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 ...

Fans of a beloved contemporary Christian hymn won’t find any satisfaction in a new church hymnal. The committee putting together a new hymnal for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) dropped the popular ...

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 ...

Songwriters living in ancient Egypt would never have expected the words and melodies they sang would feature on Australian music charts 1,800 years later. But one Australian academic's obsession with ...

Truly, songs that touch on spirituality bear some of the best melodies, richest refrains, and most meaningful messages. There is a reason they’ve lasted hundreds, if not thousands of years. Here at ...

Since December, Chinese netizens have been debating whether the country’s recent Christmas celebrations took on more distinctly “Chinese” characteristics than previous years. A popular online meme ...