The church is established
The Church's One Foundation is a hymn , which is included in the most important recent German hymnals ( Protestant hymnal 264; Gotteslob 482). It is based on Anna Thekla of Welings paraphrase of the English The Church's one foundation of Samuel Johnstone and as this to the tune of sung by Samuel Sebastian Wesley .
text
Origin and content
Samuel John Stone, clergyman of the Church of England , wrote the original seven-stanza text for his Lyra Fidelium , published in 1866 , a cycle of twelve songs on the twelve articles of the Apostles' Creed with commentary from the Bible. The reason for the drafting is a controversial internal Anglican dispute about the understanding of the Bible. Stone mentions nothing of this in his foreword, but rather formulates a purely catechetical concern.
The Church's one foundation is the development of the ninth Creed article: [Creed] sanctam Ecclesiam catholicam, Sanctorum communionem - "[I believe] in the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints." The first stanza deals with Jesus Christ as foundation and “Bridegroom” of the Church, the second by her global catholicity , held together by the Eucharist , the third by her invincibility, the fourth by her sufferings - ridicule and divisions - the fifth by her hope for heavenly peace after the earthly dispute, the sixth by their union with the perfect, and the seventh is a petition for the attainment of eternal glory.
For the 1868 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern , Stone shortened the text by the third and the second halves of the sixth and seventh stanzas, so that a five-stanza version was created. This is the free adaptation of Anna Thekla of Weling (1898) based on the turn, only three verses - 1, 2 and 5, the latter easily changed - today's ö form -version.
Today's wording
1. The church is founded
on Jesus Christ alone,
she who is the
new creation of the great God .
He came down from heaven
and chose her as his bride,
and with his blood he
married her forever.
2. Erkorn from all peoples,
but numbered as one people, there is
one Lord and one faith,
one spirit that animates them,
and
they honor a holy name , a holy meal,
and they share a hope
by virtue of his choice of grace.
3. Already here she is connected
with him who is and was,
has blessed fellowship
with the redeemed company.
With those who are perfect,
we call to you, Lord:
Grant that we may
praise you for and for with them .
melody
The melody by Samuel Sebastian Wesley first appeared in 1864 in the Selection of Psalms and Hymns edited by him and Charles Kemble . It was assigned to the text Jerusalem the Golden and was therefore given the name Aurelia - "Golden". The expectation-arousing repetitions of the tone at the beginning and the sudden upswing of the sexton in the second line give it a wistful character that fits particularly well with the eschatological passages of The Church's one foundation . With this text, the melody first appeared in print in 1868. The year before, the text and melody had been sung as the entrance song at the first Lambeth Conference of all Anglican bishops in London .
Web links
- Meinrad Walter: The church is founded (song portrait for the new praise of God)
Individual evidence
- ^ Lyra Fidelium , digitized version
- ↑ a b Kenneth W. Osbeck: 52 Hymn Stories Dramatized , p. 150
- ↑ hymnary.org
- ↑ The EG also contains the English text of the corresponding stanzas. - Both in the EKG (1950) and in the Gotteslob (1975) the song is still missing; However, it is contained in the EKG regional church part Rhineland / Westphalia / Lippe (1969) in a four-stanza version, consistently following the wording of Weling, together with the English original text and a Dutch adaptation from 1938 (No. 485).
- ↑ In the English-speaking world, all church melodies have proper names and are not named with the beginning of a text, as in German.
- ↑ hymnary.org