Rick Lee James explains why he added a Trinitarian chorus to Isaac Watts' "O God, Our Help in Ages Past." Watts, a child prodigy from a Calvinist minister's family, wrote Christ-centered hymns in the 1600s despite resistance from peers who thought hymns were too modern. James connects Watts' push for contemporary worship to his own effort to update the classic hymn.
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Hi, I'm Rick Lee James. I have an album out called Hymns, Prayers, and Invitations, and it's a mix of songs that you would find in your hymnal and songs that I have written that are very hymn-like or from prayer books or different resources like that that have been inspired. One of the songs that I'm really excited about on the project is the Isaac Watts hymn, "O God, Our Help in Ages Past." It's his song, but I wrote a new chorus for it that makes it a little bit more Trinitarian, focusing in on the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And I wanted to tell you the story behind Isaac Watts, maybe not so much this hymn specifically because he wrote so many hymns, but Isaac Watts was a really interesting guy, sort of a prodigy. At about age 7, he was already writing acrostics about his name that were spouting the Calvinistic theology that he grew up on. Uh, being a minister's son, he was in church at a very young age, and he was complaining that they only sang the Psalms and that the Psalms seemed to be dead. Now other churches were using hymns at that time, but Calvin, and he was very adamant that the church should only sing from the book of Psalms. And Isaac Watts, growing up in a Calvinistic home, he kind of wanted us to start singing about Christ, which makes sense, we're Christians. So he complained to his dad that they didn't have enough songs that were focused on Christ, and his dad very wisely said to him, "Well, son, don't just complain about it, why don't you try to write something for us?" So Watts, at a very young age, not even in his teenage years yet, started writing a song for them to use at church that was a hymn focused in on Christ. And it was such a success, and the church loved it so much, he wrote another one for the next week, and then another for the next week, and then he wrote another for the next week, until eventually he had an entire hymn book written as a young man from these different songs. Well, Watts grew up and became a minister himself, and I know that nothing like this happens today, but because he was doing this new form of music called hymns, a lot of people in his Calvinist tradition were very upset about these modern songs that were not written from the book of Psalms. And Christ being the focus of the Psalms was the entire reason that Isaac Watts wanted them to be sung in church. He said there's nothing wrong with singing the songs, but why wouldn't we want to focus in on our Christian faith, on who Christ was? So if you can imagine, there was a time back in the 1700s when hymns were too modern, hymns were too contemporary, and people were complaining about these modern songs in their church called hymns. So Isaac Watts wrote, "Oh God, our help in ages past," It's one of his songs. It's one of the more rockin' songs on the album, and I think that's appropriate because we're trying to modernize things, and it's alright to take some creative license with a song like this and just sing about the God who has been our help in the past, today, and tomorrow. So I hope you'll enjoy it on my new album, Hymns, Prayers, and Invitations. Thank you, and God bless.
<LYRICS>O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.</LYRICS> Be thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home.
