Posted on 04/11/2008 5:51:39 AM PDT by fweingart
“Jerusalem” is a beautiful hymn!! The Emerson, Lake & Palmer version of it is absolutely soul stirring. (I was listening to it just last Monday.)
As for us dumb Yanks stateside, there are a zillion old time Gospel hymns that refer to “the blood”...could those be next to be criticized because of the violent and gory imagery?
England just keeps getting dumber and dumber and their churches grow further away from God.
When my son was born 12 years ago, we had a family party at our home on the day he and my wife got out of the Hospital.
I had rigged a sound system outdoors, and when Mum and son came up the drive, we played “Jerusalem” at high volume. And when they came indoors through an honor guard of assembled friends, we played Copeland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man”. Plenty of champagne followed.
These are probably the two finest pieces of triumphalist music ever written, and I am unashamed and unrepentant for all the noise they made on that very special day twelve years ago.
It is a shame that this church has banned “Jerusalem”. It is their loss.
Alright, that’s it. Bring me my bow of burning gold.
“Till we have built Jerusalem”... that’s important because one has to remember that Jerusalem is a lot more than a patch of land and a few piles of stones. Jerusalem has a deep inner meaning, and that’s what everybody should be building not just on England but inside of oneself.
IIPeter 3:10 But the day of the LORD will come as a thief in the night:.....
I was expecting that the ban was due to UK Muslims finding something offensive in the lyrics ...give it time and they probably will find something to be indignant about in this hymn.
“Jerusalem” is now a bad word because the idiots assume that it has to do with Zionism and modern Israeli politics.
The hymn talks about bringing liberation to the “satanic mills” and building the City of God in England. It has absolutely nothing to do with the real estate of Jerusalem in the Holy Land.
More knee jerk idiocy from the COE.
How inspiring to see that the Very Rectum Abp. Williams of Canterbury is not the only one huffing airplane glue. "Jerusalem" WAS the CoE at one time.
Of course, that's when there was a CoE.
Emerson, Lake and Palmer did a nice version.
Jerusalem is a beautiful hymn. Another joy killer takes the soapbox.
Hiho-2, thanks for posting that. It’s quite beautiful. Sent it to my niece’s fiance, a Brit here in Utah.
Man, that hymn is the first one I think of when I think of hymns in England. In John Ford’s westerns, anytime a hymn was sung, it was always “Shall We Gather at the River?”. In English films, when hymns are depicted, it always seems to be “Jerusalem”. Oh, well...
Pitch darkness in the middle of the night, all of the boys who were about to leave standing outside the school buildings, singing Jerusalem.
For me, and many of the others, it was a pledge for our lives. To do what we felt we needed to do in our lives to create the world we wanted.
Chariot of fire
The line from the poem, "Bring me my Chariot of Fire!" draws on the story of 2 Kings 2:11, where the Old Testament prophet Elijah is taken directly to heaven: "And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." Or it could refer to 2 Kings 6:17 , where the prophet Elisha prays that the eyes of his servant might be opened to the "horses and chariots of fire" surrounding them to protect them from an enemy army.
Who could forget the singing of this hymn during Abrams funeral in the movie, "Chariots of Fire?"
Maybe he can get the Muzzies to cut out that cr@p about ole Mo visiting Jerusalem?
ML/NJ
Excellent post and comments. And very well said by The Rev. Dr. Peter Mullen.
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