A pair of Presbyterian Church (USA) pastors and hymnwriters, Stephen M. Fearing and Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, joined earlier this month to offer a virtual workshop on hymns that resist Christian nationalism. More than 300 people registered.
Fearing is pastor of Guilford Park Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Gillette is designated pastor at First Presbyterian Union Church in Owego, New York.
Hymns are not neutral documents, Fearing said. “Hymns teach. Hymns form memory. Hymns give language to our loves, our fears, our hopes and, of particular interest to us tonight, our loyalties,” Fearing said, adding that, as Evangelical Lutheran Church in America pastor Andreas Teich said in a Hymn Society lecture last summer, hymns are theological projects.
