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We sang Hie to Kolob today, and as I was sitting in Gospel Principles, I heard a new member/investigator say it was “right over my head”. Cue one sister saying it was a star close to where HF lived.
I tried some damage control, and said it was an ultra-Mormon hymn… and contrasted it with hymns we share such as “Guide me oh thou great Jehovah” and “Nearer my God to thee”.
I also said how the tune was adapted by Ralph Vaughan-Williams, the English/Welsh composer and how some lovely versions can be heard on Youtube.
But I really shied away from the rockier shores of Mornon theology. On another controversial note, it looks like the priesthood 40th will be unmarked in our ward – can’t say I’m sorry.
I think the doctrine about Kolob is basically made up and thankfully I’ve not heard discussion about it in years at church. I quite like the hymn however because it’s musically interesting and the hymn message is actually quite nice in my opinion. At BYU years ago I was taking organ lessons and a class requirement was to attend certain organ recitals. One measure of a skilled organist is the ability to look at a piece of music and improvise on the spot. The guest organist was given the music to If You Could hie to Kolob as the music he was to improvise. He studied the music for about 60 seconds, made the registration (sound) settings he desired and then started to play. The music he made was very lighthearted and even silly, as opposed to the somewhat heavy and ponderous music of our hymn. The audience gasped and a couple of people giggled. I will always remember that performance as a reminder that Kolob doctrine and music both should be taken with the grain of salt.
The tune is certainly an old and beauriful one and quite well known. “There is no end to race” leads into other uncomfortable doctrine… But Kolob? I’m aware of the doctrine, and where it is found, but it’s never been meaningful to me personally… it’s where we verge into science fiction.
(It also appears – kind of – in Battlestar Galactica, but that’s another matter.)
“There is no end to race” ?? How did I miss that line all these years?
I always took it to mean no end to (the human) race. Something to make it fit the meter and rhyme with “space.” The hymn says: Text: William W. Phelps, 1792–1872. Standard SM talk time. The Websters Dictionary from 1828 defines
raceCnsl1 wrote:
“There is no end to race” ??How did I miss that line all these years?
It’s always stuck out like a sore thumb to me.
What nibbler said. Our angst about that phrase (written before the Priesthood ban and completely apart from it) is due to our modern use of the word rather than its meaning at the time. Having said that, I would celebrate the hymn’s removal from the hymnbook – or, at the very least, dropping that verse. Once a hymn or ritual or teaching loses relevance, there is no need to keep it.
From a long-ago thread: On Own Now wrote:
Kolob, even in the BofA is nothing more than a symbol of Christ and the stars symbolic of the Noble and Great Ones.Chap 3:
Quote:2 And I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; and there were many great ones which were near unto it; 3 And the Lord said unto me: These are the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all …
Quote:23 And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good… 24 And there stood one among them that was like unto God …
Old Timer wrote:
What nibbler said. Our angst about that phrase (written before the Priesthood ban and completely apart from it) is due to our modern use of the word rather than its meaning at the time.Having said that, I would celebrate the hymn’s removal from the hymnbook – or, at the very least, dropping that verse. Once a hymn or ritual or teaching loses relevance, there is no need to keep it.
I’m not sure about that at all. Yes, we did use “race” in the sense of tribe or family, but we also have used it in the modern sense going way back into the 19th century.
Quote:On Own Now wrote: ↑17 May 2014, 20:44
Kolob, even in the BofA is nothing more than a symbol of Christ and the stars symbolic of the Noble and Great Ones.
Kokob means “star” in Hebrew, and I suspect Kolob is little more than a variant of that.
Yea, Sam, we used the modern meaning in the 19th Century, but when the song was written the common meaning was what nibbler shared. It changed in the Church when the ban was being considered and then instituted. I’m not really convinced. An organization I was in had a Nazi collaborator in it for many years (long story). We didn’t know until some historian exposed him just after his death. Some of the members went out of their way to apologize for his bad life choices, but I really couldn’t do such a thing. They said it was partly pragmatic, not ideological since he was fighting against the other occupiers of his country. I said it was a bad choice, even if he had done some good things after the war, and showed little or no sign of being a racist. He doesn’t – thank God – appear to have been involved in an atrocity, but he had enlisted as a non-German in the SS. Our memberships of said organization overlapped, and I know many people who knew him, but I never actually met him, so I was not personally conflicted.
My line was that his WW2 actions had nothing to do with the organization as a whole or its aims and principles, or members such as myself who were born long after the war…. but that we should not bury or whitewash his actions.
I think the same applies here. People in the past have made some stupid choices. We don’t need to continue them or justify them, even if those people had motoves they could justify to themselves.
“Race” here could be a crass word choice. Or an innocent one. It looks bad now, that’s for sure. Especially in a day and age where people are triggered by far milder things.
I agree with everything you just wrote, Sam. I am just saying there is ZERO evidence the word meant race as we now define it to the author of the hymn when the song was written, while there is plenty of evidence it was used to mean “the” human race. The earliest missionary efforts made no distinction whatsoever.
Was W.W. Phelps, who wrote the song, a racist? Probably. Did W.W. Phelps believe that race (by modern definition) is eternal and has no end? Probably.
Does the hymn contain a LOT of speculation, that may or may not be true? Absolutely.
Was the hymn more concerned with invoking the spirit through poetry and rhetoric, than objective truth? Absolutely.
Quote:There is no end to race
I keep coming back to this question. Which would people prefer, a message that we retain our race for eternity or a message that some will be assigned a different race at some point in the future/afterlife… as if one race were preferred over the others?
As old as I am, I didn’t personally know WWPhelps. As dande pointed out, by today’s standards he probably was a racist, as nearly all people were then. But for completeness, let me point out the following: In July, 1833, WWP wrote an article in the Independence Missouri LDS paper, the Evening and Morning Star. In it, he acknowledged that free black people were probably going to come to Missouri as part of Mormonism, but that the Church would go the extra mile to adhere to the laws of Missouri in that respect. His words:
Quote:Slaves are real estate in this and other states, and wisdom would dictate great care among the branches of the church of Christ, on this subject. So long as we have no special rule in the church, as to people of color, let prudence guide; and while they, as well as we, are in the hands of a merciful God, we say: Shun every appearance of evil.
In the same edition, he later wrote about that the Church had no stand on slavery, but in the same paragraph hinted at the “wonderful events of this age” toward ending slavery.
This was the last edition of the paper printed in Independence. The press was destroyed a few days later because the Missourians didn’t share what WWP had called in his article a “liberality of opinion” towards free black people. The destruction of the press is famous in Mormon history for the Lawrence girls steeling away with a stack of already-printed pages for the Book of Commandments. It wasn’t polygamy that got this press destroyed by a mob, it was a reaction to the anti-racism of WWPhelps, and through him, the Church.
In the article, WWP never used the word ‘race’.
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