Free Republic

Nearer, My God, to Thee - Words: Verses 1-5, Sar­ah F. Adams, in Hymns and Anthems, by William Johnson Fox, 1841; verse 6, Ed­ward H. Bick­er­steth, Jr. Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me, Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee. Refrain Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee! Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down, Darkness be over me, my rest a stone. Yet in my dreams I’d be nearer, my God to Thee. Refrain There let the way appear, steps unto Heav’n; All...

I Stand Amazed (How Marvelous) Verse 1 I stand amazed in the presence Of Jesus the Nazarene And wonder how He could love me A sinner condemned unclean Chorus How marvelous how wonderful And my song shall ever be How marvelous how wonderful Is my Savior's love for me Verse 2 He took my sins and my sorrows He made them His very own He bore the burden to Calvary And suffered and died alone Verse 3 When with the ransomed in glory His face I at last shall see 'Twill be my joy through the ages To sing of...

After watching the debate, I have a new song that I'm singing at the top of my lungs. It's called the Canticle of the Turning. I emailed our choir director at church to sing this hymn the next 3 Sundays at mass. Here are the lyrics My soul cries out with a joyful shout that the God of my heart is great, And my spirit sings of the wondrous things that you bring to the ones who wait. You fixed your sight on the servant's plight, and my weakness you did not spurn, So from east to west shall my...

This video is arranged with a short instrumental medley of hymns, “Softly and Tenderly” and “Lord, I’m Coming Home”, with a flowery hummingbird scene.

Should the Stars In Your Service Flag Turn To Gold (1918) lyrics by Dora F. Hendricks music by Charles H. Gabriel MIDI sequence os002.mid by John McDonnellShould the stars in your service flag turn to gold, If from somewhere in France comes the message you fear, Should the anguish of death on your heart be rolled, Creep close to God and you will hear His great heart throbbing, as soft and low He whispers: "Child, I know, I know! "Your very best for the world you've done: "I, also, gave my beloved Son, "I, also, gave my beloved Son." Like...

Click the link to listen to the following songs, each will make you laugh because they are so absurd, and cry because they do indeed fit so many who proclaim to be Christian. Blest Be The Tie That Doesn't Cramp My Style Pillow of Ages, Fluffed for Me I Surrender Some I'm Fairly Certain That My Redeemer Live Sit Up, Sit Up For Jesus Take My Life and Let Me Be What An Acquaintance We Have In Jesus Where He Leads Me, I Will Consider Following He's Quite a Bit To Me Oh, How I Like Jesus Fill My Spoon,...

If anybody wants to have an instant smile on their face, you gotta check out this video of this talented two-year-old girl, belting out "The Lord's Prayer." Too cute.

One Toronto church decided that they had enough of divisiveness this Lenten season, and decided to take a stand. No more would incendiary rhetoric be used to inflame the passions of the congregation. No more would the United Church endorse an outdated theology, at least not the West Hill Protestant United Christian Church. Their pastor struck these dreaded words from their Easter hymnal …. Jesus Christ? That triumphal barnburner of an Easter hymn, Jesus Christ Has Risen Today – Hallelujah, this morning will rock the walls of Toronto’s West Hill United Church as it will in most Christian churches across...

In this animated Bullfrog video you can here the sound of a bullfrog and hear the frog sing, I’d Rather Have Jesus, gospel hymn. Revski

Yet another painful experience of modern Evangelical “worship,” once the fury and chagrin has drained away, awakens in my mind this scene from my boyhood: It is a summer Sunday evening service in a little Baptist church in rural Michigan, hard by the fields and woods. Everyone who plays an instrument (all “acoustic” in those days), young or old, skilled or not, has been invited to accompany the congregational singing, for that is what is done on Sunday evenings, when the service is less formal. The minister stops the music near the end of the hymn, taps the pulpit, and...

ROME (CNS) -- Catholics, Anglicans and Methodists filled Rome's Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls with some of the most famous hymns written by Charles Wesley at a service marking the 300th anniversary of the Methodist reformer's birth. The songs, featured in hymnals across denominational lines, were the focal point of the Dec. 3 ecumenical evening prayer service in the Catholic basilica. The Rev. John Barrett, president of the World Methodist Council said, "It was mind-blowing really" to celebrate Wesley and sing his hymns "in Rome with an ecumenical gathering." "I think Charles Wesley would be thrilled. He did...

Vote at the Holy Observer.

According to EWTN (I didn't watch the proceedings), there are two pieces of news on the the proposed music document that had been scheduled to be considered at the Fall USCCB meeting: 1) it has been downgraded from particular law to advisory, which means that it will not have the same binding status and will not require Rome's approval, and 2) it has been otherwise withdrawn because there were 100 pages of proposed changes and there was no way it could be tackled at the USCCB meeting. Very interesting.  This document was supposed to be a response to Liturgiam Authenticam...

I'm having some problems with music in Catholic America. Part of it is my problem. I spent fifteen years in the Anglican Church with the New English Hymnal--which is probably the finest hymnbook ever published in the English language. Musically and liturgically it was the best that traditional Anglicanism had to offer. Catholic music in England--well we won't even go there. Apart from a few islands of decent church music the Catholic church in England was a wasteland. I am discovering that in the USA it is not much better. My problem is that I am actually unfamiliar with most...

I've recently been strapping on the swamp boots to wade through something called Glory and Praise, perhaps the most commonly used Roman Catholic hymnal in the United States and Canada. Oh, it is sloppy and noisome work, logging the bathos, stupidity, banality, heresy, and textual vandalism. I've concluded, though, that there is one factor that touches every problem, something that helps explain these apparently disparate acts of mischief: -- the neutering of old masculine language about mankind and even God -- the heedless fouling up of the old poetry, to update a "thou" and a "thee" -- the seizing of...

Preacher Dan Smith turned a rap song about babes with booty into a spoof Internet hit, and used it to help create a new church for people who hate church. Dan Smith thinks Christians take themselves too seriously. Pastor Dan Smith's 'Baby Got Book' video, a big hit online, helped him start his Momentum Church. "We can be dorks," he says after Sunday service in suburban Cleveland. "We can be Ned Flanders and basically speak jargon that nobody understands." The 33-year-old pastor has made it his mission to turn the notion of earnest, boring, humorless Christianity on its head —...

God of our Fathers (National Hymn) Daniel C. Roberts, the 35 year-old rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, a small rural church in Brandon, Vermont, wanted a new hymn for his congregation to celebrate the American Centennial in 1876. He wrote "God of Our Fathers" and his congregation sang it to the tune Russian Hymn. In 1892, he anonymously sent the hymn to the General Convention for consideration by the commission formed to revise the Episcopal hymnal. If approved, he promised to send his name. The commission approved it, printing it anonymously in its report. Rev. Dr. Tucker, who was...

The Church Impotent by Leon Podles Despite constant feminist complaints about the patriarchal tendencies of Christianity, men are largely absent from the Christian churches of the modern Western world. Lay men often attend church activities because a wife, mother, or girlfriend has pressured them. As, Tom Forrest, a priest active in international evangelization, points out, only twenty-five percent of the participants in Catholic gatherings he has attended are men, and "when men do come, they are often brought along with some resistance by their wives." While men still run most churches, women outnumber them in the pews in Europe, in...

"'When Life's Troubles Rise to Meet Me’: Sifted in Satan's Sieve"(Sermon series on "The Hymns of Paul Gerhardt")Tonight marks the third in our series of midweek services on “The Hymns of Paul Gerhardt.” We are using the life and the hymns of this great Lutheran pastor and poet as an aid for our Lenten devotion. We began two weeks ago by seeing Gerhardt’s life as an example of how to live as a baptized child of God within your vocation. Last week we heard how Gerhardt’s hymns warm the believer’s heart by pointing us to God’s great love all around...

Lutheranism’s Sweetest Voice Turns 400Paul Gerhardt’s beloved hymns were a product of sufferingMalcolm Muggeridge once called suffering the only method by which we have ever learned anything. Nothing corroborates this British author’s insight more profoundly than the poetry of Paul Gerhardt, who was born exactly four centuries ago, on March 12, 1607, in Gräfenhainichen near Wittenberg. For most of his childhood, youth and maturity, this Saxon pastor experienced one of the worst calamities that ever afflicted Central Europe – the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48). Yet “the religious song of Germany found its purest and sweetest expression in the hymns of...