Hymns are “important in the history of ideas, the formation of culture, and the inner life of individual readers,” J. R. Watson reminds us in this time when the disciplines of hymn writing and singing ...

1. What is your favorite hymn from “The Golden Age of Hymns”? (See the Contents for some still-popular candidates.) What makes this hymn important to you? 2. In what ways is today’s outpouring of ...

Five hundred years after Martin Luther and a colleague published their first hymnal, Princeton Theological Seminary Professor Emeritus Paul Rorem has written a book that provides what his publisher ...

In a class on ministry, Will Willimon often referred to “the great theologian of our age”—meaning Bob Dylan, whose poetic expression of antiwar convictions helped Willimon articulate a Christian ...

Brian McLaren, the liberal “emergent” evangelical activist, re-emerged last week to announce that he is rewriting the hymn “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” The hymn is too warlike, he writes, as is much ...

The Greek hymnos refers to a song of praise similar to the ode, and in the Christian tradition in the Middle Ages, these are predominantly in Latin. Vernacular hymns arise early in the Reformation and ...