By Kim Lawton
Universities routinely receive non-monetary donations such as real estate, patents, or art. Ivan Burnett Jr. ’65 M.Div. decided to give something different: a hymn tune named in honor of the school.
Burnett is a former Navy chaplain and United Methodist pastor. During his retirement, he has been composing and self-publishing volumes of hymns, hymn tunes, preludes, and anthems. He says he wanted to donate a hymn tune that would honor YDS because “Yale Divinity School meant so much to me and shaped me so much.”
In many traditional hymns, the melody and lyrics have separate titles. For example, the hymn “Be Still My Soul” is set to the tune of “Finlandia.” Burnett titled his hymn tune “Yale Divinity School” and paired it with a hymn text titled “The People Who Walked in Darkness.”
The lyrics are based on the Scripture passage Isaiah 9:2: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in the land of deep darkness, on them, the light has shined.” Because Yale’s official motto is Lux et Veritas—Latin for “light and truth”—Burnett believed this would be the perfect donation.
Ivan Burnett’s YDS hymn: Listen to the recording.
At 85, Burnett is thinking about the legacy he will leave behind. He wants what he calls his “spiritual gift” to YDS to be part of that legacy. “If I can give back anything to those who helped me, and if that may help others, that would be a blessing,” he says.
A life of music and service
Music and service have been part of Burnett’s life from an early age. He was born in Meridian, Miss., and began taking piano lessons in the second grade. He sang in junior high and high school choruses and was a member of the choir at his local United Methodist church.
Burnett says he “felt the call to the ministry” at a church camp when he was in the seventh grade. He attended Millsaps College, a Methodist school in Jackson, Miss., and majored in psychology while continuing to pursue music, singing in the concert choir and accompanying the madrigal group. Burnett says he debated whether to be a congregational pastor or a minister of music. He finally decided to become a local pastor,
When selecting a graduate school, Burnett says he was influenced by several mentors, including his college president, the pastor of his church, and the director of his youth ministry program, who had all attended Yale. “I thought if I went to Yale, I would be as great as they were,” he says, although he jokes, “That didn’t happen.”
Burnett was at YDS from 1962 to 1965, during the height of the Civil Rights era. “My colleagues and I were constantly discussing race,” he says. “Martin Luther King was marching down in Mississippi. Bill Coffin, the chaplain at Yale, was leading civil rights marches down in Mississippi. And so, it was something that I continually was looking at and listening to.”
He says those conversations had a profound impact, as did the experience of taking classes with African Americans. Growing up in Mississippi at that time, he says, “I had no contact with any African Americans who were seen as equals, and I had never been in a class with an African American.”
The egalitarian climate at YDS was formational for Burnett’s future ministry, which was often characterized by supporting people facing discrimination. “I began to grow in my experience of accepting people as they were, no matter what,” he says.
Burnett’s new ideas were tested shortly after he graduated from YDS. He returned to Mississippi, where he was appointed to a conservative United Methodist congregation. He says at the first administrative board meeting, the chairman’s brother asked him, “Pastor, what do you think about this (expletive) business,” using the pejorative word for Black people, and “what would you do if one came on Sunday?”
Burnett replied that he would give the person a hymnal and ask him or her to join in the singing. “At which point they insisted I call the district superintendent and let him know that they were coming over to see him that night because they were ready to get rid of a minister,” he recalls.
The district superintendent supported Burnett and asked him to stay to show that the United Methodist church was open to all. Burnett stayed, but about two-thirds of the congregation left. Still, the church survived and for the first time in six years paid all of its apportionments and benevolences (the local church’s percentage of the annual conference administrative and missional budget).
Eventually, Burnett moved to Arizona, where he worked in several United Methodist churches. After a few years, Burnett says he began to sense God was calling him elsewhere. “I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it was in the middle of all the Vietnam protests,” he says.
His wife urged him to become a military chaplain, an idea he initially dismissed. Burnett says he was “too influenced by the teachings of (theologian) Reinhold Niebuhr and by fellow students in Bacon House” to be a pacifist, but he had great sympathy for conscientious objectors. Ultimately, he decided to become a military chaplain to advocate for them. He joined the Navy in 1973 after earning a Doctor of Ministry degree from the Claremont School of Theology.
“I knew I didn’t want to go in the Army and crawl through the mud, so I picked the Navy,” he says, adding that he did not know that Navy chaplains also served with Marines. “My first duty was Marine infantry, crawling through the mud,” he laughs.
Burnett spent more than 26 years as a Navy chaplain, serving on a nuclear-powered cruiser, an aircraft carrier, and at major Navy and Marine Corps installations. He attained the rank of Captain (O-6) and was decorated with two Navy Commendation medals, three Meritorious Service medals, and the Legion of Merit.
After he retired in 1999, Burnett and his wife returned to Arizona. He was active in many ministry projects, including serving on several United Methodist boards and committees. He taught marriage enrichment classes and worked at a camp for people with AIDS. He learned massage to help AIDS patients in an attempt, he says, “to witness to God’s love for everyone.” He learned Spanish so that he could be more welcoming to immigrants from Latin America.
At the request of one of his two sons, he began writing his memoirs. “That turned into four volumes,” he acknowledges. “Ministers have a gift for gab, I reckon.”
A hymn tune for YDS
After his self-published memoirs were complete, Burnett says he was “a little bored” and decided to focus more on his music. He began composing hymns and other religious pieces. He has written seven volumes of music and is working on number eight. He says his pieces have been used by churches in at least 12 states. One was performed by a visiting youth choir at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.
Last year, Burnett was singing the hymn “Draw Us in the Spirit’s Tether” in his local church when he noticed the title of the hymn’s tune was “Union Seminary.” He wondered if any hymn tunes were named in honor of YDS. He couldn’t find any, so he decided to write one.
Then, Burnett says, he realized he had already composed a hymn tune that was perfect for YDS. During the Advent season, he had written the hymn and melody based on Isaiah 9:2. He says the words “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” had special meaning for him because of his YDS experience.
“I felt like I walked in darkness and saw a great light at Yale,” he says. “I think God moves us, and I saw this as God’s spirit guiding me to pass that on.”
Jake Joseph, YDS Associate Director of Alumni Engagement and Development, says the Divinity School had never received the gift of a hymn or hymn tune before. “Now we have this amazing, unusual gift,” Joseph says. “It demonstrates there is a wide variety of ways alums can make gifts and support the school. We are always willing to have that conversation with them.”
Burnett says he has no expectations about how his gift will be used, although he would like someone else to write additional verses. He hopes it may inspire others to consider how “they might share their spiritual gifts with Yale, in addition to their monetary gifts.”
Says Burnett, “If we don’t share our talents, we’re not using what God has given us and what God has moved us to do.”
Kim Lawton is an award-winning reporter, producer, and writer who has worked in broadcast, print and online media. For nearly 20 years, Lawton was Managing Editor and Correspondent for the highly acclaimed national public television program “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.”