God talk and congregational song: An interview with Brian Wren

A lot of Christian worship is too inward-turned, too nostalgic or escapist. That inwardness can mean that we focus only on ourselves and on our immediate community. We'll do some missions and we'll do some giving, but we won't really think about the wider society in which we live and the systems of which we're a part. The language that people use in worship partially correlates with the degree to which they're insular. But that correlation isn't complete or direct. Some congregations with extremely conservative liturgies are socially involved.

Do you find that your work is accepted and used more in some churches than in others?

There's a core of things I've written that have been published widely across the congregational spectrum. Other things are more likely to be used by one kind of church than another--not necessarily along confessional lines but in terms of what the church sees itself as being. Some of my hymns would be more likely to be used by socially active, involved churches.

I'm very fortunate that I've had the freedom to write over a period of time, and that people have used what I've written and found it acceptable. That means that sometimes I have been able to push the boundaries a bit. I don't write about social justice or about ecology or about whatever. What I see myself as doing is writing a lyric that a group of people living in a certain kind of world might sing in the presence of God.

If I try to write something that is "about" a particular thing, it will show. Some of the hymns written during the temperance movement haven't survived because they were saturated with the issue rather than with worship. "Goodbye old booze, goodbye" is the kind of thing you get when you focus too closely on issues. I may have written things that sound like that, but I try not to. An example of what I write is a recent hymn that begins "In Christ we live, whose life was more/than teaching love and doing good." That's a statement of faith. It's not "about" anything. It's written from the perspective of being in Christ.

I got the idea for what I consider the crucial lines in that hymn, "In Christ we vow to serve the weak/and lobby for the dispossessed./And if we find out how and when/to show that they are not alone,/we will not proudly be their voice,/but humbly help them find their own," from a group of people whom I taught in a Writing for Worship course at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. I hope the hymn will help the people who sing it to be a little more clear about what they're doing or not doing. I try to find language that will help people see their own journey.

Some of the social gospel hymns have survived--for example, Harry Emerson Fosdick's "God of Grace and God of Glory."

The genius of that hymn is that its images are so apt. The line "a wanton, selfish gladness/rich in things and poor in soul" is even more meaningful today than it was when it was written. It holds up a mirror to our own society. Though in some ways the language is dated, the thought makes it possible still to sing it. That's the kind of longevity I hope my hymns will have.

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