Last month I spent a week in the Netherlands on a speaking tour related to two of my books, Political Visions and Illusions and Citizenship Without Illusions. On the last two days of my stay, one of my hosts and I twice visited the Grote Kerk in Nijkerk. Here is the story:
What is a Mannenzang? There is a Dutch tradition, apparently not more than three decades old, of mass gatherings of men in churches, and perhaps elsewhere, to sing psalms and hymns together. The sound of huge numbers of tenor and bass voices praising God in song exudes a certain power that has to be experienced first hand for a full appreciation. In the evening of saturday, 19 September, Samuel and I made our way into Nijkerk's historic Grote Kerk for a mannenzang. I would be hard pressed to estimate the number of men present, but the building was completely filled for the event. The assembled men sang six psalms according to the Genevan melodies and six hymns. These were interspersed with commentary by Dr. Paul Jan Visser. Martin Mans was at the organ, Pascal van de Velde on the trumpet, Wibrand van Norel on the timpani, and Jan Verhoef directing from the front.
I recorded two of the songs we sang together, including one that will be familiar to English-speaking Christians. Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven is one of my favourites, written by Henry Francis Lyte in 1834, with accompanying melody by Sir John Goss. The words are loosely based on Psalm 103. In Dutch this becomes Prijs, mijn ziel, de Hemelkoning, whose first stanza I recorded below:
The second song I recorded was the entirety of Genevan Psalm 100, whose haunting phrygian tune is not as well known amongst English-speaking Christians as it should be. This is the original OLD HUNDREDTH before the Scots renumbered Psalm 134 accordingly for their 1650 Psalter.
The entire programme can be viewed here:
The following morning Samuel and I were back at the Grote Kerk for sunday morning worship. The Grote Kerk's original building was constructed in 1461 and rebuilt after a fire in 1540. Known historically as St. Catherine's Church, the congregation became Protestant in 1594. Today it is officially known as the Hervormde Gemeente Nijkerk and is part of the Gereformeerde Bond, the small-o orthodox wing of the Protestantse Kerk in Nederland (PKN), the large denomination formed in 2004 by the merger of the Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk, the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN), and the Evangelisch-Lutherse Kerk.
Although one expects such a large denomination to have mostly lost the distinctives of the predecessor bodies, worship here was along traditional Reformed lines most resembling, on this side of the pond, the liturgy of the Canadian Reformed Churches. The minister read the Ten Commandments (De Tien Geboden) followed by the summary of the Law from the gospels. Because everything was in Dutch, and because my knowledge of Dutch is fairly limited, I could understand only the highlights. But the sermon was on Mark 1:1-20, focussing especially on 1:17 (Kom achter mij aan): "Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men."
At the long prayer following the sermon, the elders, all wearing dark suits, stood for the duration. During the service we sang selected stanzas of Psalms 45, 25, 127, and 147, all from the 1773 Dutch version of the Genevan Psalter. The pews were filled for the service. Nijkerk is part of the Dutch Bible Belt, a swath of territory stretching from the centre of the country southwest to the Rhine delta.
I am not sure what to make of the following photograph, but it seems that many of the older church buildings in the Low Countries have urinoirs built into the outside walls. Perhaps it's to redirect the activity referred to in 1 Samuel 25:22 and 25:34.
I was pleased to learn first hand that the tradition of psalm singing is still alive and well in an otherwise secular country. Recently a friend gave me two Dutch psalters used in the former GKN. I will shortly be posting about these two volumes, one of which represents a revision of the liturgy and psalter from 1986, only 18 years before the denomination became part of the PKN. Stay tuned.
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