“An Enterprise Calculated To Knit The Union”: Evangelical Hymnody and Church Union in Canada, 1925-1931

Abstract

In the early spring of 1931 dignitaries and assembled leaders of the United Church of Canada – in a celebratory mood – met for an evening on the Roof Garden of the Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto to recognize a much-anticipated achievement in the liturgical life of their young Protestant denomination. After guests had dined, a special presentation by the General Council of the United Church honoured the labours of the Reverend Alexander MacMillan and of the church’s Committee on Church Worship and Ritual; it was under MacMillan’s leadership that the Committee published the first official hymnal for use in the United Church. Officially known as The Hymnary of the United Church of Canada, this new worship volume was intended to serve as a harbinger of the 1925 church union between the majority of Canadian Presbyterians, Canadian Methodists, and the smaller Canadian Congregational church. Quite fittingly, the congratulatory evening at the Royal York Hotel concluded with a rousing “hymn sing” (led by Reverend MacMillan himself) from the crisp bindings of the new hymnal. To its passionate, if not idealistic, promoters The Hymnary offered the very best of three worship traditions now comprised in the United Church; in the words of its Preface, the hymnal exemplified “the stateliness and tenderness of the Scottish Psalter, the glowing passion and evangelical fervour of the Wesleys, and the lyrical