Hymns: Now Thank We All our God

I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy 😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the old hymns.

Today’s song is Now Thank Ae All Our God from 1636.

I often mention that I was raised a Roman Catholic. After some years of doubt and investigation as a teen, I committed my life to Chrit and became an evangelical Christian when I was 18. Then, I settled down in Cork Baptist Church, though I often visited some other local evangelical churches, such as the Brethren assembly, Pentecostal churches and newer charismatic house churches. I used to sing Now Thank We All Our God as a Roman Catholic, and I was pleased to hear it in evangelical churches too. I remember liking the tune as a child, though I understood little of the words.

It’s nice that the Roman Catholic church are happy to sing Protestant hymns. This one originated in Germany. Martin Rinkart, a Lutheran pastor, wrote the text around 1636 in the walled town of Eilenburg, Saxony, during the Thirty Years’ War. Eilenburg was overwhelmed with refugees, severe famine, and pestilence.

I sometimes wonder about the history of hymn singing. I once assumed that they were always sung. Some believe that only Psalms would have been sung in New Testament times. Congregational hymn singing was a late, and sometimes controversial, development:

• Following the legalization of Christianity in 313 CE, St. Ambrose introduced Latin, metrical congregational hymns to combat heresies and teach orthodox doctrine. However, by the late Middle Ages, congregational singing faded in favor of Latin plainsong and chants sung exclusively by trained choirs and clergy. In Roman Catholicism, Vernacular congregational hymns were formally restored to Catholic worship following the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) in 1963.
• Martin Luther believed music was a gift from God that belonged directly in the hands of the congregation. In 1524, he published the first Lutheran hymnals.Lutheranism was the first major Protestant tradition to make congregational hymn singing central to its liturgy.
• In the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition, it was not until Isaac Watts published Hymns and Spiritual Songs in 1707 that non-scriptural English hymns began breaking through, eventually gaining widespread acceptance in Presbyterian churches during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
• Methodism was essentially born on a wave of song. John Wesley published the first English hymnal in America in 1737. His brother, Charles Wesley, wrote over 6,000 hymns (including “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and “And Can It Be”), using energetic music to spread evangelical theology across Britain and North America.
• While Methodists and Independents sang hymns throughout the 1700s, the Church of England did not legally authorize congregational hymnody until 1820.
• Early English Particular Baptists restricted congregational singing to Psalms. However, in 1673, Pastor Benjamin Keach introduced a hymn at the end of the Lord’s Supper at his Southwark church, later expanding it to regular Sunday services by 1691. This sparked intense debate among early Baptists, but by the early 1700s, hymn singing became standard across the tradition.
• Eastern Christianity developed a rich tradition of poetic, non-scriptural hymnody very early in Church history. By the 6th and 7th centuries, complex poetic hymnody was fully woven into Orthodox Byzantine liturgies, though unlike Protestant hymnody, these are chanted by choirs/cantors rather than sung in metrical stanzas by the general congregation.

It’s a pity that I don’t hear “it “Now Thank We All Our God” much anymore in church, but I can watch it anytime I want on YouTube – and what’s stopping me from singing it and playing it myself? 😀

I don’t understand why hymns were controversial. A hymn is simply a prayer put to music. We don’t see them as inspired in the way that Scripture is inspired. There might be some occassions where someone might disagree with a particular point or emphasis in a prayer or hymn, but generally speaking, it’s a wonderful thing to worship together. And through hymns, we can share worship across the world and across centuries. And I love to see people worship God – which is why I try to avoid sneering at the new hymns nowadays. I spent many years sneering at them 😀. But even if I attended a church that only sung psalms, I’m sure that they’d be OK with me taking an interesting in any type of Christian music outside the context of church.

Here are some other versions: