Hymn-singing as an activity is admittedly nowhere near as common as it once was, and that is probably true inside churches as well as beyond their walls. So what is the point of singing hymns? Here are ten benefits worth bearing in mind. This may seem a strange thing to say, yet it is true. When we engage in singing …
Treasure No 72: What are we saying by singing?
(A transcript of the paper given to the Conference of the Society in July 2006, printed with the author’s permission) I chose that title because I am aware that there is a kind of assumption very often around in the church and elsewhere that the default position for human beings communicating and expressing themselves is ‘saying’. And that ‘saying’ is …
Treasure No 56: Ten Golden Rules
[Reprinted, with permission, from Wild Goose Songs, Volume 1 (1987.)] If you wish to print this out please open the PDF file here.
Treasure No 55: Hymns in the Early Church
(Adapted from an address given to the William Temple Society, York) In the ancient Greek world a hymn was a metrical address to a god. In Homer’s Iliad (1.472–4) we read: The god there is Apollo, and a paean is a hymn addressed to Apollo as healer. Again in Hesiod (Works and Days 656–7), who, Herodotus tells us, was with …
Treasure No 42: The Hymn Today
Under this title a symposium was presented at the Society’s Conference at Norwich last year. Here we print the substance of what each speaker said on that occasion (or, more accurately, what he would have said had time allowed). When people first started talking about ‘modern hymns’ in the late 1950’s they usually meant that they had found a 1930’s …