What is The Evangelical Psalter?

The Evangelical Psalter is a project with two main goals. The first is to provide a digital repository of all chorales and hymnody within the Evangelical tradition in an English idiom. The second is to create a physical book that will provide the American Church with a practical tome for use in corporate worship. 

Although providing a repository of all Evangelical chorales is the goal, the starting point for this endeavor is to coalesce the entirety of the chorale traditions of the erstwhile Evangelical-Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America at the time of its dissolution. This would include the original chorale traditions of what today are known as The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS), and the SELC District of the LCMS (formerly the Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Church). 

The Spirit of the Synodical hymnals of yore that served the idiomatic needs of the Norwegian, Slovak, Saxon, and broader Germanic traditions inspires the vision of this project in producing an English-language Psalter for the American Church. We believe that translating the Synodical hymnals into English will be an indispensable aid in achieving that ultimate goal. In addition to those hymnals, special attention at the start will be given to the first hymnals of the Pennsylvania Ministerium, which was the first Lutheran Church body in North America, as well as the General Council and General Synod traditions. However, as noted, we eventually hope to cast an even wider net and include all Evangelical hymnals in this project.

What are the different components of this site?

On the home page you will discover links to "The Evangelical Liturgy" and "The Evangelical Psalter." The former contains an English offering of the Evangelical rite that descended from the Holy Reformation's purification of the Divine Liturgy following the precepts of the Von Ordenung Gottis Dienst ynn der Gemeyne (Order of Divine Service in the Congregation) of 1523. The development of this tradition was firmly rooted in the chorale as it took shape in the Saxon Agenda of 1539/40 and other cultural traditions that followed. There you will find content related not only to the Chief Divine Service, but also the Divine Office (Matins, Vespers, etc.). The link to "The Evangelical Psalter" offers chorale prescriptions and content related to the Lord's Days and Festivals of the Church Year. This will form the basis for the printed hymnal that The Evangelical Psalter will eventually become.

The rest of the homepage contains links to the original hymnal traditions of the four constituent members of the Synodical Conference at the time of its dissolution. These indexes will contain links to a landing page for every chorale in that tradition, which will coalesce the versions from the disparate linguistic streams (along with different English translations of historical note and musical variants). Eventually, other hymnals from outside of the Synodical Conference tradition will be indexed and included.

Why use the terms "Evangelical" and "Psalter?" 

Both terms are directly related to the beating heart of this project: The chorale. The Blessed Reformer, Doctor Martin Luther, is credited with the invention of the chorale as a musical form that was meant to express Evangelical precepts (both musical and doctrinal) in a vernacular idiom. The model for this creation was principally the Biblical Psalter, with which the Blessed Reformer was intimately acquainted as both an Old Testament scholar and medieval monk. In the Sacred Psalter, the Holy Prophet David set the standard for instantiating the Evangelical idiom in his vernacular Hebrew. In the time before Christ, the Psalter was idiomatically cast into Greek by the translators of what is known as the Septuagint, after which St. Jerome translated into Latin what is known as the Vulgate. The Churches East and West developed elaborate chants to correspond with both the Greek and Latin iterations of the Psalter, developing sacred hymnody for liturgical use based on these models. The Blessed Reformer sought to have worship music that would incorporate the idiomatic nature of the German language and culture. He further believed in the Evangelical principle that worship was something meant to be bodily and personally instantiated by all believers and not just the clergy or trained choristers. From the combination of these ideas the chorale was born.

It is important to note that the first chorales were called "German Psalms." And, indeed, in other languages the name stuck—the Norwegian Church after the Reformation referred to their hymnals as "Psalm Books." While many of the original chorales were born from specific Psalms (e.g., the famous "A Mighty Fortress" ["Ein feste Burg"] is Psalm 46, while the Reformation's Battle Hymn, "O God, Look Down From Heav'n" ["Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein"], is Psalm 12), not every chorale was meant to directly correlate. Rather, the chorale embodied the spirit of the Psalter in its expression of Evangelical truth as a means of corporate worship.

Why is this project necessary?

There is an overwhelming amount of chorales that were never translated into English. In some cases, precious little of entire linguistic traditions have been preserved and are all but forgotten in the American Church (e.g., the Slovak contribution). But that question of "translation" into English belies the further reality that the Reformation's impact on the English Church took a significantly different direction than its German, Scandinavian, or Slovak counterparts. While the Church of England produced a Book of Common Prayer (BCP) that was at the center of its liturgical life, there was no musical tradition comparable to the chorale. In fact, the BCP is famously bereft of musical prescriptions, while the authorized proliferation of hymnody in that tradition only goes back to the Victorian era. Although there were prototypical examples of an Evangelical spirit in voices like Isaac Watts that dissented from the established Anglican Church and produced English hymnody, even then the implicitly musical quality latent to the chorale was not evident (e.g., in the lack of intimate wedding of melody to text, or the seeming failure to recognize an inherently spiritual quality to music in its own right). While there is much to be lauded from the Anglican tradition, the uniquely Evangelical application of liturgico-musical principles was not fully realized in its initial establishment. What is more, the English Church and the American Church are two different entities with different socio-cultural sensitivities. For these reasons, an idiomatically English chorale tradition of particularly American origin has never really been iterated.

What is the strategy for producing chorales in an "English idiom?"

The Blessed Reformer's concept of "German Psalms" will guide our process in curating "English Psalms." But it is necessary to flesh this out a bit more and understand the meaning of terms, especially the concept of translation. The dichotomy observed in Biblical translation is relevant here, often referred to as formal and dynamic equivalence. More formally equivalent translations emphasize the grammatical structures of the original language, with a preference toward word-for-word direct/literal translations. In contrast, dynamic equivalence is concerned with conveying the meaning of the source language in a way that is more natural to the target language, often requiring paraphrase. 

With respect to Biblical translation, a more literal translation is to be preferred for doctrinal reasons. To be sure, there is an argument to be made that the same could be said for chorale translations. After all, they are the beating heart of the Church's practical transference of its doctrinal core from one generation to the next. However, it is conversely important to recognize that the Blessed Reformer's original chorales were often dynamic translations of the Biblical Psalter, to the end that they would convey a Germanic poetic idiom in the spirit of the original. To be sure, he understood the importance of the literal Psalter and translated that directly as well, even advocating its singing with plainchant in the German tongue. We appreciate and support the use of the same in English. However, we also recognize the value of the poetic nature of the chorales and the importance of maintaining the rhyme schemes and meters they proffered as well. This alone will make a strictly formal equivalence translation impossible. More to the point, if we are seeking to produce a chorale tradition in the English idiom, then maintaining English linguistic conventions is important.

We are at a slight advantage in dealing with translations from the German in that English is also a Germanic language. So some of the structural components will not be too far off. But at the same time, we are not opposed to recasting chorales in order to make them "speak" English in a better way. The approach we will take in this process is to recommend a singular translation for universal American use on the main landing page for a particular chorale, but also provide more literal translations (as well as translations proffered by various hymnals already extant) in conjunction with the original language texts (as well as historical translations into non-English languages [e.g., Scandinavian and Slovak versions of German chorales and vice versa], along with translations of these non-English versions where they substantively vary from the original language). In this way, the individual user will be able to access the widest amount of information possible and make an informed decision when using a given chorale.

A secondary consideration is musical. While the chorales often remained the same across linguisto-cultural barriers, in other cases there were variants that suited the particular needs of a new target language. While our goal is to maintain the melodic integrity of the original chorales (an endeavor that will be aided by the previously stated fact that English is a Germanic language), nevertheless we will not shy away from variants where necessary in the same spirit by which Luther altered Latin melodies to more clearly "speak" German. As with translations, where variant melodies exist, these will also be provided for on the landing page of a given chorale.

Why refer to "Evangelical" instead of X denomination?

"Evangelical" here refers to the One, Holy, Universal Church of Christ and His Apostles, which holds to their teachings as exposited by the Holy Reformation and codified in her confessional texts (e.g., The Christian Book of Concord). This was the original nomenclature for what is often called "Protestant" in North America. We believe the use of "Protestant" can be misleading and accepts an oppositional frame. Due to political pressures and other factors, further qualifiers were sometimes considered necessary to specify the type of Evangelical (e.g., Evangelical-Lutheran or Evangelical-Reformed). While these descriptions can be helpful, we believe they can also muddy the waters more than they clarify in certain contemporary contexts. For this reason, we have chosen the timeless "Evangelical" moniker in the same way the Papal Church refers to itself as "Catholic" or the Eastern Churches refer to themselves as "Orthodox." This does not, of course, deny that the Evangelical Church is Catholic and Orthodox. Rather, it emphasizes that the universality and right-teaching of the Church is firmly rooted in the Evangel of Christ, which is epitomized by the chorale.

Who is undertaking this project?

The Evangelical Psalter is operating under the corporate direction of Evangelical Mystics, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in the State of Wisconsin. The project is overseen by their Board of Directors and aided by the help of volunteers.