Office Bearers

GS 1974 ARTICLE 101 – Church Book [1] Presentation of Book of Praise

Advisory Committee I presents:

MATERIAL:

Agenda C I a – Report of the Committee on the Church, appointed by the General Synod New Westminster, 1971, and Enclos­ure: “BOOK OF PRAISE”.

CONSIDERATION:

The completion of “Book of Praise” according to the mandate given to the Committee on the Church Book by the General Synod New Westminster, 1971, Acts Article 28 sub 8a, is of great significance for the life of our Churches.

RECOMMENDATION:

On this ground this Advisory Committee recommends: Synod decide to give the Committee on the Church Book appointed by the General Synod New Westminster, 1971 the opportunity to officially present to this Synod in plenary session “BOOK OF PRAISE” as an Enclosure to their report.

This Recommendation is unanimously adopted.

PRESENTATION OF BOOK OF PRAISE:

The floor is given to the Rev. G. VanDooren, convener of the Committee on the Church Book.

He addresses Synod as follows:

  • Mr. Chairman, esteemed brethren,
  • It is with a feeling of great satisfaction, better: of gratitude, that I may introduce the official presentation of the Complete Book of Praise to this Synod.
  • Exactly twenty years ago the first Synod of The Canadian Reformed Churches received a letter from the man who will present the Book of Praise to you, protesting against a decision of Classis East February 1954 to accept for use in our Churches the Psalter of the Christian Reformed Church. This man was, and is, Mr. Menno M. DeGroot.
  • Synod 1954, Article 56, appointed a Committee with the instruction to study the whole matter of the rhymed version of the Psalms in the English language. Yours truly was appointed convener and has been now, for these twenty years.
  • That is how it started!
  • Today we may say: behold, it is finished!
  • I could write a whole book about those twenty years, but will only mention some of the highlights.
  • The first remark should be that this undertaking was a unique one. To my knowledge no Church has ever before given such a mandate. Indeed, all Churches have given mandates to compile a Psalter and/or Hymnal, to compile from what was there already. Synod 1954 gave, in fact, the mandate, to compose such a Psalter, because, as far as we knew by that time, there was not an English Genevan Psalter available. One may wonder whether Article 30 of the Church Order gave the right for such a mandate but no one will regret that it did so. It was quite a step! Recently arrived in this country, and give a mandate to produce something that was never done before: the translation of Calvin’s Psalmbook into the English-speaking world. Yes, we had something. The Christian Reformed Psalter contained 34 trans­lations of the “beloved Psalms” but they were translations of Dutch stanzas rather than rhymings directly from the Scriptures.
  • Thus we started with the well-known “green booklet”.
  • The Committee started its work, first by searching through libraries if there were something we could recommend and present to the Churches.
  • Speaking of highlights, I remember how Menno DeGroot and I sang through the whole First Scottish Psalter in the hope that it might be acceptable. The result was close to nil.
  • I want to recall the work of the late Rev. Prof. F. Kouwenhoven who, being fluent in Hebrew, translated the Psalms directly from the original language, inspired by the Holy Spirit and how the three of us, he, the Rev. VanderBoom and I compared this with rhymings that were made at our request, word for word, mostly interested whether those rhymings had preserved the convenantal character of our Psalms. While doing this, we also came to the discovery that the Revised Standard Version was, in many respects, closer to the original. The result was that we suggested to those who made the rhymings, to especially use this translation next to others.
  • Then there was another discovery. Mr. Menno DeGroot, always 0.1 the lookout, found out that the Library of Congress U.S.A. possessed a copy, previously owned by the forefathers of the later President Roosevelt, whose signature it contained, a copy of the Psalter 1’167. This was a translation of the Dutch Psalter, produced by the (originally named) Hollands Gereformeerde Kerk in New Amsterdam, dating back to 1628. How we hoped that we had found what we were looking for. However, how we were disappointed. Indeed, two or three Psalms 1767 are in our present Book of Praise, but as a whole this Psalter was unacceptable, not only for the obsolete language but more for the fact that it had mutilated the Genevan tunes in a horrible way and used one tune for about twenty-five Psalms!
  • Next came what I may call a happy beginning of a new chapter in our history of twenty years, a chapter, however, with an unhappy ending, as one document of our Agenda shows.
  • I recall the day that we, Menno and I, met with Mr. and Mrs. Dewey Westra, close to the border in Samia. We had found his name as one of those who had rhymed the “34” for the Christian Reformed Church, and as the only one who would still be able to do more, similar, work. He was rightaway ready to help, even willing to rhyme all 150 Psalms. How happy we were when returning home.
  • The unhappy ending, however was the result of the fact that the D.W. rhymings were not to the taste of our membership, nor was your Committee happy with the fact that the specific covenantal flavour of the Psalms disappeared behind his somewhat pietistic work. Thus Synod 1968 ordered the Committee “to delete from a new edition of the Book of Praise those rhymed versions which lack the close conformity to the Scripture-text and those which lack the simplicity and clarity of expression required for the songs of the covenant, if revision is not possible.” (Acts Article 87, 7 b). The last words tell the tragic story. Hundreds of letters have been written bac and forth but the end-result was that, with D.W. “revision was not possible” the way our Churches wanted it. Thus, during the preparation of the complete Psalm book (I confine myself to the Psalms only, because Advisory Committee I has only introduced this part of the Book of Praise yet) the cooperation with D.W. dwindled and I do not think that even one Psalm appears in the complete Psalter which is 100% his work.
  • In the meantime we established contacts with experts, not only in language but also in Church music. For a moment these contacts spread over nearly the whole world, even reaching as far as Japan_ In answer to our questions, the final result of advices received from Church music experts was that, as far as the tunes were concerned, we should preserve the Genevan Psalter unmixed and undefiled.
  • I wish I had the time, Mr. Chairman, to describe in detail all the work that had to be done before one Psalm could be finalized and made ready for the printer (to keep the price low we selected a printer in The Netherlands, expert in this kind of publication). Once we found someone willing to prepare a rhyming, we compared it with the Bible text, made a long list of remarks and requests, sent it back to him; waited for his answer, sometimes an answer that did not satisfy us. Thus again a letter went out, sometimes we had to compromise, and when we as Committee were_ finally satisfied, we sent the rhyming to one of our expert advisers to check the language. His remarks came back to us, we passed them on to the original author, and thus – after some frictions sometimes, we could say: this will be it. Then Mr. DeGroot prepared the text with the tune for the printer.
  • And so I could go on, but our time is limited.
  • I want you to know, however, that we always started our meetings with the prayer that our God would help us in finding the men who could provide us with
  • faithful rhymings so that He could be enthroned on the praises of Israel. And He surprised us. New talents came to the fore (the brethren do not want their names mentioned) and, after the disappointments with D.W., we could complete our mandate only because of these new, surprising, talents.
  • Thus you may understand, Mr. Chairman, no one can be more happy about the completion of the Psalmbook than our Committee, after those twenty years during which there were changes in membership, but the Committee remained the same. We are fully aware that this new and complete edition is not perfect; maybe we must say, it is “provisional”. We dare not deny that it shows the fingerprints, maybe even (as one scorned) the “wooden shoes footprints” of immigrants. Undoubtedly a new generation will be able to improve it and bring it closer to the perfection which will arrive when our Saviour will lead us into the land where we will sing the song of Moses and the Lamb forever.
  • But we do believe that by the publication of this Book of Praise we have saved and secured, for the generations to come, the Calvinistic, Genevan, Covenantal Book of Praise.
  • May I now introduce to you the man who wrote his protest to our first Synod, Mr. Menno M. DeGroot, who will present to you the four successive products of our endeavours:
  • The “Green Booklet” with 34 rhymings. The first edition of the Book of Praise;
  • The Supplement to this first edition; and finally
  • The complete Book of Praise.                                                                    I thank you

After hr. M.M. DeGroot has presented the above to Synod, the chairman expresses the thankfulness of Synod to the LORD for the strength which He has given to complete the Book of Praise. He also thanks the members of the Committee, remembers the late Rev. F. Kouwenhoven who took part in the work in its initial stages. He expresses the wish that this work may be preserved in our Churches. We now can remember God’s deeds in our songs of praise, Who thrones on the praises of His covenant people. This book is evidence of our desire in our Churches, homes and schools not to ask for what pleases us but for what pleases the LORD. May the use of this book be to the glory of God, to the establishing of the Churches, now and for a long time.

After this Psalm 150 is sung.