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?
I really want to begin by challenging that rather radically: I want to ask whether there has ever been a time in the history of the human race, when people have just said things. I have a strong, deeply-rooted conviction that it is perfectly likely that people sang before they spoke. I suspect that even our Neanderthal cousins sang rather …
Treasure No 56: Ten Golden Rules
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Treasure No 55: Hymns in the Early Church
(Adapted from an address given to the William Temple Society, York) 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 Homer the greatest formative force upon Greek religious thinking, we find The ancients claimed that the earliest hymns were composed …
Treasure No 42: The Hymn Today
When people first started talking about ‘modern hymns’ in the late 1950’s they usually meant that they had found a 1930’s ballroom number for ‘Holy, holy, holy’ or a 1940’s pantomime tune for ‘The Church’s one foundation’. There were few new texts to challenge the mind, and most of the ‘modern’ tunes were ephemeral. Today, less than twenty years later, …