December 2003

Recovering Mother Kirk: The Case for Liturgy in the Reformed Tradition. D. G. Hart. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003. 264 pp. $24.99. ISBN 0801026156. www.bakerbooks.com

With Reverence and Awe: Returning to the Basics of Reformed Worship. D. G. Hart and John R. Muether. Phillipsburg, N. J.: P&R Publishing Company, 2002. 208 pp. $12.99. ISBN 0875521797. www.prpbooks.com

The book of Psalms, embodied in the Genevan Psalter, has nourished Reformed Christians for centuries. This spiritual heritage has a special place in the hearts of Hungarian Reformed believers who have survived the harsh years of Communist repression and domination. Their stories testify to the influence of the psalms in the ordinary and extraordinary details of their lives.

Howard L. Rice and James C. Huffstutler. Louisville: Geneva Press, 2001. 248 pp. $24.95. ISBN 0664501478. www.ppcpub.org

Jazz has a checkered past. While its deepest roots are in the spirituals sung in the slave fields of the South, jazz really came into its own in the saloons and brothels of New Orleans. It is still culturally suspect to many.

Robb Redman. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002. 272 pp. $19.95 www.josseybass.com

LOFT (Living Our Faith Together) is the main student-run contemporary worship service at Calvin College. But it isn’t the only one. A little over two years ago, students on campus began a midweek, late evening, jazz- and poetry-based prayer service held in an underground coffee house known as the Cave. Ron Rienstra coordinates that service as well as LOFT. This column is offered in response to many inquires about what goes on there.

A Kuyperian Experiment

D. A. Carson, ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002. 256 pp. $16.99. ISBN 0310216257. www.zondervan.com

There have been several collections of essays published in the last few years. Though these collections don’t provide narrative cohesiveness, they are able delve deeper into narrowly defined subject areas.

Editor’s note: In popular usage, the word hymn can refer to the text only (typical in England), to text and tune only, or to the whole combination of text and music. In this article, the desire to return to old hymns is to return to the older texts, sometimes also the tunes, but definitely not the sounds of traditional hymns. Old hymn texts are finding new life in contemporary musical settings.

Todd E. Johnson, ed. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2002. 240 pp. $22.99. ISBN 1587430320. www.bakerbooks.com

Isn’t it self-evident that we worship God with who we are? Not really. In the medieval period priests and singers performed before silent spectators. And at the Reformation Ulrich Zwingli “conducted a monologue in the presence of a completely silent congregation” (Howard Hageman, Pulpit and Table, p. 120). There’s not much difference between those two practices. The people could watch or listen, but who they were was omitted.