Happy (Fair & Balanced) Thanksgiving!

The Separatist sojourn in the Netherlands preceded their errand into the wilderness of New England in 1620. These believers brought a Dutch hymn with them to Plymouth and "We Gather Together" remains as the quintessential Thanksgiving anthem. This blog appreciates good writing and the lyrics of this hymn are as powerful in 2008 as they were in 1597 when the Separatists first heard them. The story of this hymn illustrates the dark and bloody ground of hymnody among U.S. religionists. If this is (fair & balanced) faith in faith, so be it.

[x YouTube/Shgoh2006 Channel]
"We Gather Together To Ask The Lord's Blessing" (1597)
By S.H. Goh

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known.
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to His Name; He forgets not His own.

Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, were at our side, all glory be Thine!

We all do extol Thee, Thou Leader triumphant,
And pray that Thou still our Defender will be.
Let Thy congregation escape tribulation;
Thy Name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!

[x Wall Street Fishwrap]
A Hymn's Long Journey Home
By Melanie Kirkpatrick

Its mention of God makes it verboten in schools today. But not too many years ago this was the season when teachers would lead their students in the great ecumenical Thanksgiving hymn, "We Gather Together to Ask the Lord's Blessing." It's a singable melody, and the stirring lyrics speak directly of the Pilgrims' experience in overcoming religious persecution.

Or do they? With the exception of Native Americans, we're all the descendants of those who came to the New World from somewhere else. So too, it turns out, did "We Gather Together," whose origins are Dutch and speak of religious persecution that predates the first Thanksgiving. It's appropriate that a hymn we sing to celebrate a quintessentially American holiday is, like most of us, a transplant.

The melody can be traced back to 1597 and is probably older than that. It started out as a folk song, whose secular lyrics set a decidedly nonreligious tone. Wilder dan wilt, wie sal mij temmen, the song began, or Wilder than wild, who will tame me?" Folk melodies have a way of wanting to be sung—think "Greensleeves," which has numerous sets of lyrics associated with it—and Wilder dan wilt was no exception.

Its transformation into the hymn about overcoming religious oppression began on January 24, 1597. That was the date of the Battle of Turnhout, in which Prince Maurice of Orange defeated the Spanish occupiers of a town in what is now the Netherlands. It appears likely that Dutch Protestants&3151;who were forbidden from practicing their religion under the Catholic King Philip II of Spain—celebrated the victory by borrowing the familiar folk melody and giving it new words. Hence Wilt heden nu treden or, loosely translated, "We gather together"—a phrase that itself connoted a heretofore forbidden act: Dutch Protestants joining together in worship. Its first appearance in print was in a 1626 collection of Dutch patriotic songs, Nederlandtsch Gedencklanck.

It's tantalizing to think that the English Pilgrims—in exile in Holland, the only place in Europe where they could worship freely--might have been familiar with Wilt heden nu treden. There's no record that they were, but the circumstantial evidence is strong. Some of them spoke Dutch, attended Dutch churches and even became Dutch citizens. "It's possible, I'd even go so far as to say it's probable, that the Pilgrims knew the tune," says John Kemp of Plimouth Plantation, the living-history museum of 17th-century America.

But to the Pilgrim mindset, "We Gather Together" would have been a secular song. It wasn't the direct word of the Bible, which meant they would not have sung it at church. The Pilgrims, like the Dutch Calvinists, sang only Psalms in worship and then without musical accompaniment or even harmony, which they considered "man glorifying in man's art," says Mr. Kemp. They saw any song except a Psalm as a violation of the commandment against idolatry.

So how did "We Gather Together" get from a 17th-century Dutch songbook to 20th-century American churches and schoolrooms?

One answer is Dutch settlers, who brought it with them to the New World, perhaps as early as the 1620s. The hymn stayed alive in the Dutch-American community throughout the centuries, says Emily Brink of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, Mich. In 1937, when the Christian Reformed Church in North America—a denomination that began with Dutch immigrants who sang only Psalms—made the then-controversial decision to permit hymns to be sung at church, "We Gather Together" was chosen as the opening hymn in the first hymnal.

Another answer has to do with a Viennese choirmaster by the name of Eduard Kremser, whose arrangement of "We Gather Together" was published in Leipzig, Germany, in 1877. Enter Theodore Baker, an American scholar studying in Leipzig. Baker translated the hymn into English in 1894 as a "prayer of Thanksgiving" to be sung by a choir.

From there it was an easy step to congregational singing. According to the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, which maintains a database of popular hymns, "We Gather Together's" first appearance in an American hymnal was in 1903. Over the next three decades it showed up in an assortment of hymnals in the Northeast and Midwest and in school songbooks. Its "big break" came in 1935, says Carl Daw, executive director of the Hymn Society, when it was added to the national hymnal of the Methodist-Episcopal Church.

The association with Thanksgiving helped popularize the hymn, and the country's experience with war also contributed to its spread. "By World War I, we started to see ourselves in this hymn," says Michael Hawn, professor of sacred music at Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology. Even more so in World War II, when "the wicked oppressing" would have resonated with a public engaged in the fight against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. "People take stock of themselves at Thanksgiving," he says. "We've all survived some turbulent times."

"We Gather Together" has all the elements that make a hymn great, says Prof. Hawn. Its melody is accessible, it has a catchy "incipit" or opening phrase, and it has a message that unfolds through the stanzas and carries the congregation with it to an uplifting conclusion: "O, Lord, make us free!"

On Thanksgiving Day, that's a sentiment that all Americans, wherever we are gathered, can share.

[Melanie Kirkpatrick is the associate editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Kirkpatrick received a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a master's degree from the University of Toronto. She was a Gannett Newspaper Foundation Fellow in Asian studies at the University of Hawaii. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a trustee of Princeton-in-Asia, an internship program in Asia for young college graduates.]

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