Excerpt from A First Series of Church Songs A want has been long felt for a collection of Church songs to supplement the Hymn Book - songs with a distinctly Church and religious tendency, without being hymns. From the workshop, the kitchen, and the stable, we hear the most sacred words warbled lightly, because they have become familiar in church or chapel wedded to taking tunes. The English people, for lack of national Volkslieder such as the Germans possess, have become a hymn-singing people; and the hymn is sung regardless of the character of the words, because the people are cheerful and want to sing. Of late years Messrs. Sankey and Moody, and, later still, the Salvation Army, have introduced religious songs which have at once become favourites, because the airs have been secular, and, in some cases, the words rollicking. The result has been a distinct lowering of the reverence of the people for holy things and holy words. Sacred aspirations and names, at which angels and devils bow, are trolled out or roared to music-hall tunes, sometimes by tipsy men, and often without thought. The tendency of these songs is not only to irreverence and profanity, but also to encourage heretical views of the scheme of Salvation. Justification is upheld as a sentimental outgush of excited hysteria, not as the gradual growth of a spiritual life; and this mischievous teaching poisons the sources of the moral conscience. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Sing! has grown from Keith and Kristyn Getty’s passion for congregational singing; it’s been formed by their traveling and playing and listening and discussing and learning and teaching all over the world. And in writing it, they have five key aims: • to discover why we sing and the overwhelming joy and holy privilege that comes with singing • to consider how singing impacts our hearts and minds and all of our lives • to cultivate a culture of family singing in our daily home life • to equip our churches for wholeheartedly singing to the Lord and one another as an expression of unity • to inspire us to see congregational singing as a radical witness to the world They have also added a few “bonus tracks” at the end with some more practical suggestions for different groups who are more deeply involved with church singing. God intends for this compelling vision of His people singing—a people joyfully joining together in song with brothers and sisters around the world and around his heavenly throne—to include you. He wants you,he wants us, to sing.

This collection offers the first English translation of the oldest known Christian hymnal, a book of hymns which was compiled in Jerusalem during the later 4th or early 5th century. The First Christian Hymnal offers an unmatched resource for understanding the development of early Christian worship and piety, as well as the transmission of Christian doctrine to the unlettered. For too long, this invaluable collection has been almost completely ignored by scholars of early Christianity, having survived only in an Old Georgian translation.

(Easy Piano Songbook). 50 worship favorites for beginning pianists to learn, including: Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) * Blessed Be Your Name * Come, Now Is the Time to Worship * Forever * Here I Am to Worship (Light of the World) * In Christ Alone * Lord, I Lift Your Name on High * Mighty to Save * Open the Eyes of My Heart * Shout to the Lord * 10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord) * Thy Word * We Fall Down * You Are My King (Amazing Love) * Your Name * and many more.

(Easy Piano Songbook). The name says it all: over 70 of the best P&W songs today. Titles include: Awesome God * Blessed Be Your Name * Come, Now Is the Time to Worship * Days of Elijah * Here I Am to Worship * Open the Eyes of My Heart * Shout to the Lord * We Fall Down * and more.

Our contemporary culture is communicating ever-increasingly through the visual, through film, and through music. This makes it ever more urgent for theologians to explore the resources of art for enriching our understanding and experience of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Annunciations: Sacred Music for the twenty-First Century, edited by George Corbett, answers this need, evaluating the relationship between the sacred and the composition, performance, and appreciation of music. Through the theme of ‘annunciations’, this volume interrogates how, when, why, through and to whom God communicates in the Old and New Testaments. In doing so, it tackles the intimate relationship between Scriptural reflection and musical practice in the past, its present condition, and what the future might hold. Annunciations comprises three parts. Part I sets out flexible theological and compositional frameworks for a constructive relationship between the sacred and music. Part II presents the reflections of theologians and composers involved in collaborating on new pieces of sacred choral music, alongside the six new scores and links to the recordings. Part III considers the reality of programming and performing sacred works today. This volume provides an indispensable resource for scholars and artists working at the interface between theology and the arts, and for those involved in sacred music. However, it will also be of interest to anyone concerned with the ways in which the Divine communicates through word and artistry to humanity.

Singing a new song is not an optional extra, but a faithful response to a divine command. This command is the opening phrase of Psalms 96 and 98. And, St John the Divine says, this is what the saints in heaven are doing all the time.But, on earth, things are not so easy. Sometimes it's because the latest new song in the old hymnbook is two centuries old. Or the congregation has been told by some sadist that it 'doesn't sing well'. Or sometimes the organist can only play what s/he hears on the radio. Or the guitarist can do anything, as long as it's only three major chords. However, even in such dire straits, the divine command has to be obeyed.So what if we kept familiar tunes - hymn tunes or folk tunes - and set words to them in 21st-century idioms? What if we gave some ancient psalms a makeover, replaced threadbare wedding and funeral songs or dealt with the things that people actually talk about when they're not in church? And what if most of the suggested tunes were so well known that - even if musicians took the huff - people could still sing the verses on their own?What if you looked under the covers of this book and began to upset the quiet of the place in which you are presently standing by beginning to hum?This book amounts to a modest proposal from the Wild Goose Resource Group on how to make the most of minimal congregational song resources in an accessible and resilient way.

The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.