This is not technically related to the O.P., but the most poignant case for exclusive psalmody that I've ever encountered can be found here:
PRC Psalm CD's.
Andrew Myers was gracious enough to send me both c.d.'s almost a year ago (I believe it will be one year in August). At that point I could say that I had already felt the intellectual pull of the E.P. arguments, and at the very least realized that I needed to respect the case that was made. After hearing the c.d.'s, at the risk of being a little hyperbolic, I felt a bit like the emissaries of Vladimir after having visited the Hagia Sophia, I "
knew not whether I was in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendour or such beauty, and I am at a loss how to describe it. I know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For I cannot forget that beauty. Every man, after tasting something sweet, is afterward unwilling to accept that which is bitter, and therefore I cannot dwell longer here."
Granted, that's not an intellectual or Biblical argument, and it isn't intended to be so. I still need to study the issue much more before I can say with any degree of meaningful certainty and studiousness that I am fully E.P. But I am practically so right now, and sometimes thirst for such congregational worship.
In retrospect it is utterly baffling and befuddling to me, literally, that I could have went my whole life and never heard a Psalm sung. I grew up in Nazarene churches, but visited churches of many denominations in my early years as a Christian. At most, every now and then, I'd hear a hymn or praise song with one line of a Psalm as a refrain or something.
This might sound overly dramatic, but sometimes I just get a headache and think, "What is it about the Psalms that make people hate singing them?" Sometimes I get the impression even in some Presbyterian churches that if they do have to use a Psalm, it's much better to use a very loose paraphrase (again, very loose), and not something from one of the Psalters. It's almost like there's an antipathy against actually
just singing a Psalm, as if it would be an experience of excruciating pain, like putting a cat into a bathtub.
It just very much strikes me that it seems to be "EP" or "no Psalms at all" in most churches; and in Presbyterian churches that aren't EP, I'd guess (there's no way I could no; none of us could, I suppose) that in many it's "one Psalm per service, and probably a very loose paraphrase).
Anyhow. I would encourage everyone that hasn't heard really good Psalm singing to purchase those c.d.'s.
I'm not affiliated with them in any way, so this isn't an infomercial.
