Pastor Blondos, at his Kyrie Eleison blog, has a post titled "Nothing New Under the Sun." He quotes P. E. Kretzman's 1929 comments to illustrate how "modern" church innovations are not at all modern. One quote from Kretzman:
"Gospel Anthems"
We must take note also of a most deplorable tendency of our times, namely, that of preferring the shallow modern ‘Gospel anthem’ to the classical hymns of our Church. The reference is both to the text and to the tunes in use in many churches. On all sides the criticism is heard that the old Lutheran hymns are “too heavy, too doctrinal, that our age does not understand them.” Strange that the Lutherans of four centuries and of countless languages could understand and appreciate them, even as late as a generation ago! Is the present generation less intelligent or merely more frivolous?
(From P. E . Kretzmann; Magazin fur evang.-luth. Homiletik und Pastoraltheologie; June 1929, pp 216-217.)
1 comment:
People may not like this, but I've heard it said by a creationist that people used to be of higher intelligence then we are today! So, maybe it's because of less intelligence, but we sure wouldn't want to admit that, now, would we? But, we seem to act like it in wanting all things dumbed down for our generation :-) Hope I didn't insult anyones intelligence!
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