War Songs
Couple of interesting articles in today's Times.
The first one is about hymns with a fighting theme or war language. The author suggests:
"warlike imagery is falling out of favour. If I were compiling a hymn book I would reverse this trend."
Not sure what I think about this one. I think it is true that these images have declined - even in modern worship songs. When I was young we sang "The battle belongs to the Lord" and even younger "I'm too young to march in the infantry...but I'm in the Lord's army" but these things are less apparent in today's songs. But is that a good thing or not? Maybe we are in danger of losing the "spiritual battle" element of faith that is in Scripture? Or maybe it is appropriate to cut these things out in a world of wars and militaristic nonsense?
The article concludes by suggesting:
"Furthermore, it could be that as the tides of secularism rise higher and our numbers fall lower, the Church in the West may find itself increasingly, and appropriately, nourished by songs of war."

The second piece worth looking at is about evangelicalism here.

Tags: hymns,
worship