Going for a song: Rebecca Hardy on how Quakers have changed their tune

‘We try our hand, the Quaker choir.’

The preface to Rise Again, the songbook created by Quakers Annie Patterson and Peter Blood in 1988, has a quote from the renowned folk singer Pete Seeger. ‘Why is singing good for the planet?’ he asks. ‘Nobody can put it in words. But if there is a human race here in a hundred years, my guess is that one of the main reasons will be we found ways we can sing together – different religions, different languages. The act of singing together makes us realize we’re human beings.’

It was this kind of sentiment that led Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) to make a new songbook for the World Plenary (WP) next August. ‘Most (although not all) Friends around the world sing,’ says Tim Gee, general secretary of FWCC. ‘Many Yearly Meetings, especially those who practice programmed worship, have produced hymnals, including in English, KiSwahili, Spanish and Aymara. At Burundi Friends Church – one of the largest in the world – up to nine choirs sing at once during weekly worship, and globally those groups who sing tend to be growing fastest.’

Music is also a feature for Quakers who practice ‘silent’ worship, he says, albeit in a more subtle way. Protest songs are sung as Friends prepare for witness outside an arms fair or fossil fuel company headquarters. ‘Songs are sometimes shared through spontaneous ministry,’ he adds, ‘and residential events often use music. Most prominently, though, singing plays a role in fellowship.’
This, as Tim describes it, is a departure from the life of the earliest Friends, who feared that music ‘could distract from the “still small voice” of Christ within’. Since then, however, ‘Friends have found that songs, carefully chosen and faithfully sung, can be an aid in growing closer to God, as well as to one another.’

FWCC world gatherings have included song lists for at least fifty years. The oldest known copy of a plenary songbook dates back to 1967, but next year’s selection is a smaller affair, comprising twenty-one songs. This is partly because ‘songs will only catch on if they are sung many times’, says Tim, and also because the in-person WP will be smaller this time.

The hymns have been selected by the WP worship working group. This group includes Friends from South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Britain, the US and Japan, and ‘with further advice from a Friend based in Bolivia’. The team considered every song in previous WP songbooks, as well as those sung at other FWCC gatherings. ‘We then looked for songs that have been chosen many times, are well known, relatively simple, and are distinctly (although not necessarily uniquely) Quaker,’ says Tim. Then came songs that ‘could speak to the condition of Friends’, particularly those with ‘words which are acceptable and relevant to various Quaker traditions’. The selection also reflects the wider WP theme of ‘Ubuntu’, which Tim defines as ‘I am because you are’. There are also songs that are written by (and for) Quakers, such as ‘Forever Friends/Para Siempre Amigos’ (created for the World Gathering of Young Friends in 1985), and ‘Dear Friends’, sung to the tune of ‘Building Bridges’.

‘Almost all of the songs listed here are shared with the wider Christian family,’ says Tim. ‘Some of them – “Great is Thy Faithfulness” or “Santo Santo Santo (Holy, Holy, Holy)” – are among the best known hymns of all’. But every selection also suggests ‘a deep resonance with Quaker experience’. ‘Yesu Kwetu Ni Rafiki (What a Friend We Have in Jesus)’, for example, references Jesus’ teaching that: ‘Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command… This is my commandment, that ye love one another’. ‘This passage is much loved by Friends’ churches, and widely thought to be a factor in why Friends are named as we are,’ says Tim. ‘In Christ There is No East or West’ has even been suggested as an FWCC anthem.

Two of the songs – ‘Moto ya Jesus (The Fire of Christ)’ and ‘This Little Light of Mine’ – reflect ‘the central experience of Quakerism… the divine as a powerful inward force, a Light which is the Light of the World’. ‘Love is Flowing Like a River’ also speaks to the experience of Friends throughout the ages, says Tim, of ‘God being like “an ocean of love and light”’.

The selection also contains a number of African American spirituals. According to Tim, these ‘describe a direct and physically-experienced relationship with God, combined with action for freedom, and a liberatory reading of the Bible’. At least two – ‘Every Time I Feel the Spirit’ and ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ – contain probable coded references to escaping from slavery, through the underground railroad, which many Quakers were part of. Others have played a role in more recent movements for peace, such as ‘Down by the Riverside’ (‘I’m going to lay down my sword and shield’), which became a favourite with protestors during the Vietnam war. ‘Balm in Gilead’ was one of the favourite hymns of Martin Luther King Jr, who worked closely with Quakers. Meanwhile, ‘Siyahamba (Walking in the Light of God)’ is frequently sung on peace marches, and ‘is especially relevant because of the World Plenary’s location in South Africa’, says Tim.

Tim also gives a nod to Paul Robeson, a singer and civil rights campaigner who was ‘one of the most famous re-popularisers of spirituals in the last century… [and] came from a family of Quaker anti-slavery activists’. Some of Robeson’s favourites are included in the songbook, such as ‘He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands’, which was also the title of Robeson’s biography.

The collection also features some new versions of old standards, including ‘Every Time I Feel the Spirit’, which dates to before the US civil war. The earliest known performance of the song was attested to a woman named ‘Aunt’ Mary Dines, who escaped slavery and became Abraham Lincoln’s family cook. First published in Folk Songs of the American Negro in 1907, the song has been recorded by many artists and gospel groups, including preacher’s son Nat King Cole.

FWCC hopes that the songs will be enjoyed at Meetings before Friends travel to the WP and also in celebration of George Fox’s 400th birthday next July. A ‘Ballad of George Fox at 400’, is being composed to the tune ‘Slane’.

Pete Seeger perhaps says it best. Wherever the notes rise up, from the quiet of a Meeting room to the rousing spirit of a choir, ‘Perhaps if we find the right songs, people so filled with hate they carry a gun with them: we can reach them too. Who knows?’

‘Every Time I Feel the Spirit’, for World Plenary 2024 (with examples of extra verses, from Kenya and Poland)
Every Time I Feel the Spirit
Moving in my heart, I will pray
Cada vez que siento el espiritu
En mi corazon, oraré

Up on that mountain, our story starts
The light of God in all people’s hearts
There’s that of God in, me and you
It’s what we call here, ubuntu.

Jordan River, chilly and cold,
it chills the body, but not the soul.
There ain’t but one train, that’s on this track,
it runs to heaven and runs right back.

Pale Kaimosi Nchini Kenya (There at Kaimosi in Kenya) Walifika Marafiki (They arrived, Friends)
Twahushudia, Juhudi Zao (We witness their efforts)
Zakueneza, Amani (of spreading peace)

Gdzieś między morzem i pasmem gór
(Somewhere between the sea and the mountain range)
Swych sił próbuje kwakierski chór
(We try our hand, the Quaker choir)
Melodia Foksa nam pomóc ma
(Silent melody is to help us)
Zobaczyć światło co wiecznie trwa
(See the light that lasts forever)

Rebecca is the journalist at the Friend.

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