BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND
Here is a neat analogy. Robert Martin Walker of Darien, Connecticut provides it. He reminds us that a year ago the United Methodist Church’s Hymnal Revision Committee announced it was dropping hymns that overdid martial metaphors. Goodbye “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Not Christ-like enough. The response? Some 8700 negative letters came to the hymnal revisers’ office. Switchboards jammed. At last, United Methodism was roused from mainline-religion slumbers by a worthy cause. Walker reports that the committee reversed its earlier decision. Then he turns creatively and defusingly cute with his analogy, well twisted. “The decision and restoration of these two hymns was nothing less that a well-planned publicity scheme to sell more hymnals. It is second only to the Coca-Cola Company’s ‘error’ in changing its formula for Coke. They, too, had a national outcry over the change. Coke loyalists demanded the restoration of the old formula. Thus was born ‘Classic’ Coke. Now there are millions of…
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