Restoring Church Singing & Sunday Schools

Did you know that Baptists in the seventeenth century did not have corporate singing? In "Keach and Hymn Singing: The First Worship War Among Baptists, Part 3" (here at founders.org) by Jeff Robinson, we are told of this. He says:

"Keach had become convinced that singing was an holy ordinance of Jesus Christ and, as Crosby, wrote, “laboured earnestly with a great deal of prudence and caution, to convince his people thereof.” Keach believed that the “want of God’s presence” in the churches was in part due to “the neglect of this great duty” of corporate singing."

He cites these words of Keach:

"Reformation, ‘tis evident, is a hard and difficult Work, and ever was; ‘tis no easy thing to restore lost Ordinances, I mean, such as have for many Years been neglected, and strangely corrupted, through that Antichristian Darkness that hath for so many Ages and Generations spread over the Earth…I must confess, I my self, when first God enlightened me into his Truth, was an opposer of this Sacred Ordinance; but it was not for want of Ignorance, and partly through Prejudice, perhaps to such who I esteem, and ever looked upon since that time, a corrupt people in false in their Church-Constitution, and polluted with human Innovation, or Inventions of Men: the abuse of an Ordinance is subject to raise Men's Spirits to a dislike of the thing itself. But, blessed be God, I have, for near twenty Years last past, been fully convinced of the Truth of the Ordinance I now contend for, and have an equal esteem for it, (through Grace) as I have for any other Truth, knowing every Word of God is pure; and have found no little comfort in the practice of it, publickly in the Church, and in private also."

When Sunday Schools began to proliferate among Christian churches in the early nineteenth century, the Hardshells argued that they were "not of God" because they were a "new thing," an "innovation" in Christian doctrine and practice. Not only were they not specifically mentioned in the new testament as existing in the first churches, but they were not in existence among the Baptist churches prior to the nineteenth century. Ergo, they are against the will of God and his word. Of course, neither of these objections or arguments have any weight.

First, in the previous posting on Sunday Schools we showed how they were not new (a thing I have shown in other posts on this subject through the years). That they had been lost, or gone out of existence, for awhile, we do not deny. But, we believe the church restored them in much the same way she restored corporate singing through the efforts of Keach. No doubt many argued against corporate singing for the same reasons as did the Hardshells over Sunday Schools. It is new to sing in church! But, as Keach showed, it was not new. Rather, it had been the ancient practice and needed to be restored. Don't you see?