I am a working Anglican priest of 21 years' experience and a professional musician, whose church has been developing a contemporary music program for the past five years. In the course of that experience it has become obvious that good modern hymnody is hard to find! The great traditional hymns have depth and power, but for many people have become increasingly disconnected from modern life both theologically and aesthetically. The contemporary Evangelical world has developed an admirable sacred aesthetic in its music tradition, but much of it is dreck and the theology is painfully limited. The liberal church, meanwhile, mostly fails to conjure any sacred aesthetic in its hymnody, and its texts tend to be ploddingly ideological.

The purpose of my sabbatical is to develop 10 new hymns in the modern style (that is, accompanied by a rhythm section) that will be useable by mainline churches, both practically and theologically. This will involve (1) mining the church tradition for texts that are both beautiful and timeless, (2) in collaboration with other musicians and librettists, adapting and setting those texts to music, and (3) creating a commercial-quality recording of those hymns. Most of this can be accomplished without any travel, but I would like to make a pilgrimage to Canterbury for the sake of inspiration.

I apologize for the loose nature of this application: I only just learned about your program this evening (August 31) from a colleague! If you are interested by this proposal but are unable to approve it in its present form, I'd be willing to work as quickly as possible to bring it into a more acceptable condition.