Singspiration Hutzpah
This past Tuesday the single adults of Grace Bible Church in Northeast Pennsylvania gathered for a singspiration. In between a medley of traditional hymns and modern favorites we took the time to share testimonies and thoughts from the Sunday sermon.
After singing It Is Well with My Soul, I shared what I thought was an accurate version of that hymn’s dramatic history. In lurid detail I recounted how Philip Bliss wrote the lyrics to the song after watching his wife and daughter drown before his eyes when their ship was sunk in a violent storm. What better way to contrast external confusion with the inner peace found in resting in Christ?
Unfortunately, my poetic recounting was nearly completely inaccurate. The author did not witness the sinking, it was his four daughters who drowned, and his wife survived. The ship was not sunk by a storm, but by a collision with another boat. All of these errors are somewhat understandable; it is true that close family members drowned at sea and sorrow inspired the author to write a masterpiece. But all hope for forgiveness is lost when I substituted the hymnist for the lyricist. It was Horatio Spafford who wrote those moving lines, not Philip Bliss!
If forced to offer a defense I can only claim to have told the “dynamic equivalent” of the story. After all, the original autograph was laden with distracting details and was woodenly literal. My goal was to convey the emotions of the author rather than just his original “meaning.” By spicing up the story somewhat I attempted to bridge the gap between 19th century author and 21st century audience. Besides, if Eugene Peterson can do it with the Apostles than who’s to say I can’t do it with the Spaffords?
Maybe I can release a new exciting brand of hymn histories for worship leaders. I call it The Message: Hymn Stories in Contemporary Language, on sale wherever mass marketed pop-Christian books are available.
Good point!
I’m glad you admitted your mistake. =) See, I knew you weren’t always right. =) Love, your sister
P.S. See you soon. Congrats!
Sounds like something I would say! Only then to have an elderly man in the church rebuke me! Unfortunately, it has happened to me
Before you share the story behind “It Is Well with My Soul” again, you might want to read this biography of Spafford’s wife, Anna: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/books/review/Oppenheimer-t.html. I haven’t read the book myself, but according to the review, Spafford and his wife later founded a cult in Jerusalem. Prior to that, the Spaffords worked for D. L. Moody in Chicago.
Spafford’s daughter Bertha Spafford Vester wrote a book called Our Jerusalem: An American Family in the Holy City, 1881–1949, which, unsurprisingly, concludes this about the “absurd claims” about her father: “Some reports were vicious, others harmful, all untrue” (59).
Of course, Kenneth Osbeck’s 101 Hymn Stories glosses over all this.
I’m curious enough about this that I think I’ll skim through Vester’s book and maybe read this biography of Anna Spafford.
Romanticism didn’t just infect secular culture during the 19th century; Victorian sentimentality is everywhere in Christian lit during the time…emotional hymns, moving poems, anthologies of stories about deathbed conversions (Charles Darwin as well as myriad accounts of the dying exclaiming about hearing angels singing), etc… I wonder if there are any scholarly studies of their cult?