In 1866 one Samuel Stone, curate at Windsor, published Lyra Fidelium, twelve hymns on the articles of the Apostle’s Creed, usually understood to have been in response to dissention in the Church of South Africa about the teachings of a Bishop J W Colenso. Of this set, the most famous and most often still sung is that concerning ‘The Nature of the Universal Church, and the Fellowship of the Saints’; we know it as ‘The Church’s one foundation in Jesus Christ her Lord.’

The clearest references to the divisions in the background are in the following verses (not always sung in modern uses of the hymn):

The Church shall never perish!
Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish,
Is with her to the end:
Though there be those who hate her,
And false sons in her pale,
Against or foe or traitor
She ever shall prevail.

Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder
By heresies distressed:
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
shall be the morn of song!

Colenso, born in Cornwall and having become a Mathematician at Cambridge before ordination and recruited to South Africa for Episcopacy, taught a number of things that unsettled others in the church. His metropolitan tried to depose him, but a court found that he had no power to do so, leading to a situation in which a parallel bishop was set up covering the same area.

The teachings thought problematic were largely his argument that certain passages in the Bible might not be understood literally, and that they may have been written long after the events they purport to describe – these are things current Biblical scholarship would usually take as common ground; it seems increasingly fringe within the Church to insist on a literal reading of the creation narratives as though they describe historical events. Colenso is also understood to have taken a pastoral position towards converts in polygynous marriages which others saw as offensive to Christian morality.

Given, as I say, that at least a portion of Colenso’s apparently problematic teachings look with hindsight not merely acceptable but relatively conservative compared to more recent conclusions, it is interesting to think about the schisms and heresies in this hymn – and the false sons within the pale of the Church – in relation to current divisions, which seem intractable. Will they be just as intractable in even 150 years time? That is a relatively short time in the total history of the Church. How sure are we that what we now see as indispensable is truly that; are we each sure that those we see as undermining the Church from within (and I am sure there are people on each side of current debates who consider the other side to fit into that category) are not in fact discerning a different aspect of honest truthfulness to which we ought to listen.

The tune we sing this hymn to was destined by its composer, S S Wesley, for the hymn Jerusalem the Golden – hence its title Aurelia – but is found to marry very well with Stone’s text in this case. Indeed, there are those who have argued that setting to this particular tune is explanation of the hymn’s ongoing popularity. Just as taking that tune and singing to it these words produces an overall effect that is more than the sum of its parts, what might it look like to combine in useful dialogue diverse perceptions of truth within today’s Church(es) to allow God to build a stronger and more attractive vehicle for declaring God’s kingdom?