Sing a New Song

A URC Psalmody Series

Over the summer of 2012, we became aware of a new and particularly well-acclaimed book on psalmody, entitled Sing a New Song: Recovering Psalm Singing for the Twenty-First Century (Reformation Heritage Books, 2010).  This collection of essays from prominent Reformed scholars, edited by Joel R. Beeke and Anthony T. Selvaggio, evaluates various aspects of psalm-singing—its history, its biblical warrant, and its pastoral importance.  With excitement we both obtained copies of Sing a New Song and began reading it in parallel.

Soon we realized that this would be an excellent book to discuss in depth on URC Psalmody.  For the first chapter we tried a new interview-style post format, which worked so well that we continued it through the rest of the book.  At one point we were providentially able to produce a video version of one of these interviews (Chapter 8), filmed on the campus of Mid-America Reformed Seminary!

Our weekly discussions on Sing a New Song spanned the fall of 2012.  We followed the general structure of the book, but created our own titles for each chapter to more interestingly summarize its contents.  To prevent this unique material from slipping down into the inaccessible depths of the blog archives, we’ve collected links to the individual posts below.  Enjoy!

Part 1: Psalm Singing in History

• Chapter 1: Psalm-Based Piety (9/6/2012)
• Chapter 2: A Delightful Ordinance (9/14/2012)
• Chapter 3: The History of Psalmody (9/20/2012)
• Chapter 4: Wesley, Watts, and Worship Wars (9/29/2012)

Part 2: Psalm Singing in Scripture

• Chapter 5: The Psalms and Their Tuning Fork (10/4/2012)
• Chapter 6: Singing Kings (10/11/2012)
• Chapter 7: Prayers for God’s Glory (10/18/2012)
• Chapter 8: Singing Sufficiency (11/8/2012) — VIDEO

Part 3: Psalm Singing and the Twenty-First-Century Church

• Chapter 9: Redemptive-Historical Psalm-Singing (11/15/2012)
• Chapter 10: Setting the Soul in Tune (11/29/2012)
• Chapter 11: An Incomparable Treasure (12/6/2012)
• Summary Thoughts (12/14/2012)