Interview with Herman G. Stuempfle, Jr., Fellow of the Hymn Society
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Herman G. Stuempfle, Jr. was named a Fellow of The Society in 2004. He is author of four collections published by GIA: The Word Goes Forth (1993), Redeeming Time (1997), Awake Our Hearts to Praise (2000) and Wondrous Love Has Called Us! (2006). Some of his nearly 600 hymn texts appear in various hymnals and set as anthems. interview took place over August and September, 2006, between Herman G. Stuempfle, Jr., Fellow of The Society of United States and Canada, and Robin Knowles Wallace, for THE HYMN. Wallace did research for interview, aided by Stuempfle, who then responded to questions. RKW: Herman G. Stuempfle, Jr. was born son of a Lutheran pastor, in 1923 in Clarion, Pennsylvania. His AB is from Susquehanna University. He later graduated from Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, then served parishes in Pennsylvania and Maryland for twelve years, followed by three years on staff of Board of Social Missions of United Lutheran Church in America. RKW: Can you tell us about your parents regarding hymns/singing/faith? When did you first become interested in hymn singing? HGS: I grew up in a Lutheran parish, where my father was pastor. Here I was exposed to a variety ofhymnic traditions-the General Synod tradition of evangelical hymnody at Sunday School and weekday services, with a more traditional sung Sunday morning liturgy and vespers with chorales. Singing hymns is a part of my earliest memories. RKW: one of Stuempfle's hymn collections he credits his wife Gretchen as the first reader of [his] texts who 'speaks truth in love.' They celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in September 2006. They have three children, Stephen (an ethnomusicologist and museum curator in Miami), David (a studio potter in North Carolina), and Kristin (Associate Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Gettysburg College). 1962, Stuempfle was invited to teach preaching at his alma mater, Lutheran Theological Seminary, where he served for 27 years. During that time he earned an S.T.M. at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and his doctorate at Southern California School of Theology at Claremont. His doctoral work resulted in a book, Preaching Law and Gospel (1978), and was followed by other publications in areas of preaching and theology. addition to teaching and writing, Stuempfle was involved in ecumenical ministries, including prison ministry and work in a soup kitchen. He served in academic administration at Lutheran Theological as Dean for five years and then as President of seminary from 1976-1989. announcing a project to name a faculty chair in honor of Stuempfle, current president remarked, This seminary seeks to complete an endowed chair named for this most highly gifted proclaimer of Word, a rich hymnwriter, lecturer and most deeply respected leader. Stuempfle's hymnwriting has primarily come in retirement, with GIA publishing four collections of his texts, beginning in 1993. Some of his texts were published in THE HYMN, beginning in 1989. 2001 Stuempfle wrote column Hymn Interpretation, considering texts by Franzmann, Troeger, Andrew of Crete, and his own translation of a text by Jochen Klepper. 1993 he wrote a brief article on Daniel A. Payne, graduate of Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, bishop, seminary president, and hymnwriter. work, combined with reviews of recent hymn collections by others, demonstrates Stuempfle's thought and gracious approaches to broad range of hymnody. an article by John R. Spangler which first appeared in Seminary Views (41.1), Stuempfle discussed parallels between preaching and hymnwriting: In homiletics classes, I used to tell students that sermons emerge from space where three intersecting circles overlap: (1) biblical text, (2) situation of parish and its individual members, (3) personality and gifts of preacher. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.007 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".