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The Hymnology of Black Methodists
By Jon Michael Spencer

"In comparison with the 1939 Methodist hymnal containing no racial representation in the hymnody and with the 1964 UM hymnal containing a mere six pieces from the extensive corpus of black hymnody, the new 1989 Methodist hymnal contains suitable representation of the hymnody of all four of the church's major ethnic groups. Songs of Zion has not only had direct impact on the inclusiveness of the 1989 hymnal, it is also a stalwart statement Of resurrection by a people who had been crucified by nearly three decades of legal separation within the Methodist Church."

WITHIN United Methodism, there co-exists a Black Methodist Church which was institutionalized in 1939 when the delegates of the merging Methodist Episcopal (ME) Church, ME Church, South, and Methodist Protestant (MP) Church voted to segregate its black membership.¹ Of the six administrative jurisdictions established by the Methodist Church, five were geographically based, with the remaining one being racially based to include the entire black constituency of the church. According to the 1939 book of Methodist discipline, the jurisdictional boundaries were the Northeastern, Southeastern, Central, North Central, and Western Jurisdictions. The Central Jurisdiction included "The Negro Annual Conferences, the Negro Mission Conferences, and Missions in the United States of America."² This arrangement was the ME Church's concession to the ME Church, South, which had disburdened itself of its black membership in 1870 by approving and facilitating the founding of the Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church, and wanted nothing to do with the hundreds of thousands of blacks in the Northern church. As Harry V. Richardson notes, segregation was a matter of historical fact in the Methodist

Jon Michael Spencer has been serving as Visiting Professor at Duke University Divinity School. He received his doctorate in music composition from Washington University, St. Louis, and he has written extensively about the history of black music. He is the author of Sacred Symphony: The Chanted Sermon of the Black Preacher (1987) and Editor of The Journal of Black Sacred Music. Dr. Spencer's discussion of black music, especially the 1981 hymnal, Songs of Zion, is pertinent not only for Methodists but for many denominations that are or will be issuing new hymnals.

¹ William B. McClain, Black People in the Methodist Church: Whither Thou Goest? (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Pub. Co., 1984), pp. 98, 83.
² Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Church (New York: The Methodist Publishing House, 1939), pp. 27-28.

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Episcopal Church, but the jurisdictional system it agreed upon made segregation legal according to the constitution of the church.³

In theory, the Methodist Church discourages discrimination based on race and color. In fact, the same book of discipline (1939) which legalized segregation is the same which claimed in its social creed, "We stand for the rights of racial groups, and insist that [our] social, economic, and spiritual principles apply to all races alike."⁴ In 1968, when the United Methodist (UM) Church came into existence upon the merger of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren, the Central Jurisdiction (and legalized segregation) was abolished and supported by familiar theoretical statements rejecting racial discrimination. However, it was four years later, perhaps in response to the recent advent of liberation theology in North America, that a more satisfactory statement against racial exclusion appeared in the church's 1972 book of discipline. "We rejoice in the gifts which particular ethnic histories and cultures bring to our total life," it says. "We commend and encourage the self-awareness of all ethnic minorities and oppressed peoples."⁵ On the other hand, the denominational hymnal-the most public and popular document of the church-flagrantly failed to reflect this claim. Published in 1964 this hymnal with a mere six hymns representative of the largest ethnic community in United Methodism continued to serve the church until 1999. The committee which compiled it stated in its preface that the intent of the volume was to serve the present and future generations of United Methodists by compiling a hymnal "of sufficient diversity to allow for the variety of religious experiences." It is obvious that with a mere six -hymns representative of the black religious experience that this statement of theory was far from being a point of fact.

I

In a sociological study on black pastors and churches in United Methodism carried on for the decade ending in 1974, Grant Shockley, Earl Brewer, and Marie Townsend concluded from their data that racial conditions had not improved substantially for black Methodists since the 1968 merger and abolition of the Central Jurisdiction:

United Methodism in America has committed itself to the achievement of racial inclusiveness in its life, work, fellowship, and mission. Over the ten-year period covered in this study (1964-1974), there is less convincing evidence than there should be that the church is not just as far from genuine inclusiveness as it was before the merger process began.⁶

³ Harry V. Richardson, Dark Salvation: The Story of Methodism as It Developed Among Blacks in America (Garden City, New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1976), pp. 273-74.
⁴ Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Church (1939), p. 696.
⁵ The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1972), p. 87.
⁶ Grant S. Shockley, Earl D. C. Brewer, Marie Townsend, Black Pastors and Churches in United Methodism (Atlanta: Center for Research in Social Change, Emory University, 1976), p. 1.

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The authors stated further that there is a duplicity which exists in theorizing about inclusiveness, on the one hand, and the failure to implement its realization, on the other.⁷ At present, a half-century since the formation of the Central Jurisdiction, two decades since its abolition, and one decade since the publication of this report, the majority race of the denominations which merged in 1939 to form the Methodist Church and again in 1968 to form the United Methodist Church have long been fully homologous, while, on the other hand, there still remains within United Methodism a Black Methodist Church. Racial exclusiveness, which is blatantly reflected in the Methodist hymnal of a quartercentury (1963-1989), is the single factor that led to the production of several hymnal supplements by the denomination's Board of Discipleship. These projects began as early as 1973 and were published between 1981 and 1983.

According to the 1972 book of Methodist discipline, the Section on Worship of the Board of Discipleship exists for such functions as to cultivate the best possible worship experiences in the church through the use of music and the arts, to develop resources for worship in the churches, and to advise the church in the preparation and publication of liturgical materials.⁸ These are the aspects of the organization that sponsored a workshop on the black church in Atlanta in 1973, out of which came a proposal that the UM Church publish a hymnbook supplement reflective of the musical heritage of black Christians. In the preface to the volume that was to result from the recommendation Songs of Zion- William B. McClain, Professor of Homiletics and Worship at Wesley Theological Seminary and Chairman of the National Advisory Task Force on the Hymnbook Project, recalls the inception of the project:

Growing out of the Consultation on the Black Church in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1973, sponsored by the Board of Discipleship, was a specific recommendation that the Section on Worship develop a songbook from the Black religious tradition to be made available to United Methodist churches. This urgent recommendation was made by a workshop on worship I conducted after we carefully surveyed the present Book of Hymns only to find it contains only one hymn by a Black composer and a mere five Negro spirituals, listed simply as "American Folk Hymns." This songbook, entitled Songs of Zion, is the realization of the dream of those persons who gathered in Atlanta eight years ago.

Songs of Zion is situated in the middle of a sequence of three hymnal supplements produced by the Board of Discipleship's Section on Worship. These Supplemental Worship Resources (Nos. 11, 12, and 13) are respectively Supplement to The Book of Hymns (1982), Songs of Zion (1981), and Hymns for the Four Winds: A Collection of Asian American Hymns (1983).⁹ Songs of Zion was not only published prior to

⁷ Ibid.
⁸ The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church (1972), pp. 336-37.
⁹ Supplement to the Book of Hymns (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1982), Hymns from the Four Winds: A Collection of Asian American Hymns (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983). For the Hispanic community, the UM Church produced in Spanish translation an abridged edition of The Book of Hymns titled Himnario Melodista (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1973).

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the Supplement to The Book of Hymns, but it appears to have been the source from which the latter took much of its black hymnody. While Songs of Zion and Hymns for the Four Winds were compiled respectively for the Afro-American and Asian-American membership of the UM Church, the Supplement to the Book of Hymns is the effort of the church to reconcile the lack of ethnic hymnody in its 1964 hymnal by including hymns representative of all four of its major ethnic groups-Afro-American, Native American, Asian American, and Hispanic.

The preface to the Supplement to The Book of Hymns identifies the volume as "a collection of alternative congregational song selected from that which has been used in The United Methodist Church and the wider Christian community since the canon of The Book of Hymns was closed in 1963." The small collection contains 128 pieces whose numbering (854-981) picks up where it ends in the 1964 hymnal. Supplementing the five spirituals and one Tindley hymn in the 1964 hymnal are an additional six black spirituals, two African hymns, and a single hymn each by C. A. Tindley, C. Eric Lincoln, and Margaret J. Douroux. Three of the six spirituals are co-arranged by J. Jefferson Cleveland and Verolga Nix, the editors of Songs of Zion. The inclusion of this black hymnody in the supplement is largely attributable to William B. McClain, then a member of the Board of Discipleship's Section on Worship, and the late J. Jefferson Cleveland, the leader of the Afro-American consultant group to the supplement project.

II

The Supplement to The Book of Hymns is a positive gesture by the UM Church to remedy the racial exclusiveness of its 1964 hymnal. Prior to the publication of The Book of Hymns in 1989, a cardinal improvement over the 1964 volume,¹⁰ Songs of Zion was the only hymnbook produced by the Methodist Church which adequately and equitably represented the rich and expansive hymnic history of its largest ethnic constituency. The supplement produced by the ME Church, South, in 1851, Songs of Zion: A Supplement to the Hymn-book of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (revised and enlarged in 1874), clearly was not published with the church's black membership in mind. According to its preface, it was compiled as a supplement to the connectional hymnbook in part to "contravene, to some extent, the circulation of those collections which seem to have been compiled on the principle that neither poetry nor common sense is an essential element in a spiritual song." Although the hymnbook was produced for the white membership

¹⁰ With the help of minority members of the Hymnal Revision Committee and special consultants, The Book of Hymns of 1989-the first hymnbook to be published following the elimination of the Central Jurisdiction-includes a carefully selected group of 84 hymns representing the four major ethnic groups of the church.

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of the ME Church, South, it does contain numerous campmeeting songs which may have made it equally attractive to black Methodists as well.

III

The Songs of Zion of 1981 is doubtless intended primarily, though not exclusively, for black worshipers. The compilation of 249 pieces by two black United Methodist musicians, J. Jefferson Cleveland and Verolga Nix (the editors), includes black and white hymnody typically sung in the black church. In the preface to the collection, McClain insists that Songs of Zion is intended for the Christian church at large rather than merely for the United Methodist Church or its black membership. "This songbook offers the whole church a volume of songs that can enrich the worship of the whole church," he says. "It is music that will broaden the musical genres in worship in any Christian church." In this respect it is probably significant that neither the title nor the cover identifies the volume as produced by or for the UM Church. And other than the fact that the cover is printed in the colors symbolizing African-American liberation-red, black, and green-there is no immediate indication that Songs of Zion is produced especially for the black church. Just as the Songs of Zion of 1851/1874 probably enjoyed some circulation among early black Methodists, so has the Songs of Zion of 1981 enjoyed some circulation and continued use among white Methodists who have found in it favorite old hymns excluded from their 1964 and 1989 hymnals.¹¹

Unlike the Songs of Zion of 1851/1874, the Songs of Zion of 1981 is basically ordered according to musical genre rather than theological category. Its five sections-Hymns, Negro Spirituals, Black Gospel, Songs for Special Occasions, and Service Music-actually deem it more appropriately termed a hymnbook or songbook rather than a hymnal. What further distinguishes it from a standard hymnal are the historical essays prefacing its first three sections: "A Historical Account of the Hymn in the Black Worship Experience," "A Historical Account of the Negro Spiritual," and "A Historical Account of the Black Gospel Song." The volume is also distinct in that several of its songs are in print for the first time, having been transcribed into music notation by Cleveland as he heard them sung during his upbringing in the church. Some hymns have long been out of print, for example Tindley's "I'll Overcome Someday" which appears in no other denominational hymnbook prior to this one.

As a supplement, Songs of Zion is basically an assemblage of hymnody excluded from The Book of Hymns of 1964. The few pieces that are duplicated in it have been arranged, principally by Cleveland and Nix, in the style black worshipers have traditionally sung them. An example is their co-arrangement of Tindley's "Stand By Me" (the only hymn by a black writer in the 1964 Book of Hymns). Another is "In Christ There Is No East or West" which, in Songs of Zion, is arranged

¹¹ To date, over 325,000 copies of Songs of Zion have been sold or distributed.

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by the renowned black composer H. T. Burleigh. Songs of Zion, then, is neither a standard hymnal (or hymnal supplement) nor an average hymnbook or songbook. It is a distinctive hymnic and historic document which re-presents to the black church many of its hymns long neglected or forgotten.

The first section of the songbook-Hymns-contains 71 pieces by such contemporary black hymnists as Margaret Douroux, Richard Allen Henderson, James Hendrix, J. Edward Hoy, Morris C. Queen, and William Farley Smith. Also among the contemporary pieces is VeTolga Nix's setting of a hymn by Valerie Clayton (a soloist for Tindley Temple UM Church in Philadelphia). Some of the more historic pieces include a hymn-setting by the late E. C. Deas, and the Negro National Anthem (J. Rosamond Johnson's setting of his brother James Weldon Johnson's "Lift Every Voice and Sing"). As might be expected in a volume produced by black United Methodists, the largest number of hymns by a single composer are the twelve by Rev. Charles Albert Tindley, the great hymnwriter of the Methodist Church. In his introductory essay to this section, Cleveland writes:

The Rev. Dr. Charles Albert Tindley was an outstanding and worldrenowned minister, and Tindley Temple United Methodist Church stands today as a tangible memorial to his memory. He ministered not only through the spoken word; he ministered through song and was an astute and prolific composer, and his numerous hymns remain as self-memorials to his ministry through music.

Although Cleveland, in accordance with the characteristic assertion of most Methodists, considers Tindley to be the most prolific black hymnwriter in the history of the black church, unquestionably the most prolific is Bishop Charles Price Jones, the founder of the Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A. While Tindley composed approximately 40 gospel hymns and has been credited elsewhere as the first black to publish an original song collection in 1901, a study of the hymns and anthems of Jones, who composed over 1000 pieces, reveals that he was undoubtedly the more prolific composer and the first to publish an original collection of hymns, Jesus Only No. 1, in 1899. The year Tindley released his first collection, Jones had actually published his second volume, Jesus Only Nos. I and 2 (1901). Oddly enough, while Songs of Zion includes 12 pieces by Tindley, it contains none by Jones whose hymns are particularly well-known and loved by black Holiness and Pentecostal worshipers. What this plainly illustrates is that Songs of Zion is more denominational and less ecumenical than it initially appears, and that it peculiarly reflects the composite personality of black Methodists in general and black United Methodists in particular.

IV

Tindley is a pivotal figure in the hymnic history of the black church, and Cleveland is correct in his proemial essay on black hymnody that "he bequeathed to all Methodism and to Christianity a legacy that will

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live on through his hymns." Tindley's hymns condemning the world of unjust inequalities and portraying the beauties of the kingdom of heaven have long been comforting to black worshipers of every denominational persuasion who daily endured racial repression. In his hymn "Some Day," for example, Tindley characterizes the human domain as a "world of sin" and a "world of tears," a "wilderness" from which, he writes, "I shall be free some day." And in one of his most celebrated songs, "We'll Understand It Better By and By," he identifies impoverishment as one of the principal dilemmas of his day:

We are often destitute of things that life demands,
Want of food and want of shelter, thirsty hills and barren lands,
We are trusting in the Lord, and according to his word,
We will understand it better by and by.

The world Tindley depicts in song is also a place in which decent persons are rare commodities and so-called friends are never available when help is needed. His response to these "trials dark on ev'ry hand" and to being "tossed and driv'n on the restless sea of time" is to turn away from the world toward his heavenly "home":

By and by when the morning comes,
When the saints of God are gathered home,
We'll tell the story how we've overcome:
For we'll understand it better by and by.

In his hymn, "What Are They Doing in Heaven?," Tindley says that those who are already enjoying heaven are the oppressed who "lived and suffered in the world" and the "poor and often despised" who "looked to heaven through tear-blinded eyes." Conversely, in his "Stand By Me" he exhorts those who still live in the world to persevere the storms of life:

When the storms of life are raging, Stand by me (2X)
When the world is tossing me, like a ship upon the sea,
Thou who rulest wind and water, Stand by me.

A large segment of the hymns in this section are traditional evangelical pieces black worshipers adapted from around the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century and have sung ever since. While some black hymns such as Thomas A. Dorsey's "There'll Be Peace in the Valley Someday" have been more popular among white worshipers than black, some white gospel hymns such as Charles D. Tillman's setting of M. E. Abbey's "Life's Railway to Heaven" have been more popular among black worshipers. In his introduction to this section, Cleveland explains the means by which black worshipers adapted white hymnody:

When blacks began to establish their own churches, they did not discard the sophisticated hymns learned from their experiences in White Christian worship; rather, many of these hymns were adopted and converted into original Black songs. These "made-over" White hymns were the results of diverse influences including: (1) African religious music, (2) the African call-and-response song, (3) European or American religious or secular songs, and (4) various African and Afro-American dialects. And how were

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they made over? The melodies were often improvised to fit the needs of the Black worship service. On the other hand, many of these melodies were kept intact, but the rhythms and harmonies of these hymns and songs were changed to reflect the Black worship experience; consequently, many hymns from Watts, Wesley, Sankey, and other hymnals were molded into a strictly Black idiom.

Some of the old favorite evangelical pieces in Songs of Zion are "Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross" by Fanny J. Crosby, "It Is Well with My Soul" by Horatio G. Spafford, "His Eye is on the Sparrow" by Civilla D. Martin, "No, Not One" by Johnson Oatman, "In the Garden" by C. Austin Miles, "Throw Out the Lifeline" by Edward S. Ufford, "Savior, Lead Me, Lest I Stray" by Frank M. Davis, "I Surrender All" by Judson W. Van de Venter, and "Love Lifted Me" by James Rowe. Also included are a couple of hymns arranged melodically and rhythmically to be lined-out and sung in the customary slow and embellished "Dr. Watts" fashion. One such piece is Cleveland's arrangement of Wesley's "Father, I Stretch My Hand to Thee."

Of special historic interest in this section is "Prayer for Africa," a Zulu hymn written and set by Enoch Sontonga. The footnote to the piece explains its origin and significance:

Nkos Sikele'i Afrika was composed in 1897 and first publicly sung in 1899. The composition has a somewhat melancholy strain. The black folk around Johannesburg were, at the time, far from happy. The piece was commonly sung in native day schools and further popularized by the Ohlange Zulu Choir that visited the Rand giving concerts.

When the African National Congress flourished, its leaders adopted this piece as a closing anthem for their meetings, and this soon became a custom in the other provinces in connection with all types of Bantu organizations. Of late, the black races of the Union and the Protectorates have somehow by tacit assent adopted it as their recognized national anthem, sung before royalty and on big public occasions.

The single verse to the hymn appears in the original Zulu language with Swahili and English translations:

Bless, O Lord, our country, Africa,
So that she may waken from her sleep.
Fill her horn with plenty, guide her feet.
Hear us, faithful sons.Spirit, descend, Spirit descend,
Spirit descend, Spirit divine.

V

The second section in Songs of Zion-Negro Spirituals-is naturally the lengthiest, for the spirituals probably still constitute the largest body of black sacred music in the history of the black church. In the historical introduction to this section, Cleveland and McClain figure that there are approximately 6,000 extant spirituals which have been handed down to our generation. Among the 98 spirituals comprising this section are pieces that remind us of the wide range of sentiments felt by the enslaved: songs of joy like "Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit," songs of

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thanksgiving like "Free at Last," and songs of praise like "Ride On, King Jesus." There are also spirituals which express with unyielding faith the belief that God would repeat in behalf of the Africans enslaved in America the liberating act performed for the Hebrews subjugated in Egypt: "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel," "Freedom Train a-Comin'," "Go Down, Moses," "Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho," and many others. On the other hand are the "sorrow songs"-the cries of the homeless, the troubled, and sunken-down-which seem to be individual rather than communal expressions: "I Been in de Storm So Long," "Nobody Knows the Trouble I See," and "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Chile." Most of the "sorrow songs" actually are not as remorseful as they initially appear, for while they commence on a low note of dejection they typically conclude on a high pitch of praise. For instance:

Nobody knows the trouble I see,
Nobody knows my sorrow;
Nobody knows the trouble I see,
Glory, hallelujah!

Two of the very few exceptions to this characteristic of the "sorrow songs" are "Were You There" and "He Nevuh Said a Mumbalin' Word," both of which show no glimmer of hope in that Christ is left crucified rather than resurrected.

There are also spirituals complementary of every phase of the church year, spirituals arranged to be sung by choir, congregation, and solo voice, and spirituals of a range of formulaic types-from the responsorial (call and response) format to those with either syncopated melodies cast in short phrases or slow lyrical melodies cast in long phrases. All of the pieces attempt to recapture the original dialect, and the prefatory "Keys to Musical Interpretation, Performance, and Meaningful Worship" (written by Verolga Nix) advises worshipers not to change the dialect into correct English or to overexaggerate its diction.

While these instructions complement the historical essays and contribute to the historicity of Songs of Zion, what detracts from its historical breadth is the absence of spirituals arranged by the renowned black composers who devoted their careers to the documentation and performance of this music: R. Nathaniel Dett, H. T. Burleigh, Hall Johnson, William Dawson, Edward Boatner, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Lena McLin, Undine Smith Moore, and many others (all of whom are mentioned in the historic essay prefacing this section). Instead, nearly all of the spirituals in Songs of Zion are arranged by Cleveland and Nix. Of the 54 pieces in the collection composed or arranged by Cleveland, 35 are spirituals (19 arranged in collaboration with Nix), and of the 48 pieces composed or arranged by Nix, 33 are spirituals (19 arranged in collaboration with Cleveland). Aside from these, there is one spiritual each arranged by Delores Lane, Fredrika R. Young, and the acclaimed John W. Work, with the remaining pieces simply being denoted "Traditional."

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The section on spirituals is listed in the Classification Index as "Negro Spirituals and Afro-American Liberation Songs." This is because it includes the anthem of the civil rights movement, "We Shall Overcome," and several spirituals adopted and popularized during the movement (for example, "Amen" and "Free at Last"). As Cleveland and McClain explain prefatorily, "Out of the reservoir of Negro spirituals were created the freedom songs of the nonviolent movement in the South during the peak of the demonstrations for social justice and human dignity." Although the anthem of the movement is not an adopted or adapted spiritual, like numerous civil rights songs it is a synthesis and adaptation of extant hymnody. Combining the tune to the old Baptist hymn "I'll Be Alright" and the text of the Tindley gospel hymn "I'll Overcome Someday," the piece is emblematic of how the oral tradition adapts hymns to meet new social needs. Observe a side by side comparison of the two choruses:

VI

The third section of Songs of Zion-Black Gospel-contains 31 pieces from the Traditional and Contemporary eras of this musical genre. The inclusion of this section also functions to document and give credence to this widespread yet often controversial form of religious music. While black gospel from its inception about a half century ago has met with some opposition by a substantial faction of sophisticated black worshipers and theologically trained clergy, McClain's preface to Songs of Zion gives a positive theological explanation of the significance of this body of black song:

The gospel song expresses theology. Not the theology of the academy or the university, not formalistic theology or the theology of the seminary, but a theology of experience-the theology of a God who sends the sunshine and the rain, the theology of a God who is very much alive and active and who has not forsaken those who are poor and oppressed and unemployed. It is a theology of imagination-it grew out of fire shut up in the bones, of words painted on the canvas of the mind. Fear is turned to hope in the sanctuaries and storefronts, and bursts forth in songs of celebration. It is a theology of grace that allows the faithful to see the sunshine of His face-even through their tears. Even the words of an ex-slave trader became a song of liberation and an expression of God's amazing grace. It is a theology of survival that allows a people to celebrate the ability to continue the journey in spite of the insidious tentacles of racism and oppression and to sing, "It's another day's journey, and I'm glad about it!"

Whether it is because it embodies theologies of experience, imagination, grace, and survival, or because it has enlivening rhythm and memorable rhetorical texts which today's youth enjoy, Cleveland (in his historic introduction to this section) speculates that gospel music is

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present in approximately ninety-five percent of all black churches in the country.

In this section, the Traditional Period or Golden Age of Gospel (1930-1969) is well represented by the songs of such composers and arrangers as Doris Akers, J. Herbert Brewster, Lucie E. Campbell, James Cleveland, Thomas A. Dorsey, Theodore Frye, Roberta Martin, Kenneth Morris, Clara Ward, and many others. Together, these musicians transformed the congregational gospel hymn of the Transitional Period (1900-1930)-the C. A. Tindley and C. P. Jones era-into the solo, quartet, and choral gospel song of the Traditional Period. The Contemporary Period, or Modern Gospel Era has from its inception in 1969 been dominated by Pentecostal artists of the Church of God in Christ. Among them, Walter Hawkins and Andrae Crouch both have songs in this collection.

VII

The remaining two sections in Songs of Zion are Songs for Special Occasions and Service Music (neither of which is arranged according to genre like the previous sections). Songs for Special Occasions, containing the more intricate arrangements of familiar spirituals and hymns, is intended to accommodate church musicians and choirs who read music. Included among the thirteen pieces of this group are anthems, ensemble music (quartets, trios, and duets), and arrangements for solo voice. Two eminent black composers represented in this section are R. Nathaniel Dett, with his anthemic arrangement of the spiritual "We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder," and Lena McLin, with her setting of Thomas Ken's doxology, "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow."

The 34 pieces comprising the section on Service Music include Amens, Benedictions, Chants, Communion Music, Introits, Offertories, and Responses. Among these hymns is a complete musical setting of communion by William Farley Smith titled "Communion Music for the Protestant Church." The eight parts are "Introit," "Gloria in Excelsis," "Hymn-Hungry and Thirsty, Lord, We Come," "Doxology," "Sanctus," "Agnus Dei," "The Lord's Prayer," and "Benediction." This section also contains pieces by Roland M. Carter, the celebrated choir director formerly of Hampton University, and Odell Hobbs, the distinguished choir director of Virginia Union University.

Songs of Zion is a hymnbook and historic document of real distinction. Its function, however, goes far beyond its use, for it also serves as a strong retort to the leaders of the black Methodist denominations who have long chided those blacks who remained members of the white Methodist churches. Probably unintentionally, Songs of Zion, as the most public and popular document produced by black United Methodists, has done more than any other entity to counter that criticism. Insofar as it is more African-American than any black Methodist (or Protestant) hymnbook published in the history of the black church, it is the paradigm of black religious self-awareness after which future black

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denominational hymnals must be measured and modeled. More important, however, than the fact that other black denominations must now take account of the racial content of their hymnals is that Songs of Zion finally shows the black church that there is more in common between black United Methodists and their black Protestant counterparts than between black United Methodists and the majority race of their denomination. McClain (a black United Methodist) gives a fitting example of this contention in his book, Black People in the Methodist Church:

Even in those places where there was the emulation of the white churches and their worship style, "Amazing Grace" never sounded the same, and there was a bit of a "bounce" in the choir's procession. The black religious experience had meticulously placed some chords in the soul that were responsible to its familiar beat. No yearning thought of assimilation could totally drown out the sound of the pulsing jungle; faint, perhaps, but still there.¹²

In comparison with the 1939 Methodist hymnal containing no racial representation in the hymnody and with the 1964 UM hymnal containing a mere six pieces from the extensive corpus of black hymnody, the new 1989 Methodist hymnal contains suitable representation of the hymnody of all four of the church's major ethnic groups. Songs of Zion has not only had direct impact on the inclusiveness of the 1989 hymnal, it is also a stalwart statement of resurrection by a people who had been crucified by nearly three decades of legal segregation within the Methodist Church. When at the General Conference of 1939 the white delegates had voted to form a separate jurisdiction for the entirety of their black membership, they then arose and sang "We Are Marching to Zion," while the black delegates remained seated, some weeping.¹³ But when black Methodists now turn to hymn number three in Songs of Zion and sing "We Are Marching to Zion," it is indeed emblematic that they have made large strides not only in the life of Methodism but also in the reconciling of the races in North America. "It is true that at times the black members of the U.M.C. have had to struggle for equal participation in their predominantly white church," notes Harry V. Richardson. "But the struggle in their church was simply part of the struggle that Blacks were waging in every phase of American life."¹⁴

Just as black Methodist denominations remain an inescapable critical commentary of the historic failure of the Methodist Episcopal churches to deal prophetically with the "race problem," so the existence of Songs of Zion is a discriminating critique of the initial inefficacy of the United Methodist Church to remedy the causes which led to the institutionalization of the Black Methodist Church within United Methodism. Had the Southern and Northern branches of the Methodist Episcopal Church

¹² McClain, p. 86.
¹³ Richardson, p. 275.
¹⁴ Harry V. Richardson, "The Role of Blacks in the United Methodist Church," in Black Methodism Basic Beliefs, ed. G. Lovelace Champion (1980), p. 108.

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not been exclusionary then, the black Methodist denominations probably never would have come into existence. And had the 1964 Methodist hymnal not been exclusionary, then Songs of Zion perhaps never would have come into existence. Notwithstanding, these racial entities and artifacts do exist for these iniquitous reasons, which is why this brief survey of the composition and content of Songs of Zion is so revealing historically.