HYMN books are expensive. Even with discounts and donations, a new set of hymn books for a parish church can run into thousands of pounds. So, when the dilapidated books stacked at the back of church have outlived the tender loving care of the keeper of the gaffer tape, what is a PCC to do? Even disposal is tricky: if more ancient than modern, they will barely be fit for the great expense of export abroad. Better to let members of the congregation help themselves for personal devotion at home.
Singing in church requires the congregation to be resourced to join in. Hymn books, hymn sheets, full service orders, and large screens and projectors all have their place, although rarely in the same building. Each of these options — screens, paper, or hymn books — requires investment, and indeed some ongoing cost for repair and replacement. (It may be thought that buying a set of hymn books requires no further expense, but the red or green gaffer tape will certainly be needed after a few decades).
THE technology to project and display hymns and songs on a screen is cheaper than it was, but you need someone to master Windows and maintain the wiring. It can cost far more than a set of hymn books, and needs replacing sooner, at greater environmental cost. It requires a faculty, and an electricity supply that can bear the load. It does not work by candlelight, and makes everyone feel at home as they reach for their glasses and wonder what is on next, and whether it is a repeat of last week.
Printing a service sheet each week is time-consuming, paper-consuming, and prone to errors great and small. The number of human hours spent per week on producing a single-use hymn- or service-sheet might usefully be contemplated while waiting for the photocopier technician to arrive on a Saturday morning.
A specific souvenir booklet is welcoming, friendly, helpful, and practical; and Common Worship-made-bespoke booklets are aspirational, even de rigueur. And yet, now that we have carbon net zero, and realise that the staples have to be removed before recycling, is it time to think again about all this paper, work, and expense, which adds up in more ways than one? A hymn book uses only paper and ink at its production: a once-for-all, initial ecological cost, offset by decades of ongoing use. A copy of Ancient and Modern or The Revised English Hymnal will outlive your car, for sure.
SURVEYS reveal that the average congregation knows and sings about 250 hymns annually. This prompts the question why Hymns Ancient and Modern (2013) contains 845 hymns, The Revised English Hymnal has 688, and Hymns Old and New has 568 — to mention just three. Of course, not all congregations know or sing the same hymns, and there are stars of hymnody that everyone knows and sings, and that no hymn book would dare omit.
Meanwhile, there are hymns that have outstayed their welcome in the well-known books, and new hymns that editors want to introduce to congregations: publishing them in a well-known book gets them noticed and used. Editors always live in hope that clergy and organists will notice what’s new, and consider and try it. Coe Fen, Guiting Power, and Corvedale are tunes that have become popular in this way, as have “Christ triumphant”, “I, the Lord of sea and sky”, the hymns of Bernadette Farrell, and material from Iona and Taizé. These find their way into books, either by way of novelty, or popular acclaim, copyright permissions notwithstanding.
This is the double-edged sword that a hymn book is a fixed phenomenon: inflexibility. Supplements such as Sing Praise (2010) and New English Praise (2006) appear, but the big books survive and bear a generation forward in singing the faith. Thus, buying a new hymn book is an exciting gear change, even within a familiar tradition.
WHICH one to buy? A congregation is formed, if not defined, by the songs that it sings; so parishes will describe themselves as “an English Hymnal parish”, for example, because they use that book, and have done for a long time. Notwithstanding the commercial competition that can exist between publishers, parishes dependent on Ancient and Modern, or Hymns Old and New do not often describe themselves in this quasi-partisan way, though they might as well. It is never as simple as “English Hymnal for Anglo-Catholics, Ancient and Modern for Broad Anglican, and Hymns Old and New for everyone else”, but there is some truth in that.
Communities that use the latter are used to a contents list that is fundamentally alphabetical rather than seasonal. Indexes aside, this makes flicking through the pages like browsing a dictionary, as no hymn is connected to the ones surrounding it. Just as, in a dictionary, “music” may appear next to “mushroom”, so “We three kings” and “We sing the praise of him who died” are adjacent.
This detracts from one of the purposes of providing a hymn book: it is not simply a reference book, but a treasury. Having a Lent section, or a selection for marriage, or natural disasters, is not only practically helpful, but aids meditation. Hymns are poetry, after all, and most reward quiet contemplation, even if this is hampered — or perhaps enhanced — by your being able to “hear” the tune in your head. Hymn-singing is fundamentally a corporate activity, but not exclusively so. Consider what a congregation will do with a hymn book when they are not actually singing from it. Give them a gaffer-taped previous-generation book and find out.
THE choice of book says something about what a congregation is and what it wants to become. A hymn book is an aspirational purchase, made in faith, hope, and love. It is a musical compendium and a theological reference work. Gentle reader, I am biased. I get that. I love hymn books — I love hymn books. To hold one, flick through it, use it as a tool with which to unlock the voice, and a manual for spiritual contemplation — these are personal joys.
Nothing handles, or feels, or works, like a hymn book, especially if it is built to last — which the best ones are. When I sing, I am singing with all those who have held this book; with all those who are singing from the same hymn book; with all those who have held it, but hold it no longer, and yet who sing on another shore; and, indeed, with all who will sing these hymns in the future, some as yet unborn.
This is the power of hymnody; and a book of hymns opens up a unique form of liturgical and musical communion which a screen or disposable sheet cannot provide. Hymn books are a bargain.
Dr Gordon Giles is the Chairman of the English Hymnal Company, and an editor of The Revised English Hymnal (2024) and Ancient and Modern: Hymns and songs for refreshing worship (2013). He is Canon Chancellor of Rochester Cathedral.
