Stirring Hymns

[rockfreak]

I suppose many of my older generation will not be believers but may still respond to the stirring hymns we used to sing in chapel. I've recently discovered an interesting set of albums by Maddy Pryor, taking one of her periodic rests from being singer with Steeleye Span, and titled "Maddy Pryor and The Carnival Band - Sing Lustily and With Good Courage". These albums resurrect what it must have sounded like in years gone by when they had local musicians playing stringed instruments in the gallery rather than an organ (something featured satirically by Hardy in one of his novels - 'Under The Greenwood Tree' or 'The Woodlanders' ? - I can't remember which). Maddy assembles a load of compulsively singalong old standards by the likes of Bunyon and the Wesleys (I'd forgotten how many great hymns they wrote - did we sing some of these in chapel in the 50s and 60s? Did we allow Methodism into our CofE liturgy? I really can't remember). Anyway, you can find all these albums on You Tube.

[MrEd]

'To be a Pilgrim', Bunyan's poem turned hymn is best known set to the tune of Monk's Gate, named https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yHJMPw8RHU, for the hamlet just south-east of Horsham, near Manning's Heath, around 3 miles from CH. A fine tune it is.

[rockfreak]

Thanks Mr Ed for putting the link to Maddy and the Carnival Band. As an old codger who came late to the internet I'm useless at putting links.
I suppose I'm what is today described as a Cultural Christian - someone who was brought up with this stuff and still has a lingering affection for it, while not actually being a believer.

I still believe that the CofE is rather a good thing because it's a broad church where you don't have to believe dogma literally and which, perhaps by being a rather woolly, broad church, has kept religious fanaticism at the margins. If you want to just turn up and sing the stirring hymns and listen to the King James Bible (which is a work of literature in its own right) and maybe run a food bank, then that's OK. I suppose that is what atheists like me would recognise as Christianity. Not for nothing is St Francis everyone's favourite saint, whether they are believers or not. In heartland America there has been an unfortunate side effect to not having an official church. Religion has gone free market and, as Dawkins observes, what works for soapflakes works for God. Heartland America is possessed with a virulent Old Testament fanaticism where any Elmer Gantry figure can get up on a soapbox and draw a crowd and do very well out of it. It's currently expressing itself in a massive support movement for Donald Trump.

I wonder when CH stopped singing these stirring hymns in chapel? I left in 1960. What has been the nature of religion since?