Ship of Fools: The Churchmanship of the parish library and book stall

Thread: The Churchmanship of the parish library and book stall Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by S. Bacchus (# 17778) on :

I've been going through the church's collection of books and tracts recently, and was somewhat intrigued to realize that they made us seem much higher than we actually are

To whit, the parish liturgical library has as its core:

The Bible: AV, RSV, NRSV, REB, Jerusalem Bible, and La Bible de Jérusalem (in French)
The 1662 BCP
All the Volumes of Common Worship (and, my, there are a lot of them)
The CTS Daily Missal
The 1928 Deposited Prayer Book
'The Priest's Prayer Book'
'The English Ritual'
'After the third collect' (1952 edition)
The New English Hymnal
New English praise
The English Catholic Hymnbook
The Manual of Plainsong
'Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described'
'The Parson's Handbook'

Most of these books look well-read and are annotated, suggesting actual (albeit sometimes very infrequent) use by successive clergymen. The current vicar threw out everything he didn't want, but it was mostly more of the same with a slight bias toward decades old copies of Crockfords.

The bookstall (in the back of the church, with tracts for sale) currently has a book on confession put out by Community of the Resurrection, the Catechism of the Church of England as approved by the General Synod, and some tracts by the Additional Curates Society. Literally everything else (except for printed copies of sermons) is published under the imprint of the Catholic Truth Society.

The funny thing is that it's not a particularly Anglo-Catholic church! Or, at least not markedly so.

Has anyone else noticed a discrepancy between reading material and actual worship practice?

Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on :

The C of E has a book-length Catechism? How could there be so much material that enough people could agree upon? I am asking this in all seriousness.

Posted by Olaf (# 11804) on :

Most Lutheran churches I've visited (and bothered to browse their library) have a tremendous discrepancy. The books almost invariably skew con-evo and Religious Right. They also tend to be useless, outdated, and musty. I have to give a lot of credit to somebody who takes on the church library task, but they rarely seem to understand that their savvy strategy of buying old books at second-hand stores and garage sales isn't exactly going to mean those old books are going to be of any use to the people at church. It would be a very odd person who would check out books about how to raise a happy Christian family with copyright dates in the 1970s, other than perhaps for the camp value.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Trouble is, you've usually got a choice between schmaltzy glurge that is modern and solid, meaty, hard-to-get-in-to tomes of the last century or five. Thus you get The Book of Concord right next to Spiritual Makeover (with Cosmetic Tips!). Meh.

Posted by Olaf (# 11804) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Trouble is, you've usually got a choice between schmaltzy glurge that is modern and solid, meaty, hard-to-get-in-to tomes of the last century or five. Thus you get The Book of Concord right next to Spiritual Makeover (with Cosmetic Tips!). Meh.

True dat. I'm afraid my dream of a nice library stocked with erudite theological texts and new items from Mainline publishing houses will never come to fruition. I doubt most places even have a new translation of the Book of Concord.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Oh, we do. But we would, wouldn't we? [Razz]

Posted by S. Bacchus (# 17778) on :

quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
The C of E has a book-length Catechism? How could there be so much material that enough people could agree upon? I am asking this in all seriousness.

Book-length might be stretching it! It's a paper back pamphlet of about 15-20 pages. The title is, I believe, 'A New Revised Catechism'.

Posted by Cathscats (# 17827) on :

My local charity shop finds ways of passing on any Christian books handed in to the church library. You can imagine the vintage and quality of most. Every so often I conduct a purge and put the rejects (most) in the recycling bin. Amazingly in less than no time what seems to be the very same books turn up in the library again! Either someone on the bin lorry salvages them, or someone in the village has a never-ending supply of stories about missionaries in the 1950s meeting their deaths. [Roll Eyes]

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

quote:
Originally posted by S. Bacchus:

Has anyone else noticed a discrepancy between reading material and actual worship practice?

I don't know about the CofE, but in other denominations I know church libraries don't normally offer much on worship other than defunct hymnbooks. I wish they did, but even Christian bookshops don't stock a great deal on church worship practice. Most of the books that do exist are American imports, even though the cultural context is different for the UK.

Church libraries and jumble sales normally offer devotional material, religious biographies, or serious-minded theology for the general reader. The covers on the theological paperbacks always have a rather dated 'modernist' look to them. Someone must read them but I'm not sure who.

Posted by Olaf (# 11804) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I don't know about the CofE, but in other denominations I know church libraries don't normally offer much on worship other than defunct hymnbooks.

For Lutherans, it seems not only to be defunct hymnbooks, but also cheapie songbooks and nondenom hymnals full of revivalist stuff that isn't really applicable to Lutheranism. Of course, these are the hymns that "everybody" wants to sing. (Olaf, in a snarky moment, would reply that "Everybody told me she wanted to learn some new music from the hymnal in the pews.")

Posted by AndyB (# 10186) on :

As someone who is completely sold on modern worship songs as a concept, "Everyone else is singing this song" or "everyone wants to sing this song" is an absolutely terrible reason to sing any song.

If the song concerned is appropriate to the service AND I consider that the choir and congregation can handle it, I will choose it. On the other hand, I might think that a particular traditional hymn says the same thing far better and choose it instead...

Maybe I should write a book on that. Experiences of a musical director in conversation with other worship leaders, ministers and pastors.

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

Every church I've been into, which has a bookstall, seems to have ended up with the wackier end of the Christian book market. There doesn't seem to be any attempt to filter the books, so I'd imagine an avid reader would be in rather a muddle when trying to fit what he or she reads about the faith with what is actually taught Sunday by Sunday.

Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :

Actually there is a very good reason for having hymn books and defunct hymn books on the book stall. Hymns (and worship songs) are not just used in public worship but also in private devotion, and there is normally clear blue water between which hymns are used in which sphere. As a rule of thumb the private devotion ones tend to be more evangelical (using "I" rather than "we") and older as they are recalled rather than chosen. So they are there for when someone thinks "I remember that hymn that goes ....., I better just check it out" or "What exactly are the verses to the Old Rugged Cross?"

Jengie

Posted by S. Bacchus (# 17778) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Actually there is a very good reason for having hymn books and defunct hymn books on the book stall. Hymns (and worship songs) are not just used in public worship but also in private devotion, and there is normally clear blue water between which hymns are used in which sphere. As a rule of thumb the private devotion ones tend to be more evangelical (using "I" rather than "we") and older as they are recalled rather than chosen. So they are there for when someone thinks "I remember that hymn that goes ....., I better just check it out" or "What exactly are the verses to the Old Rugged Cross?"

Jengie

I agree that there is some difference (although probably not 'clear blue water'), but the hymns I would most associate with personal devotion would be things like the hymns in the breviary or the English Hymnal Office hymns, which can't really be described as 'evangelical'!

I should say, with regards to the OP, that our parish liturgical library is predominately for the use of those leading worship, whilst the books and tracts at the back are predominately for the instruction of the faithful.

Posted by Graven Image (# 8755) on :

Oalf wrote

quote:
They also tend to be useless, outdated, and musty.

When were you in our church library?

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Actually there is a very good reason for having hymn books and defunct hymn books on the book stall. Hymns (and worship songs) are not just used in public worship but also in private devotion, and there is normally clear blue water between which hymns are used in which sphere.

This is interesting. It's a shame these things are never spelt out; I'm sure there are many people in churches, clergy included, who just see this stuff as unsightly rubbish and wish it could all be chucked out without offending someone!

But yes, I've collected a number of old hymnbooks in my time and found them useful.

Posted by Olaf (# 11804) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Actually there is a very good reason for having hymn books and defunct hymn books on the book stall. Hymns (and worship songs) are not just used in public worship but also in private devotion, and there is normally clear blue water between which hymns are used in which sphere.
This is interesting. It's a shame these things are never spelt out; I'm sure there are many people in churches, clergy included, who just see this stuff as unsightly rubbish and wish it could all be chucked out without offending someone!

But yes, I've collected a number of old hymnbooks in my time and found them useful.

Old hymnals are, in my opinion, one of the few "old" things one can get away with keeping in one's church library. That said, there is a huge difference between keeping the hymnals of a church's heritage and random other hymnals. In my own context, keeping former Lutheran hymnals just makes sense. Keeping hymnals full of revivalist gems that directly contradict Lutheran doctrine is another story.

As for pastors chucking out old stuff, one must beware. When most hymnals are produced, some hymns from the old hymnal don't make the new one, simply due to space considerations. "They can use the old hymnal to copy it, if they desire it," the hymnal committee will say. "The hymn isn't protected under copyright anymore, and we don't mind people taking it out of the old hymnal."

I was shocked, though, when I found out our former pastor had thrown away the old 1960s Altar Book. That just seems like a forever-archive sort of thing. I mean, it would have meant the difference between storing two (different) old altar books, or storing three of them. Sometimes you have to watch over your pastor's shoulders!

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