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I have written before about the abominably dopey With One Voice hymnal. Among its numerous sins include these: unsingable hymns that don’t scan or rhyme, myriad theological inconsistencies with the Lutheran confessions, total absence of any justification hymns, and liturgies devised by Marty Haugen. What has only recently become clear to me, however, is that even the title is incoherent. What is the “one voice” with which users of this sad blue book are to sing? I identify at least three strains in this collection of contemporary hymns; note that they are not mutually exclusive, and substantial overlap in fact occurs:

With One Voice hymn categories. (Not to scale)

1. The post-VC II cash-in. I missed the part of Vatican II that required vernacular hymnody to also be pedestrian and infuriating, but it must be in there somewhere. These hymns are most often written by destitute composers of various stripes in a desperate attempt to collect publishing royalties from anywhere. Inexplicably, these songs have enjoyed enormous commercial success, even though I am aware of no human who can tolerate them. (Take that, Pauline Kael!) As a result, the reach of these virulently banal hymns has extended beyond the Roman Catholic world to many other corners of Christendom — often without changing a single point of theology or emphasis! (Fortunately for other Christians, most of these hymns focus on how great we are for creating a just society, &c., and not as much on any doctrinal distinctives.)
   
   Warning signs: Guitar chord symbols, especially if “sus” appears anywhere therein. Any text copyrighted by a diocese is a pretty sure indicator. Beware of three-letter acronyms, like “GIA,” “OSB,” and “OCP;” run in terror if you see “SJ” or “Joncas.”
2. Hymns that no American Lutheran knows. This is where the “with one voice” claim becomes most confusing. These hymns are completely unfamiliar to most Western Christians because they were primarily written by the gentry of some people who were once colonized by Jesuits. Many times, these will reuse melodies from secular folk music, which would be fine if, for example, the scale and rhythmic materials of indigenous Antarctican wedding songs were more accessible for congregational singing. Unfortunately, the contrafacta doesn’t go far enough, as many of these hymn texts are not recognizably Christian.
   
   Why are these hymns included? Surely there isn’t a large community of indigenous Antarcticans (or whatever) that attends American Lutheran churches and feels disenfranchised by having to sing recognizably Lutheran hymns. Are they there to make the -sons and -sens feel awkward (or, worse, cosmopolitan)?
   
   Warning signs: Syncretism, awkward text accents, seven distinct copyrights, and monody are all reasonable indicators, but these all apply pretty well to bad 20th-century mainline Protestant hymns as well. However, if you have to drop into Spanish or some language that has to be written out phonetically for the refrain, it’s pretty clear which category you’re in.
3. Schlock. There are two overlapping subcategories of schlock, which I deem “bad Broadway musical music” and “circus music”. It’s no secret that I am revolted by musicals (I don’t even like verismo), and, while I am not opposed in the abstract to the existence of the circus, I don’t generally need a clown-car overture in church. However, if the composers of schlock were competent, they would be writing in these genres, rather than infecting a hymnal with this music. (This is really the problem with most “Christian rock” as well.)
   
   Warning signs: The arbitrary appearance of dashes or ellipses where syllables exist in other verses. Compound meters. Unnecessary mode mixture. Systematic avoidance of satisfactory cadences. Monody. “Haugen.”

There are a few hymns in WOV that fall outside or mostly outside the above diagram (not shown): there are a couple of nice spirituals (and a few bad ones), some 19th-century American hymns of varying quality, and even a few standard Lutheran hymns that missed the cut for the not-as-bad-by-comparison LBW. However, one must be careful to look at both the text source as well as the tune, since there are at least a few good tunes that have been debased by limp-wristed Anglican texts or other “postchristian” nonsense. (I think there’s a hymn to the tune of Herzlich tut mich verlangen whose text focuses on how, if we could just be nicer to one another and make a better government, God would like us again.) Consider yourself warned: contra-contrafacta can be hazardous.