Selections of 10 Clergymen : ‘In the Garden’ Tops List of Least-Favorite Hymns

Everybody has a favorite hymn.

But what about least favorite?

The Reformed Church in America, the oldest Protestant denomination with a continuous ministry in North America, is creating a new hymnal and the question of what to put in and what to leave out is a vexing one.

The Church Herald, the denomination’s official magazine, recently asked 10 Reformed Church clergy, in an admittedly non-scientific sample, to pick the best and the worst hymns.

C. Austin Mile’s 1912 classic, “In the Garden,” appeared on more of the bad lists than any other.

Message Called ‘Nebulous’

Warren Burgess of Faith Reformed Church in Traverse City, Mich., said the hymn “has a message so nebulous one has to read meaning into it.”

The hymn begins:

I come to the garden alone,

While the dew is still on the roses,

And the voice I hear, falling on my

ear

The Son of God discloses. It is followed by a chorus that reads:

And He walks with me and He

talks with me And He tells me I am His own And the joy we share as we tarry

there, None other has ever known. “America’s all-time religious favorite, ‘In the Garden,’ has done the worst in fostering the I-me-myself version of Protestantism in our country,” said Joseph Holbrook Jr. of the Reformed Church of Westwood, N.J.

“In my experience people who show no interest in taking up their crosses, in joining in public worship, in concern for the poor, in the support of missions want this song sung at a relative’s funeral,” Holbrook added.

James Esther of the Second Reformed Church in New Brunswick, N.J., agreed.

‘Sentimental Fiction’

“ ‘In the Garden,’ ” he said, “is a fine example of sentimental fiction. It says nothing of substance and is addressed to no one in particular, especially not to God.

“What it does say is not particularly Christian.”

David Ter Beest of the Faith Reformed Church in South Holland, Ill., lumped the hymn with two others--”Ivory Palaces” and “When All My Labors and Trials Are O’er”--as “hymns I seldom choose.”

“While the words may have their basis in scriptural ideas,” he said, “they express a sentimentalism about one’s relationship with Christ and could well leave a worshiper with a limited and unclear impression of the Christian faith. Worship hymns ought to glorify God and not man.”

“Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine,” a hymn almost as popular as “In the Garden,” was cited by two of the clergy in their picks of the three worst hymns.