In Depth:  Christopher Idle

The curious thing was to meet all three of them in the last 12 hours of my short midweek break, within half a mile of one another.

They were all quite different; I did not raise the subject, since we met for other reasons, yet they shared this common bond. Was I witnessing the birth of a new movement, or non-movement, for our times?

Margaret Clarkson, whose rarely-used first name is Edith, was born in 1915 into, as Margaret herself described, ‘a loveless and unhappy marriage’, which broke up when she was 12.

C. Stacey Woods (‘a name not widely known’) was well celebrated by Julia Cameron in November’s EN. Another of his hidden achievements came in Toronto in 1946. He asked Margaret Clarkson to write a hymn.

Anyone heard a sermon recently on justice and mercy? Featuring the senior lady sitting for her portrait? ‘I expect you to do me justice’, she says to the artist. ‘What you need, madam, is not justice but mercy!’ Ho, ho; pompous old bat gets come-uppance from smart bloke.

There is another way of telling it. Here the portrait-painter says, ‘Madam, I’ll try to do you justice’. She answers, ‘What I need, young man, is not justice but mercy!’ Spot the difference; realistic grandma corrects obsequious male — with style.

Several factors made Maurice Wood an unusual bishop.

One was his pastoral experience: he became Bishop of Norwich in 1971 from the Principal’s chair at Oak Hill Theological College, but also after notable earlier ministries at St. Ebbe’s, Oxford, and St. Mary’s, Islington (and as President of the Islington Conference). Another was his notoriety as a ‘conservative evangelical’, as we were then called. The bench of English Diocesans had seen none for a generation; the anonymous preface-writer of Crockfords Clerical Directory did not welcome the novelty.

When Chris drove me back to Hildenbrough station on Saturday, I never dreamed that this was our last meeting on earth. We’d had our usual mix of serious debate, music and family fun; not for the first time, he had kindly put right one of my hymns in draft.

When he travelled north for their holiday two weeks later, after a typically energetic youth teaching venture (Woolhampton 2), he little thought he would never return to his Penshurst home.

The command, we recall from Matthew 22, etc., is about loving God.

The hymns which sometimes express this thought invite us to sing some quite diverse admissions and claims, sometimes within the course of a single service or meeting. Some focus on Christ (1 Peter 1.8) rather than on God the Father. Are these complementary truths, we wonder, or contradictory statements? I, for one, would like to know; I may not choose many hymns now, but I may still sing them. Or may I? Here are a few samples of a line or two each, following two stanzas from the master which serve as an apt introduction:

A bishop once dubbed Eddy ‘Mr. Valiant-for-Truth’. Thousands knew him as ‘Mr. Ground-Level’ for his long-running column in the Church of England Newspaper from the 1960s, with working-class insights, then rare among conservative evangelicals.

He gained further fame as one of the ‘East-End Five’, East London clergy who opposed the Romanising trends of some 1970s liturgies.

By the time I moved in, the bungalow had been empty for some months. You can imagine the splendid pile of shiny leaflets and buff envelopes heaped up inside the front door.

Among the usual fare of pizzas, insurance, loans and double-glazing, four letters were addressed to the non-existent 'Occupier', in increasingly loud and offensive language, pointing out the urgent need to obtain a television licence. The penalties for not complying are too terrible to contemplate.

Dipping into the treasury

Unless they are the sort who throw away every scrap of unwanted paper, people who work with hymns acquire in time a small mountain of other people's products. We keep them because they were written by friends, or struck us as interesting; because we might value a chance to sing them, or because they are there.

On this column's 48th and final appearance, lean over my shoulder as I whiz through some which by various routes have reached me over many years. Let's start with A.

Worship & war

Before this series signs off (next month, after four years; believe it or not, it replaced Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in the paper), and before postmodernism is eclipsed by something else, let's try out a bit of pm-ism here. That is, the text you are reading and singing from may sometimes be crucially defined by its context or its readers, whatever the author thought it meant.

For example, however you chose to remember September 11, November 11 still reverberates at least in the older national British consciousness. 'Armistice Day' may have been transferred to 'Remembrance Sunday', but it is 11/11 which defines the relevant religious observance-for some, the last surviving vestige of a liturgical year.

That cry, echoing across not the sands of North Norfolk but the concrete of South London, comes to mind whenever I see the name. The first (and last) time I saw the footballer Teddy Sheringham in the flesh he was getting some unsubtle old-fashioned stick, from his own supporters of course, at Millwall. I have had a soft spot for the man ever since.

For those who care for none of these things, let me explain that while Mr. Sheringham never reached the highest pinnacles of footballing glory, he did play for promising clubs like Manchester United, Tottenham and Portsmouth, and in the process won a fine array of cups and trophies. He was often capped for England, and scored some crucial goals for his club and country. All this is by the way.

Unless a British Christian of the current generation has been stolidly attending only one church, or one kind of church, for the past 20 years, it is unlikely that he/she will have failed to encounter 'Mission Praise', in one of its many shapes or forms.

The success of this book has been phenomenal; in some congregations it has swept the board, and even in otherwise catholic, reformed, liberal or charismatic assemblies it has crept in at least as an alternative option for Sunday or the week night gathering. How come?

How do they introduce the hymns at your church?

I write from memory, but someone made a list of some possible ways of doing it. They included the numerical, the historical and the anecdotal. Numerical? 'Hymn number two eight four, two eight four, ten thousand times ten thousand verses one, two and four, one two and four.'

Or historical. 'The writer of our next hymn was born of humble but godly parents in a small village in the Cotswolds where her father was the blacksmith and her mother the schoolmistress. She was the fifth of their ten children and by the age of three was writing sonnets and could play the trombone, double bass and bagpipes.' And so on.

'A man was a professional musician in a Muslim country. After coming to know the Lord Jesus, he studied abroad, then returned to his own country despite the risks involved. He arrived in time to organise the music and train a choir for a series of Christian outreach events. He was then warned by a government representative to stop his work or risk losing his life. He is now a refugee but his songs are still being used by Christians in the country. Give thanks for this man's ministry and pray that the Lord will protect him.'

Did you see that item earlier this year in the Prayer Notes of the Barnabas Fund? Its double anonymity of people and places comes as no surprise but is worth noting. We may not often think of composers and choir leaders as the front line of candidates for martyrdom; perhaps we should. Yes, we can sing the Lord's songs in some strange lands, but we shall not be too eager to fill in the copyright details or heap prizes on those who write them.

I didn't agree with Tommy; I rarely did. He was a cantankerous old so-and-so who had been a pillar of the church for most of his 75 years. He said he could understand the Authorised Version perfectly well; it was these new-fangled Bibles that got him all muddled. We did agree that his wife was a wonderful organist, with that rare genius for the spirit of a hymn, not just the notes on the page.

But when it comes to singing, I confess to some fellow-feeling for the old chap. Take the evangelical church I slipped into as a stranger the other Sunday. 'Guide me, O thou great Jehovah'; I can understand that. 'When I tread the verge of Jordan, bid my anxious fears subside'; this reaches me where I am. My next stop is the hospice along the road.

Shut in with thee, far, far above

the restless world that wars below,

Sometimes a single line of a hymn or song can touch the mind and heart in an unforgettable way. This may be a very personal experience. Or it may speak to thousands, and lift the hymn beyond a general level of being acceptable to being uniquely eloquent.

We don't need to wait until Good Friday to sing 'How deep the Father's love for us'. Some compositions seem more suited to that day than to any other; some were written for the occasion. Certainly this year we can be sure that Stuart Townend's song will again be widely used and valued.

The Pimlico Plumbers (plc) have twice been voted Domestic Installers of the Year. Or so I believe from the information displayed on the side of the white van parked just up the road from us.

For the intelligent evangelical reader, this piece of free advertising raises several immediate questions. First, what is their phone number? Second, when did this happen - recently or around 1924, for instance? Third, were the years consecutive and, if so, what happened the third year? Fourth (multiple), who were the voters, was the result close, predictable, or contested, and were the results independently verified? I am sorry that to all these queries I have no firm answers.

Last month this column made a brave attempt at distinguishing gospel songs, Scripture songs and worship songs. Before we go on, while these labels have some value, they are all misleading if we press them into anything more than a rough and ready guide.

The first fall short of the gospel; the second are not truly Scripture; the third have no more to do with worship than any other item in the service, or for that matter with what you do on Monday morning. The standard length for 'A time of worship' is three score years and ten; see Psalm 90 and Romans 12.

By definition, dictionaries are always playing catch-up. Sometimes they take it slowly, sometimes fast, but they are always a yard or two off the pace. They are for ever recording what people have already meant by the words they speak and write. They can never say, 'From now on, this is what you must mean by using this word'.

So we cannot always expect them to know what Christians are talking about. Especially when we hardly know ourselves. These deep thoughts are stirred by the way we use the language of songs.

Did you see me on the telly last week? No, wait, it was five months ago, but (a) how time flies, and (b) this gets written so far ahead that it was last week. It depends where you count from.

Anyway, BBC Songs of Praise did a Sunday on Isaac Watts. Finding no one else, they went into the highways and byways, and enticed me into the studio (actually a well-known London library, but not the Evangelical one) to answer questions on the little giant who is my hymnwriting hero.

For those with ten minutes to spare before the opening prayer, or with permission to borrow, the church's hymn book can open up a world of delight even before we get as far as hymn number one.

We have spoken of Prefaces before. How many Christian Brethren, I wonder (note the capitals), were surprised to find that the Preface to the Christian Worship of 1975 was dated 'All Saints' Day'? For those none the wiser, that is November 1. For those despising the observance of any such dates, I think you know when Hallowe'en is, or was. And Guy Fawkes, Remembrance, New Year, Mothers' Day, Bank Holiday, Half Term? Even September 11 now looks set for a place in the international calendar; one American journal has published a whole batch of hymns for the occasion.

A casual comment, like a whodunnit clue, sometimes leads on to much bigger discoveries. You could almost call them crimes, or at least cover-ups. Earlier this year two friends were chatting and unearthed something like a plot.

She

Let's start with her. She, you will be surprised to hear, does not believe that all the good hymns have already been written. Spurred on by her experience of the Lord's grace, her discoveries of Scripture and her awareness of a rapidly changing world, she writes new ones. Many are already in print. Not being as mobile as some of us, she relies mainly on what goes on in her own evangelical church, where she has belonged for some years.

She was all smiles in the porch - nearly. An occasional visitor because her family lived nearby. Nothing to show that she was seething. But I too had relatives in the congregation that morning, and because they weren't deaf, I received over lunch a reported summary of her real opinions.

Why, she had demanded as we found number 321, did we have to sing songs from Urdu, of all things? Or words to that effect. Our Urdu-speaking son was amused. Goodness me, she might have added, are these (nickname deleted) even flooding our hymn-books now? And we used to be proud to be British!

Hymns, like buses and some brothers, are normally better separated than together. They all need healthy gaps in between. But that general rule enjoys the odd exception.

Some churches run hymn marathons, where all the hymns in a new book, or the top 100 after congregational voting, are sung through non-stop, often with teams of organists and choirs. Usually there is money involved, and through sponsorship the singers convince themselves they have somehow created cash out of nothing. All this has educational value of a sort, but whether it is worth the price of trivialising the hymns must be open to doubt. It does not seem quite what Monsell or Montgomery had in mind.

From time to time one of those seemingly eternal chestnuts surfaces in or around this third of the page. Why suffering? Where will it all end? Why are hymnwriters so greedy?

Leaving the first two for a moment, I approach the third with no particular complaint in mind. I write this months ahead, so if the letters column is bulging with outraged pastors, the coincidence is not of my making. Have we any defence?

Music apart, the three main tasks facing hymn book editors are: one, choosing the hymns; two, changing them (they all do it); and three, writing an Introduction or Preface.

Of these, the hardest by far is the third. If, that is, you want to get it right. You know for a start that over 99% of those who use the book will never read it, and that the other less-than-one in a hundred will pick it over relentlessly for unsubstantiated claims, unguarded assertions, and unbiblical assumptions. Only once in my life can I recall reading a review which praised a Preface, and that was when Mr. Wilson was Prime Minister and Carlisle was in the First Division.

It was back in the swinging sixties - as we used to call them in the nervous nineties.

In the charts, the Beatles; with the World Cup, England; on stage and TV, kitchen-sink drama. Out of this mish-mash came a quote which has stuck with me ever since. To be frank, ever since last year when I first heard it.

What do you look for in a friend? Here I ask the iron-willed to pause and jot down three or four qualities you value in your friends. What earns them, or you, the name of 'friend', different from family, work colleagues and next-door neighbours.

Now don't throw that away, but keep it handy while you move on to think of Jesus as a friend. That should not be hard; the concept is deep-rooted in hymns and prayers, since it begins in the gospels - with a difference. Our friendship with the Lord is just that; he is the Lord, so it is not the friendship of equals. But in many other kinds of friendship too, age, talents, and status may all be quite varied.

Once upon a time two persons went to a big event for real born-again Christians. They both had a wonderful week. Afterwards they went back to their home church and one of them said to the pastor, 'That was a really mind-blowing scene. I've never felt so close to the Lord. I know he was dealing with me in a very deep personal way. He had a lot to sort out with me, and I've learned more about God in the last few days than for a long time past.' The minister cautiously began to say how delighted he was, but he was interrupted.

'And there's another thing - the music! We had some truly fabulous worship times. I've got one or two of the song books we used; these new songs are just fantastic. I'm not criticising, of course, but I think I should be honest and say that all this has helped me to see your church's music in a new light. I even wonder sometimes if you have even begun to worship God at all! So what I'm suggesting is that we start using some of these songs each Sunday; I'm sure if you got a group together they could lead us, and we'd see the difference straight away...'

Honestly, I had nothing to do with this, except for the long delay between the workshop and the report. But all credit to the Round Church at St. Andrew the Great, Cambridge, for their brainstorming session last summer on what makes a good song. You have your ideas; I have mine; here, mainly, are theirs, by courtesy of my correspondent Jonny Kingsman.

But first, that was only the start. The aim was to write a theme song for a series on the Letter of James. Before they got going, it seemed a good idea to hammer out some principles. So the perfect song lyric, they reckon, will look and sound like this: my own thoughts are the ones in brackets.

The song end of the great hymn spectrum produces two opposite sights. To see both you have to turn through a full 180 degrees.

A whole range of text and tunes, when you ask their writers and composers (who are usually the same anyway), turn out to be provided by direct divine gifting. If there ever was a typewriter theory of inspiration it seems to be not so much the prophets but the songwriters who are the beneficiaries, or at least the agents. 'The Lord gave me this song.' 'I just received the music as we were in prayer together.' This, of course, instantly removes the work from the crude paws of the critic; if the Lord wishes to produce bad grammar and worse doctrine, who are we to complain?

This month I write for the two main groupings among evangelical Christians: those who observe Christmas and those who do not. I wish to recommend a hymn which all of us can use in December. To show the unbiased nature of this column, this is one which did not make it into Praise! or Hymns for Today's Church. Its proper tune was not classy enough for the Anglican Hymn Book and it contains one line which is less than scriptural.

Let us then stand to sing 'Who is he in yonder stall'. An 1866 offering from Ohio by the author of 'Darling Nelly Gray' - though you may not wish to announce it in that way. A hymn with alternating question and answer; responsive, antiphonal if you like. When we sang it earlier this year, it struck me as an ideal example of the art of repetition which I touched on controversially in April. Its model is Psalm 136; for his mercy endureth for ever.

A quiet hush pervades the evening at our seaside B&B. With the lounge to ourselves, we can't even be sure if anyone else is in residence. We are enjoying our holiday books when at 8.55 prompt, in walks another couple, almost furtively. Do we mind very much if they switch on for the news?

The etiquette handbook would say it is as rude to walk out as to say 'Yes, we do'. We accepted the inevitable, not before exchanging pleasantries in the few moments left for conversation. It took about 90 seconds to discover that our new acquaintances were Baptists; you can usually tell. We agreed to talk more after The Weather.

I had occasion recently to address a highly evangelical seaside gathering on the seven questions people ask most often about hymns. Some, I confess, are a bit tricky: What is a hymn? Others are almost equally complex. Balancing the real snorters, however, come one or two simpler ones, and I have been asked to share some of the material (honestly!) with a wider audience.

So, at some risk of repeating what you already know, I face Question Number Four on my list, which is simply: Who is the next (or the new) Charles Wesley? It is often put to us in these days of our literary pygmies, but the marks of such a figure are far easier to spot than, for instance, those of the new Don Bradman or the next Bobby Charlton. How may we recognise CW2 when he comes?

Of all the questions winging their way to me as a result of this column, the most frequent is: 'Where can I find out more about these hymns?'

It depends on which hymns you mean, which book you use, what kind of information you're after. But here are some sources I have found helpful, in five groups.

'Come, ye souls by sin afflicted'. We sang that at least three times at Limehouse, as my annotated Anglican Hymn Book reveals; the last occasion being in 1984, a year of some personal affliction for me. It is a hymn found in other discerning books from Congregational Praise to Christian Hymns, among those still in use.

Whom were we addressing? Probably ourselves and one another; unlike Joseph Hart's marginally earlier 'Come ye sinners, poor and needy' (also in AHB) which made good preaching but not good singing. The one we did sing encapsulates some gospel Scriptures rare in hymns: 'Blessed are the eyes that see him' and so on. But the hymns came to life again as a precious part of local history.

A text whose time has come?

Once every so often you meet a hymn that demonstrates single-handedly that the hymn writing age is not over. Even today a potential masterpiece may be fashioned for churches yet unborn to inherit.

Such riches do not come out of the blue. They often emerge after years of grafting away at acceptable but lesser lines, as someone's skill slowly approaches that special standard granted to a few of God's creative children. Contrary to legend, the Lord does not 'inspire' writers by using them as mere pens in his hand, or even word processors at his desk.

It might have been any book, any church, almost any hymn. It was actually No. 22 in Praise!; a version of the 22nd psalm beginning 'Why, God, have you forsaken me?' The anniversary of Barry's bereavement came that week; as he sang, verse 6 struck him with particular force. I leave you to look it up.

He didn't sing the last verse at all. Afterwards he opened his book again. He sat quietly, treasuring the words afresh and adding a note in his diary.

People offer many reasons for continuing to use thee/thou language in their prayers and praises - from the argument about regional dialects to the need for 'thee' as a useful rhyme. The first factor doesn't work for newcomers to those regions, or to these islands; the second suggests desperation rather than conviction.

Scripture is not enthusiastic about using language which confuses people, whether strange tongues, Greek and Latin, or archaic forms. A better reason for Tudor English lies in the Book of Common Prayer; no modern liturgies can rival the spiritual nourishment and biblical doctrines of the 1662 services. Thank God for churches, mainly rural, where that book is still understood and valued.

April, as one of our own poets has said, is the cruellest month. Much earlier Chaucer and Langland were more cheerful. Another poet makes this the best time to talk about repeats - of which there are many sorts from 'O come, all ye faithful' (not for April) to the Hallelujah chorus, Taize and beyond. All I mean here is singing something twice.

This Sunday it was not the song slot, chorus time, or the space for some really deep worship. This was in the main flow of the service. The minister said 'As the hymn has only got two verses, we'll sing it twice'. Subdued murmur along the fifth row: 'Good job it's not God save the Queen.'

It is often healthy to have one's assumptions challenged. I have been slow to feel the force of two contemporary responses to new hymns.

The first is the most radical. To quote one critic: 'The Lord may already have given to the church the major portion of hymns to be used to the end of the age.' Think for a moment, and you can hardly disagree - unless there are two more millennia before the Lord returns. We are unlikely to rival the wealth of our inheritance in less time than it took to accumulate.

Once upon a time an international mission (they used to be Missionary Societies) asked me for a list of 'missionary hymns' to use at its meetings and services. I drew up a core selection of 120 drawn from over 30 books

We wondered whether to classify them or simply list them A-Z. I offered two basic sections; God's initiative (Jesus shall reign; Thou whose almighty word) and our response (Facing a task unfinished; O Master, when thou callest)- and so on. But many classics (Ye servants of God; We have a Gospel to proclaim) include both, matching the perspective of the Great Commission in Matthew 28.

Here is another interesting hymn book! But first: Where today would a classic evangelical preach to congregations of up to 3,000 people? Some big holiday or conference event, perhaps; or would we need to travel abroad to find it?

The answer is, St Paul's Cathedral, London; the book, 'Sing to the Lord', where the Dean and Chapter have authorised 105 extra hymns to supplement their traditional sources. I am sorry I cannot commend the book to you - but only because this is a limited edition, not for sale. But what a sign of our times!

Not many people know this, but very soon we reach the end of the 20th century; the second Christian millennium, in fact. One or two people seem to have jumped the gun 12 months ago; never mind them.

How shall we mark the occasion memorably? From the stacks of major hymn books appearing towards the end of this age, I recently picked up ten. Seven are broadly denominational; add three which cross all such boundaries, and we have maybe 90% of the material which Protestant Christians turn to every Sunday if they use books at all. (If they don't, they still benefit from the books their transparencies borrow from.)

Remember, remember . . .

But not so much the 5th as the 11th of this month; or the day after, since this year Sunday is the 12th. If your church observes it at all, what will you be singing?

It is a big 'if'. Not long ago, Remembrance Sunday, let alone Armistice Day on the 11th itself, had all but faded out for many people. For a mixture of reasons, none particularly Christian, that trend has now been halted or reversed. It is in the villages of our countryside that it has been kept most fervently, not least because the names on the War Memorials are the same as those in the school.

Some who read this column must wonder about the young lady with the 'cello. Who is she - why is she here? So do I! I think she is playing a hymn . . .

But first: in August I briefly commended church musicians and encouraged you to do the same. The Bible does, and those glimpses in Chronicles and Nehemiah have been lovingly expounded in more than one recent book about 'worship'. Let me follow Hebrews 11 in naming a few friends who represent the faith of the great multitude of musical saints.

'So what did you sing at school, Daddy?' I cannot remember anyone asking me that, but sometimes the changing face of classroom choruses has an uncanny resemblance to the kinds of songs we all sing on Sundays.

Among early memories of junior school are some rousing renditions of 'The Farmer's Boy', 'Strawberry Fair' and 'The Mermaid': 'One Friday morn when we set sail and the ship not far from land . . .' What made these quasi-folk songs such a hit? We were suburban kids as far from the farm and the fair as from the sea. We recognised such things, but hardly equated any of the girls we knew (like Fatty's sister) with the pretty maids in the lyrics. From today's perspective, they had nothing whatever in them which resonated with our experience. They worked because of some rousing tunes, strong story-lines, highly visual language, and the sheer singability that comes through hard labour to blend text and tune perfectly together.

To judge from the adverts and supplements in your favourite monthly paper, evangelical Christians are not averse to a few days' holiday now and then, notably in August.

This is not a criticism; the Old Testament Hebrews had plenty. Travel was at ground level but time off was generous. We assume that EN readers will also keep Sunday special by (among other things) meeting with fellow-believers, maybe in one of the advertised assemblies. We have sampled the 'Churches Away' to our profit and joy.

Every Christian should go once in a lifetime.

No, not Oberammergau or Spring Harvest; I mean the Christian Resources Exhibition from which I returned in May, staggering off the Waterloo train with armfuls of evangelical paper and plastic. I had heard of it, but never been; truly, the half was not told me.

It happens at the Sandown Park racecourse. I had not realised that the virus of betting on horses could spawn such a magnificent complex of absurd buildings and such spectacular views of Surrey suburbia - as if the Christians at Corinth had taken over the hilltop temple for their annual convention.

In all our debates about what to sing (hymns or songs? old or new? book, screen or service sheet? who decides anyway?), a different niggle surfaces from time to time. For some, it is no niggle at all; it measures our Scriptural obedience, on a par with baptism, evangelism and wearing jeans.

It is this: should our worship of God include psalm-singing, and if so, should we sing anything else? Whole blocks of churches have split on the issue; it was a hot potato before, during and after the Reformation. Luther and Calvin took opposite sides. The trickle of booklets on the subject may be thinning out but rarely dries up altogether. This is not the place to weigh all the arguments. But three points are worth repeating. First, the psalms are great to sing!

Top of the Pops?

The poll whose results we published last month unveiled 'Lord for the years' as your top choice among 20th century hymns. It was not alone in this, and 'Great is the Gospel' came second. But some readers have been puzzled by the contrasting results yielded by other surveys.

Why does the Church Copyright Licence scheme (CCL) show 'Be still, for the Spirit of the Lord' as the nation's favourite, followed by 'Shout to the Lord' and 'Shine, Jesus, shine'? How did the BBC come up with 'How great thou art' as number one - which came in our top ten, but only just? Their next places, not limited to one century, were filled by 'Dear Lord and Father of mankind' and 'The day thou gavest'

Among the leaflets temporarily decorating our doormat, one pizza firm has printed 12 images from the 20th century. Most are predictable (man on moon, Elvis, Mandela), but the only pre-1950 pictures feature a Spitfire, and Laurel and Hardy. Now read on . . .

Thanks to all who responded to the quest for hymns of the century. I asked for a maximum of three each, all written in 19-something. Admittedly the results look more like a focus group than a MORI poll; many of the 60-odd nominations received one or two votes only. But while you cannot take this as EN's final league table, some trends are clear.

'But we sang that last week!' Do you know who chooses your church's hymns? Is more than one person involved? Prayerfully? Is it you? Are they chosen on the spot, or the day, week, or month before?

Most musicians, especially the non-expert, appreciate the early choosers. The church where the hymns were announced 12 months ahead, is an extreme case! However you answer my questions, the selectors affect us all.

A recent prayer-circular from some former Christian Union members includes two unconnected entries with a similar concern. For an Anglican friend who has just moved house and church, 'to sing lots of proper hymns again is absolutely fantastic - all that doctrine, all those good tunes!' A former Baptist church secretary reports having to resign his post then leave altogether, 'because, in the absence of a minister, the services were hijacked by a group of musicians playing a variety of loud instruments and singers singing shallow, self-centred songs'. Did you ever hear anything like it?

Well, yes. The very same week, I read in print what I have long suspected: that some musicians of the hijacking school see themselves as a new Levitical priesthood raised up by God to take charge of his church. When years ago, I first aired such thoughts, some musicians were self-effacingly quick to deny any such thing. Now, one of them has come clean. Ten years back, I read that God was 'restoring worship to his church' (that is, there were a lot of new songs around); now it seems it is only in the last five that God has actually been at work. This column will be out of date before you read it.

Welcome to the column about Real Hymns, and which you can help to write - not next month, but maybe the one after that. But first, what are they?

Within living memory, a moment of new-sounding music at church was a breath of fresh air. We were glad to change from the relentless foursquare plodding of some creaky old Victorian hymns, into lighter rhythms, plainer language and newer instruments to vary the musical diet. As a new millennium dawns (at least for most people), the scene has changed. It is not uncommon now, after an orgy of self-indulgent, self-centred and supremely self-satisfied songs, for someone to stumble on a Watts or a Wesley and exclaim: 'Wasn't it good to have a real hymn!'

Can our future be in Europe?

How fresh manuscript evidence can help us to face today's question . . .

From time to time, scholars poring over fragments of dusty documents startle the world with some amazing new discovery about the origins of the Christian church, and indeed of the faith itself.