Hymnbooks of The Church of Scotland - Songs of God's People (1988)

Songs of God's People (1988)

Songs of God's People was conceived as a supplement to CH3, and in many congregations the two were used together. For this reason, it includes no material which is also in CH3, but it does revive a number of items from RCH which had been dropped in the 1973 revision. It also included music from a variety of sources which greatly increased the range of types of music available for worship. For the first time, a Church of Scotland hymnary had

• evangelical choruses of the Mission Praise tradition.
• items of the Wild Goose Resource Group of the Iona Community worship (21 of which were composed by John L. Bell, who chaired the supplement committee).
• sung responses for use in prayers, which until this time much of the Church of Scotland had regarded with suspicion as being too "Catholic"; three of these were in Latin.
• short choruses in Swahili, which must be seen in the context of liberation theology and the campaign against apartheid.
• three of the rock-idiom psalm arrangements by Ian Whyte.
• a Russian Orthodox Kyrie eleison.

While it is undoubtedly true that many congregations did not take advantage of the full range of this music, the volume contributed greatly to an openness to new ideas in worship.

There are 120 songs in Songs of God's People. Unlike the hymnaries, but in common with most evangelical chorus books, the volume is not arranged thematically but in alphabetical order of the first lines.