Today we're not talking about a hymn connected to a single event but rather about a collection of hymns for multiple events. The website Baptist News Global published an article today about a set of resources recently made available by the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada for times of crisis.
Over the years, the Society has been contacted by people looking for suggestions of hymns that could be used either at times of national crisis or tragedy, or for a similar event in the life of an individual congregation. While there are certainly many general hymns in our hymnals that can be used at such times, there has also been a need for texts that have been targeted for particular themes or events, perhaps in more contemporary language. Modern hymnwriters have also been writing on these topics, though their texts are usually considered too specific for inclusion in a denominational hymnal.
A task force from the Hymn Society has compiled a collection of these hymns on several themes and worked with the authors to make the hymns accessible, resolving copyright issues in a simple way. They will be adding to the collection so that it will be an ongoing resource.
The Baptist News Global article can be seen here, and the Hymn Society collection is here.
P.S. I'm pretty sure that I am somewhere in that photograph at the top of the article, taken during a hymn festival at the Hymn Society's annual conference in 2009 at St. Olaf College, but no one has found me yet.
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