Greetings brother. Here is Psalm 10 in English... I honestly don't see the problem with teaching this to congregations. I do agree that some of the Genevan tunes are VERY different from typical 1800s metrical American hymnody, but that tradition of hymnody is almost as foreign to many of today's evangelicals as the Reformation tradition of psalmsinging.
I guess for me, the question is this: the tunes are not inspired by God, and with the possible exception of a couple of psalm tunes that date back to the early Middle Ages and may actually go back to Jewish practice, we don't know what tunes were used in ancient Hebrew singing of the psalms. We therefore have legitimate freedom to craft tunes for singing them.
In theory, we could sing the psalms to anything from Benedictine chants to hard rock syncopations. I think we both agree that it would be unwise to do either in most (perhaps not all) Reformed churches because of the associations of such musical styles with things that Reformed people do not want to be associated with. I'd make an exception for a Reformed Episcopal church in a heavily Catholic country where perhaps using Benedictine chants could be advantageous, and where there is no objection in principle to what most Reformed people would consider "high church worship," but which was in fact used by Archbishops Cranmer and Ussher, who were Reformed men who believed St. Augustine was right about both sovereign grace and the episcopate, a position which most of us on the Puritan Board would disagree, with a few exceptions.
But once we grant two points, namely, 1) that it's acceptable to turn the Psalms into non-literal metrical lyrics (some Anglicans would disagree on this) and 2) that we have freedom to create tunes that are useful in our specific contexts, I think a far better argument can be made for using the Genevan tunes than other options.
Why?
First, the Genevan Psalter is available in almost every major language in which there was a Reformed church at the time of the Reformation, as well as modern translations into Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Indonesian which were unknown to the Reformers. That means a common psalter can be used worldwide in most but not all major languages that have a Reformed church, whereas the only real alternative, the Scots Psalter, exists primarily in English.
Second, most of the arguments against the Genevan Psalter no longer apply today since most Christians aren't singing metrical hymns anymore from the 1800s. If we're going to have to teach evangelical Christians who become Reformed a whole new way of worship and of singing, why not return to our roots instead of the revivalistic hymnody of the Second Great Awakening?
I have no idea whether the Scots Psalter was translated into local languages in India by Presbyterian missionaries of the 1800s. If it was, my opinion would change in your context.
But if not, someone badly needs to produce a psalter in the major Indian languages. I'd say the Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese made the right decision to base their psalters on Geneva rather than the Scots Psalter, but given the centuries-long history of Scots mission work in India, if you already have a Scots Psalter in your major languages, certainly you should promote and use what has been used for generations in your churches. Reinventing wheels is usually a bad idea.
