttered prayer—
Or perhaps he’d been concealing
Vocal prayers that were far from rare;
But undaunted, still he trusted
In his Heav’nly Father’s care,
Or he may have been quite daunted
And been filled with deep despair.

3. Suddenly a light descended,
Brighter far than noonday sun,
Or perhaps from earth ascended
Thick darkness that left him stunned,
While appeared two heav’nly beings,
God the Father and the Son,
Or it might have been just angels
Or a heav’nly being One.

4. “Joseph, this is my Beloved;
Hear him!” Oh, how sweet the word!
Or the Lord alone announced
Joseph’s sins would no more be heard.
Oh, what rapture filled his bosom,
For he saw the living God,
Or perhaps he found it humdrum,
And he noised it not abroad.

Hymns for a Time of Coronavirus

Come, Come, Ye Saints

Photo by KIM DAE JEUNG from Pexels.

Come, come, ye Saints
No quarantining fear
But with joy
Keep away!
Though hard to you
May distancing appear
Let’s stay home
Day by day!
‘Tis better if we need to meet
To keep a distance of six feet!
Do this and joy, the virus quelled
All is well! All is well!

Now Let Us Be Home

Now let us be home in extended staycation.
For safety as strangers on earth let us stay.
Sad tidings of virus have come to each nation,
But soon blessed hour of containment, we pray!
When from all the people COVID will be driven,
And none will infect them from morn until ev’n,
And all shall come forth and embrace one another
The WHO and CDC will free all to come play!

(Thanks to Olea of the Exponent who suggested a nice edit that fixed the rhythm of the sixth line of “Come, Come, Ye Saints.”)

Beatles Songs, Mormonized

At the Sunstone Symposium this year, Todd Compton, Harold Peterson, and Clair Von Barrus are giving a presentation titled “The Beatles, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Mormonism.” (Follow the link in the image on the right for more information or to register for Sunstone. If you do, just know that I’ll be jealous!)

Inspired by their topic, I thought it might be fun to imagine what a few of their song lyrics might have been if they had been Mormons. Here are three of my attempts. If you feel so inclined, please feel free to add yours in the comments.

Here Comes the Son

Here comes the Son, here comes the Son
And I say He’s the light.

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Two Songs I Hope Don’t Make It into the Children’s Songbook

Chad Nielsen’s recent post at T&S on updates on the hymn book revision process reminded me that there are a couple of songs that I’m really, really hoping don’t make it into the new Children’s Songbook. The first isn’t even in there now, but from Chad’s post, it sounds like it’s a strong candidate. It’s “If the Savior Stood Beside Me.”

If your ward loves this song like mine and you’ve been in Primary in the past couple of decades, you’re probably familiar with it. Its lyrics begin with its title, and then has the singer ask if they would do various things differently if the Savior stood beside them. “Would I do the things I do?” “Would I think of his commandments and try harder to be true?” “Would I say the things I say?” “Would I try to share the gospel?” “Would I speak more reverently?”

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

I understand that this might just be because I’m a neurotic Mormon, but the tone of this song strikes me as very much shaming kids and reminding them that they need to stop having so much fun and return to the grim, joyless path that Jesus wants them to be on. And yes, I know there are scriptures and statements by GAs about how the gospel means living joyously, but I think for kids in particular, what they often learn in Primary is that Jesus is most concerned with having them shut up and stop wiggling. So having them sing a song where they question whether they would do this or that or the other thing if Jesus were standing there seems to me to be very much a reminder that having fun is for places other than church, and when we’re at church, we’re quiet and miserable.

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Now Let Us Rejoice in the Hymnbook Revisions

The Church has announced that the hymnbook and children’s songbook are both going to be revised. I have a bunch of random thoughts on this. I’ll put them in three lists to try to create some illusion of organization.

Good News

  • The Church is actually asking for our feedback for once! Here’s the survey. (I’m assuming they’ll do something to limit multiple responses from the same person. I’m actually surprised that it looks like they’re not requiring an lds.org account login to participate.)
  • From the FAQ on the project: “New and existing hymns and songs from around the world will be evaluated and considered for inclusion.” This seems like great news, and a welcome change from the English-only hymns we have now. In the Church News story, Elder Kopischke, who’s an adviser to the project, says “We hope that these new books will also include some of the best hymns and songs originating in other languages that will then be translated into English and the other languages of the world.”
  • Elder Curtis, another adviser to the project, says (in the Church News story) “As an extension to the new printed hymnbook and songbook, additional sacred music will be made available online, including music of local interest in each language.” This also sounds like very welcome news to me, as so much music in church is limited by what’s in the hymnbook, so if the hymnbook is expanded with these official supplements, this will give us much more music (potentially) to choose from in church.
  • Also from the FAQ: “Because the new core collections will be the same in every language, national anthems will not be included in the printed hymnbooks.” I am very happy at the possibility of a little more uncoupling of nationalism–particularly American nationalism–from our religion.

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Ring Out, Mild Bells!

The Curriculum Department has received a number of complaints that Hymn #215 was promoting wildness among Church members, particularly some of the youth. There have even been reports of unwholesome recreational activities linked to singing of this hymn. We are pleased to offer this newly revised version, which will replace the existing version when the hymnbook is next revised in 2045.

Ring out, mild bells, but be restrained,
Keep decibels low, keep echoes brief.
The year is leaving like a thief;
Ring out mild bells, but keep noise contained.
The year is leaving like a thief;
Ring out mild bells, but keep noise contained.

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Sacrament Hymns, Ranked (by length)

I have a priest-aged son, and seeing him administer the sacrament has made me pay more attention to the process than I had since I was a priest myself. One issue that I noticed last week was that the sacrament hymn seemed really short, and my son and the other priest hadn’t finished breaking the bread by the time it was over. Of course this isn’t all that unusual. The organist just played through the hymn again while they finished. It was only a matter of a few seconds, but it brought to mind that when I was a priest, I always worried about this happening, because I could feel the pressure of everyone in the congregation waiting for me to just hurry up and finish.

This got me to wondering, though, about how long the sacrament hymns actually are. I looked up the 30 hymns listed under the topic “sacrament” in the back of the hymnbook. (They are all grouped together between hymn numbers 169 and 197, except for #146, “Gently Raise the Sacred Strain.”) I calculated the length of each hymn given its time signature, number of measures and verses, and suggested tempo (I used the midpoint of the lengths implied by taking the fastest and slowest of the suggested tempos.) I included only the verses actually printed in the music because, at least in my experience, it’s typically only those verses that are sung. I didn’t make any adjustment for fermatas.

Here’s the result. It looks like most sacrament hymns are between 1:30 and 3:00 long. A few are shorter. A few are quite a bit longer.

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More Christmas Hymns Give Me!

I love Christmas carols. In a typical year, I start listening to Christmas music by October at the latest, just to make sure I can be sure to enjoy it fully by the time Christmas actually rolls around. So it makes me sad that we have space for only 14 Christmas hymns in our hymnal. It’s not a big surprise, given that it’s not a lengthy hymnal1 to begin with, but it’s still unfortunate.

I thought it might be an interesting exercise to consider which of the 14 I might be willing to give up, and which ones I might like to add to take their place. Perhaps I’ll even think of an extra few to add in case we one day get a super-sized hymnal. Read More

With God, Nothing is Impossible…Except Choir

choir-1-1002x360

I am our ward choir director. If you knew me in real life you might find this shocking—I am no great musical talent, I have no formal training, and most importantly, I sport no distinguished-looking facial hair—no mutton chop sideburns or flamboyant goatee—the true mark of a virtuoso conductor.

What I can do is read music and play the piano passably well, and that is about it…which apparently qualifies me as choir director. I am a warm body who can keep a beat and carry a tune. Praise the Lord and pass the earplugs! Read More

Behold! A Little Fact’ry!

It’s almost Conference time again, and although it has only been six months, I can hardly remember what was said in April. Perhaps Conference talks would be easier to remember if they were set to music. It seems appropriate to set them to the music of hymns, since Conference talks and hymns both inhabit that space of being sorta kinda but not really completely scripture.

I’ll start with an easy one. Here’s a singable version of then-Elder Boyd K. Packer’s classic “To Young Men Only,” given in the Priesthood Session of October 1976 Conference. Sing to the tune of “Behold! A Royal Army.”

Behold! A little fact’ry
Is in you; it begins
To make a sacred substance,
But opens you to sins.
Your fact’ry will run slowly,
And when it makes too much,
It opens a release valve:
This valve you must not touch!

Tamper not! Tamper not!
Do not touch that release valve!
Tamper not! Tamper not!
If tempted, sing a hymn!
Tamper not! Tamper not! Tamper not!
Your fact’ry lights keep dim.

 

Carefully! Carefully with the plates!

I like to think that if J.R.R. Tolkien had been Mormon, he might have written a book about the hassles of getting the Book of Mormon translated. Such a book might have included the following song:

Chip the peepstone and break the plates!
Melt the sealed portion down!
That’s what Joseph Jr. hates—
Wave the sword of Laban around!

Cut the top off of the hat!
Lose page one through 116!
Smash the Urim and Thummim flat!
Refuse to put your farm to lien!

That’s what Joseph Jr. hates—
So, carefully! carefully with the plates!