Kudos for Online Index
I have been a subscriber to Reformed Worship since its inception. I use the resource regularly and often go back to past issues. I recommended a service from RWbased on the "Great O Antiphon" to a colleague. After spending about 45 minutes going through back issues, I resorted to the computer. Your online index was excellent! I got what I needed right away. Believe me, next time I will start with the index! Thanks again for your great journal and for the ways you help us to gain access to the information we need.
Jill C. Fenske
Franklin Reformed Church
Nutley, New Jersey
Editor's note; Our online index is available directly from our home page (www.reformedworship. org), or you can go to the source at the Calvin College Library (www.calvin.edu/library/database/crcpi/adv.stm).
We're very grateful that Calvin added RW to their index of periodicals! Remember also that we still have a print version of the index; check the inside front cover for order information.
Appreciation for Moravian Easter
I so enjoyed your editorial on the Moravian Easter. It brings back wonderful memories and makes me think it might be time to go back to Winston-Salem again, perhaps for Holy Week or at least part of it. Did your hosts treat you to a love feast too? Another great tradition. I daresay many had their appetites whetted and will show up in Winston-Salem next Faster.
Maxine Ilaak
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Thank you for your editorial! It's very deeply affirming to our tradition, and I hope you won't mind if I share it with some other folk here. It would certainly do the Moravians good to hear this affirmation from someone "outside" the tradition.
The hymns for the Easter morning service are the same as they have been for at least 100 years. For someone who grew up with this service, it's really hard to imagine it without these hymns, especially the ones particular to the Moravian tradition. Probably the one that is most essential to the service is the last—"Sing Hallelujah, Praise the Lord." Someone once referred to this as the "Moravian national anthem"—a concept that I, and many other Moravians, find troubling. The Moravians are a worldwide unity, and to refer to any piece as a "national anthem" denies that worldwide relationship. Moreover, this particular hymn isn't known at all outside of the English-speaking Moravian world, and I'm not even sure how well it's known outside of the United States. But here, at least, it is very well known and loved, and worth keeping in this service.
I do think that, considering the length of the spoken word in this liturgy, it is important to use hymns where they are indicated, even if they aren't the same hymns.
Nola Knouse
Director, Moravian Music Foundation
Winston-Salem, North Carolina