"Why doesn't a song like that get sung today? I'll tell you why. It's scary."

Yes, it's scary (and more on why later). But so is much of Scripture. This song, and many far scarier, were commonplace in past centuries. Evidently, the church in older times believed that ALL the themes of Scripture are good and profitable.

You are correct that such militant themes were once the subject of preaching and teaching. But you say far more than you may know (maybe not, too) when you add "It used to be that the church encouraged herself to militancy in both her songs and her prayers."

That addition -- songs and prayers -- are different from preaching and teaching in a key aspect that makes a huge difference (and, please don't hear me denigrating preaching and teaching here!) -- preaching and teaching "land" on individuals. How often have you noted that the very same words of a single sermon have registered in marvelously distinctint and different ways from one individual to another? And, this is to be expected, I think, as the Holy Spirit makes peculiar punctuations in each attendee's heart as is needed.

Songs and prayers -- the old kind, namely set prayers offered vocally and in unison by the assembled body -- "work" differently, for their dynamic forges a corporate body. These things are communal in a way that preaching and teaching cannot be, and communal things in worship (corporate prayers, singing, confessions of sin or the Creed, corporate reading of Scripture, usually Psalms) -- all these catch up the individual and weld him by the unity of action and unity of words into a body, even if temporary, which over time anneals his soul into a shape it is difficult to attain in any other way.

This is my chiefest apologetic for liturgy which creates an objectively corporate body (as contrasted with a theoretical one) that cannot be created in space and time in any other way.

I candidly admit that liturgies are like sacks -- they may contain anything from the pits of hell (e.g. a Witch's Sabbath) or from the courts of heaven (think, for example, of tabernacle worship expressly modeled on heavenly worship, or the shape of worship in the church catholic --note the small "c"-- for the past 2000 years, which has taken its cues from the patterns and precedents of revealed worship in the Bible).

So what ever happened?

One thing that happened is that liturgy diminished in favor of exalting each individual's "feeling worshipful." With this development, corporate worship faded, and the only unity remaining during worship is the same unity observed in a pile of freshly raked leaves: they simply happen to be in one place at one time for a brief period.

A second thing that happned is what you are noting in this blog: the themes of militancy disappeared from the only corporate action that remains in most evangelical worship: singing.

Why can’t you remember ever singing anything like this in Christian worship ...

Actually, we do remember singing this hymn, and many others like it, for they're routinely sung in our worship. And, we sing Psalms, including those bloody and gory ones, those that lustily proclaim that the enemies of God's people will be a portion for jackals (this, from last Sunday's singing of Psalm 63).

"That addition -- songs and prayers -- are different from preaching and teaching in a key aspect that makes a huge difference (and, please don't hear me denigrating preaching and teaching here!)..."

I'm with ya, Fr. Bill. But there seems to be a negative correlation between preaching and liturgy. As liturgy goes up, preaching goes down. If we're going to keep preaching central to worship (as I hope you agree we should), then practically speaking, how are we to fit all the elements you've mentioned in each Sunday, without unduly sacrificing the time it takes to preach well.

Our services are an hour and twenty minutes. Forty-five minutes are reserved for preaching. In the remaining time we consistently sing four hymns or psalms, have a call to worship, corporate confession, a Scriptural assurance of pardon, announcements, pastoral prayer, a Scripture lesson (reading through books of the Bible), giving of our tithes and offering, and communion every other Sunday. It's a tight squeeze to get all that in. To do more we would have to cut back on the preaching, which I am absolutely against us doing.

I don't know if you've worshiped with us before, or not. But I'm guessing you'd find our liturgy to be in some degree inferior to your own. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my guess. On a scale of one to ten, I'd put our liturgy at about a six. But as Doug Wilson once said of his own church, I'd much rather see us drop down to five before rising to seven. It seems to me that for us to go any higher would diminish the preaching ministry. And preaching, not liturgy, is what God has specifically promised to use to save those who believe (and, please don't hear me denigrating liturgy here... ;)

Word and Sacrament ...

In keeping with Scripture (esp. 1Cor 1:17), and the Reformed tradition, we maintain the primacy of preaching, and the subordination of the sacraments to it.

I would have said the same about conventionally Reformed congregations and their worship, though merely from observation from outside them. On the other hand, yours is the first time I've encountered 1 Cor. 17 as a justification for taking Paul's commission from Christ as the normative principle for Christian worship, much less the relationship between Word and Sacrament.

For whoever cares to know, Anglican worship (in keeping with catholic worship generally) looks to a passage such as Jesus' encounter with the disciples on the Emmaus Road as the normative relationship between Word and Sacrament, viz. their essential unity and mutual necessity if one is to have communion with Christ. As to the overall elements of worship, our model grows out of the original Apostolic practice in Acts 2:42.

I am curious about this, however -- I'd have expected your characterization of worship and the relationship of Word and Sacrament to come from the mouth of a conventional Baptist, among whom I spent many years. I thought (wrongly?) that Presbyterians would have fundamental distinctions from them in these areas (leaving aside who gets baptized for the moment). Are the Reformed and the Anabaptist traditions ~that~ close to one another in this area of worship and the relationship of Word and Sacrament? My Baptist fathers in the faith would not even use the word "sacrament" to describe what they did in worship, of course. But, still, your description sounds very much like what they did (and, some, still do) when they gather on Sundays.

Just curious here.

One reason we do not have a military mindset is that most of the Church refuses to sing/chant the Psalms or other songs from Scripture. You start singing Psalm 94 or Moses' Song from Exodus 15 or Mary's Magnificat and it is hard to not to think like a warrior.
Peter Jones, Pastor Christ Church of Morgantown (not the professor)

Thanks for some grist for the mill as we lead men into battle. We had a good session the last two weeks in our small group examining 2 Timothy 2 and pondering the soldier metaphor (among others). Great reward afterward was hearing (and heartily "amenning" the intensely passionate (and marvelously humble) prayer of a woman praying for the men in the room and in the church that they would display this kind of soldier mindset as they lead in their homes, prepare to be married, and become the men who lead the church in coming generations. What a blessing! May God abundantly answer and bear much fruit.

Two small points: I'm getting lots of dingbats in my display of your posts: headings appear with the first letter in normal Roman serif font, then the dingbats come. Odd. (Mac, in Firefox).

Also, to hear the song sung to the tune of "Minstrel Boy" you ought to watch the Sean Connery/Michael Caine Freemasonry extravaganza, "The Man Who Would Be King" based on the Kipling story.