An Impact Study of Hymnody on Selected Ghanaian Churches

This paper is an investigation of the efficacy of hymns and their impact on personality. The investigation was aimed at addressing ‘the problem of the relationship of hymnody and discipline, self-regulation which results in guarded behaviour reflecting in speech, personal appearance, and conduct within the Ghanaian society.’ The investigation was against the backdrop of the perception that hymnody influences devoted singers with the power to shape personality and bring about character transformation. The objective of the investigation was to spike the hymnody effect within society. The theory of personal transformation combined the qualitative design. The study consisted of a single question to determine the most predominant view about hymnody in hymn-singing churches in Accra and Kumasi. Findings indicated that 41% of 300 informants confirmed hymnody as powerful and transformative, but elitist and excluded the non-literate. Eurocentric and Afrocentric perspectives attended the analysis of Hymnody. The study concluded that hymnody is beneficial to mood and character change to stimulate the transformation of soul and mind, leading to the growth of the inner man as a function of discipline. Thus, a reference to the notions of pedagogy and discipline are underscored as transforming outcomes of devoted hymnody participation. The paper’s contribution to knowledge lies in its focus on the role of hymnody, a religious ritual, as catalyzing the development of the discipline ethic to engage the attention of the academy for further research. Keywords: Discipline, Ghana, Hymnody, Personality.

Sounding Archives of Presence

Colonial regimes of sounds used to represent Inuit—what one might shorthand as “the Sound of Eskimo,” an Arctic complement to Deloria’s “Sound of Indian”—can be traced back to cue sheets, scores, and soundtracks that accompanied Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922). A lack of musical and cultural specificity granted to Arctic Indigenous Peoples represented in film over the long twentieth century is due to misplaced assumptions about circumpolar lands, waters, and lifeways as monolithic. Until the 1970s, ethnographic records about Inuit lifeways and music-making also lacked radical and relational approaches to research that acknowledged the particularities among and between Inuit communities and performance practices across the Arctic. This chapter traces important shifts over the past century, from non-Inuit ethnologists to Inuit filmmakers, and offers in-depth analyses of soundscapes and soundtracks from Iñupiaq filmmaker Andrew Okpeaha MacLean’s award-winning feature film On the Ice (2010). The author emphasizes three on-screen musical performances—Iñupiaq drumsong, “Eskimo flow” hip hop, and a singspiration, or Presbyterian hymn singing—that archive dense histories of colonization and resurgence in Utqiaġvik.

Beyond Hand Waving: Indices For Hymn Leading in Corporate Christian Worship

The paper examines the significance of the selection, planning, and factors that affect the leading and singing of hymns in corporate Christian worship. While myriads of scholarly literature abound on hymnology, through bibliographies and an in-depth library search, the paper seeks to discuss the guidelines that engender the leading of congregation hymns and methods required for a dynamic leading of hymns. The research findings reveal that in some Nigerian churches where there are no trained music ministers, many untrained song leaders merely stand before the congregation to announce the hymns for the congregation to sing without performing a leadership role. Others merely stand to wave a hand. Leading congregational hymns requires training and vivaciousness in skill application. The three major areas of focus include planning, leading, and congregational response to hymn singing. The paper concludes that planning and selection of hymns are both spiritual and intellectual exercises that involve basic knowledge of the rudiments of music. The research will help the church musicians and academics in further research into church music and congregational hymn singing. Keywords: Song Leader, Hymn, Hymnody, Worship, Corporate Christian Worship

Meaningful Activities Among Vulnerable Older Adults Living With Dementia

This paper examines self-identified meaningful activities in the daily lives of 21 vulnerable older adults living with dementia and the people who care for them at home (dyads). Using ethnographic observation and interviews, we asked the dyads to identify which aspects of daily life were most meaningful and how these activities changed as dementia progressed. Results ranged from pleasure-seeking activities like cigarette smoking and eating, to spiritual or mindfulness activities like hymn-singing, prayer and tai chi. Dyads identified specific examples of the ways in which meaningful activities and meaning-making both persisted and adapted throughout the progression of dementia. Using these identifiable moments of meaning-making as a starting point for inquiry, we explore underlying questions of how to adapt to dementia progression while retaining meaning in relationships.

When Mind and Memory Flee …: Hymns and ministry to people with dementia

Drawing on his experience as a part-time hospital Chaplain, Graham Deans reflects on how in worship services for geriatric patients, the singing of familiar hymns very often had the effect of restoring lucidity and comprehension to the minds of dementia sufferers affected by memory loss and confusion. His paper considers therapeutic value of hymn singing and looks in some detail at particular examples of hymns focussed on ageing and dementia.

Christian Globalism at Home

Child sponsorship emerged from nineteenth-century Protestant missions to become one of today's most profitable private fundraising tools in organizations including World Vision, Compassion International, and ChildFund. Investigating two centuries of sponsorship and its related practices in American living rooms, churches, and shopping malls, this book reveals the myriad ways that Christians who don't travel outside of the United States cultivate global sensibilities. The book traces the movement of money, letters, and images, along with a wide array of sponsorship's lesser-known embodied and aesthetic techniques, such as playacting, hymn singing, eating, and fasting. It shows how, through this process, U.S. Christians attempt to hone globalism of a particular sort by oscillating between the sensory experiences of a God's eye view and the intimacy of human relatedness. These global aspirations are buoyed by grand hopes and subject to intractable limitations, since they so often rely on the inequities they claim to redress. Based on extensive interviews, archival research, and fieldwork, the book explores how U.S. Christians imagine and experience the world without ever leaving home.

‘Praise the Lord! We are a Musical Nation’: The Welsh Working Classes and Religious Singing

The title quotation from Under Milk Wood encapsulates a widely held belief in the innate musicality of the Welsh and its religious roots. These roots were put down deeply during the nineteenth century, in a huge expansion of choral and congregational singing across Wales and particularly in the industrial communities. This development has been described as ‘a democratic popular choral culture rooted in the lives of ordinary people’, and central to it was the cymanfa ganu, the mass hymn-singing festival. Choral and congregational singing, typified by the cymanfa ganu, underpinned the perception of Wales by the Welsh and by many non-Welsh people as ‘the land of song’.Alongside this phenomenon ran the tradition of the plygain, a Welsh Christmas carol service. While the cymanfa developed in nonconformist chapels in the mid to late nineteenth century, and on a large – often massive – scale, the plygain is a tradition dating from a period much further back, when Welsh Christianity was Catholic; it belonged to agricultural workers rather than the industrial communities; and the singers sang in much smaller groups – often just twos or threes.This article describes the nature and origins of these contrasting traditions, and looks at the responses of listeners both Welsh and non-Welsh, and the extent to which they perceived these practices as expressive of a peculiarly Welsh identity. It also considers some of the problems of gathering evidence of working-class responses, and how far the sources give an insight into working-class listening experiences.

SUN-546 18-Day Lifestyle Program Improves Metabolic Equivalent Measures, BMI, and Exercise Capacity Among Overweight and Obese Adults

Introduction Various kinds of diets, workout programs, exist to lower one’s Body Mass Index (BMI), increase strength, and endurance. Metabolic Equivalent Measures (METS) is often used to measure exercise intensity1. A simple 18-day lifestyle program may be effective in raising METS, lowering BMI, and building endurance among overweight and obese adults. Methods Participants took part in an 18-day residential lifestyle program that encouraged daily outdoor exercise. Those with a BMI greater than 24.9kg/m2 were selected for this study. BMI, METS, and miles walked per day were measured at baseline and 14 days into the program. METS was measured using the Bruce Protocol while participants reported miles walked per day. Participants were given a walking goal of 5 miles per day. Participants ate 2 vegeterian meals a day that were low in sugar and fat but high in fiber. The program also encouraged moderate sunlight exposure, adequate water intake, sleep hygiene, and temperance. The program incorporated spiritual activities such as corporate prayer, spiritual contemplation, and hymn singing. A patient-doctor relationship was established and participants were consistently monitored. Results A total of n=627 participants were used in this study. METS increased from a baseline mean of 7.61 kcal/kg/hour to a final mean of 9.19 kcal/kg/hour. This is an increase of 1.58 kcal/kg/hour, ±1.26, with t(626)=-25.35 and p<0.001. BMI decreased from a baseline mean of 32.49 kg/m2 to a final mean of 31.39 kg/m2. This is a decrease of 1.094 kg/m2, ± 2.22, with t(626)=39.22 and p<0.001. Miles walked per day (MPD) increased from a baseline mean of 0.86 MPD to a final mean of 4.04 MPD. This is an increase of 3.18 MPD, ±2.01, with t(626)=-33.36 and p<0.001. Conclusion The program significantly improved METS, BMI, and physical endurance among the participants. This suggests that simple lifestyle changes are effective even among overweight and obese adults and should be encouraged by health professionals. Longitudinal studies are needed to examine these lifestyle effects outside of this program.

Singing and Praying among Korean Christian Converts (1896–1915)

In late nineteenth-century Korea, American-style hymn-singing and the related practice of praying began in missionary churches as the number of Christian converts grew at an exceptional rate that was not replicated in any other parts of Asia. Born within the context of colonial pressures from the United States and Japan, Korean Christian singing and praying in the early-twentieth century exhibit a trans-Pacific genealogy of the modern Korean voice, that is, a genealogy that materialized at the intersection of Pacific colonial projects, local experiences, and pre-existing cosmologies. This chapter investigates Korean Christian singing and praying by examining missionary and Korean records, as well as some Japanese colonial sources. Activities directed by the missionaries, hymn-singing, and praying among Korean converts reflected a network of American aesthetic, moral, and economic ideologies. The author argues that Korean Christian singing and praying formed a complex site in which North American religious practices and Korean social mobilization converged in the contexts of Japanese colonialism and US–Japan rivalry in the Pacific. This inquiry allows the author to hear and describe not a Korean voice in mimesis of or opposition to the West, but a trans-Pacific voice, exhibiting a trans-Pacific genealogy. The voice, then, can be understood as a kind of technology through which Korean converts negotiated their way into a “global history” not as full agents or subjects, but in their markedly compromised positions, within multiple shifting power relationships.