Hymn

Heard in the wild

The longer version

What it means

A hymn is a church song in the classic form: a poem of several rhyming verses, each sung to the same tune, addressed to God or about the faith, usually with organ or piano and sung from a hymnal. The tradition runs from the early church through Luther, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, Fanny Crosby, and the twentieth century, and the best hymns — "Amazing Grace," "Be Thou My Vision," "Holy, Holy, Holy," "How Great Thou Art" — are known across every tradition. Hymns are typically richer in theology than modern worship songs and were written to teach the faith as well as sing it.

The hymn and the modern worship song are the two poles of church music, and the argument between them has been going on since the 1970s.

Why people say it

Christians who love hymns love that they're sturdy: a good hymn says something substantial, has been sung by generations, and works without a band. They carry the faith — people who've sung "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" for fifty years can sing it at a deathbed. And the form itself, verses of poetry, is old: Paul told the churches to sing hymns, and the church has never stopped.

How to respond

If you're in a traditional service, find the hymn number on the board or in the bulletin, open the hymnal, and follow the words (the music, if you read it, is printed too); nobody minds if you just listen. If a friend says they miss hymns, they've told you their church has gone contemporary and they feel the loss. If you like the old songs and want to hear them again, plenty of churches, and a whole retuning movement, agree with you.

If you hear it in different churches

Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Reformed churches have deep hymn traditions and denominational hymnals. Catholics sing hymns at Mass, though their music tradition also includes chant and psalm settings. Orthodox don't use hymns in the Western sense — their hymnody is chanted liturgical text. Baptists have a rich gospel-hymn tradition and are often split between hymn services and contemporary. Pentecostals and non-denominational churches sing mostly worship songs, with occasional hymns retuned.

Where does “Hymn” come from?

Jesus and the disciples sang a hymn (probably a Psalm) after the Last Supper (Matthew 26:30). Ambrose of Milan wrote the first Latin hymns in the 380s. Luther wrote hymns for congregational singing in the 1520s ("A Mighty Fortress"); Isaac Watts's Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707) established English hymnody; Charles Wesley wrote some 6,500 hymns in the 1700s; John Newton wrote "Amazing Grace" in 1772. The nineteenth century added gospel hymns (Fanny Crosby, Ira Sankey) and the great missionary and social hymns. The worship-song era began around 1970 and has coexisted, sometimes uneasily, with hymns since.

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