1958

Pastor G. Oliver Sands, conducting services.

Average attendance at Sunday services was 63.

The Fellowship Hall building committee presented a set of preliminary plans by architect Robert Milliken of Kingston. The congregation voted to spend $100 ($667 in 2006 dollars) for the plans, which Milliken drafted.

Organist Anna Eignor, who had been playing at services for the past 34 years, was given $50 ($333.50 in 2006 dollars) as a second token of appreciation (she had received the same amount the year before). She had been playing the electric Hammond organ, purchased 3 years earlier, after pump-organ player Lydia Russell, 79, refused to play it (because she hated electricity). According to the reminiscences of Elsa Holumzer, 48 years old at that time,

A choir member [had taken] over, Annie Eignor, but she was too nervous… so I inherited it for the next six years.…(1)

---

Quoted in Anderson, Mark J., For All the Saints: Christ's Lutheran Church, Woodstock, New York, 1806-2006 [Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006], p. 151. (Close)

---

A cooperative effort of eight synods, including ours, resulted in the publication of the Service Book and Hymnal (or SBH). Luther Reed, a renowned scholar of church music, who had worked on the 1917 Common Service Book, was chairman of the Joint Commission that, prior to publishing the SBH, managed to navigate the shoals of contentious debate regarding the nature of the liturgy and hymnody.

[The] Common Hymnal must be a new work, not simply a conflation of the existing hymnals; it must contain only good hymns providing, as a companion to the liturgy, for the full round of the Christian Year… and Life; the hymns should be devotional rather than didactic or homiletical, and their directions Godward, not manward; the hymnal must be ecumenical in character, expressing the continuity and catholicity of the life of the Church; the final criterion is not Lutheran authorship, but agreement with the teachings of the Word of God; the hymnal must have the highest standards of excellence, and each hymn, being an act of worship, should be exalted in language, noble in thought and reverent in feeling.(2)

---

Quoted in ibid., p. 152, citing Reed, Luther, in SBH. (Close)

---

The SBH has been described as being "Anglican," or even "Roman Catholic," in the direction that was taken. Although it restored many of the ancient classical hymns of the church, it did so by omitting some of the basic repertoire of Lutheran hymns from the sixteenth century. It also included many pietistic songs inherited from the Scandinavian Lutherans. Nonetheless, the hymnal did include a solid selection of hymns that used the harmony of J. S. Bach. It was also a catalyst for bringing about unity among some very diverse traditions within the American Lutheran community. Scholarship and a changing aesthetic were at work in the national and the local church.(3)

---

Anderson, op. cit., pp. 152-53, citing Schalk, Carl, God's Song in a New Land: Lutheran Hymnals in America [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1995], p. 172. (Close)

---

At Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, PA, a woman was an influential teacher of sociology.

• ← Preceding year on the church
• Next year on the church →

This is a placeholder for information on our region during this year. The information will come soon. The footnote at the end of this sentence is also a placeholder; please don't click it.(2)

• ← Preceding year on the region
• Next year on the region →

Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican) was President. The 85th Congress was in session. (The midterm elections that year would elect the 86th Congress.) A dollar in that year would be worth $6.67 in 2006 for most consumable products.

This is a placeholder for information on the United States during this year. The information will come soon. The footnote at the end of this sentence is also a placeholder; please don't click it.(3)

• ← Preceding year on the U.S.
• Next year on the U.S. →

This is a placeholder for information on the world at large during this year. The information will come soon. The footnote at the end of this sentence is also a placeholder; please don't click it.(4)

• ← Preceding year on the world
• Next year on the world →