In a denomination of any flavor, a new hymnbook is a giant undertaking. With talk of another Presbyterian Hymnbook on the way in my home denomination, it makes me wonder, “How does a song become a hymn?” When I was young, one way we learned was through sneaky cartoons they slid in between episodes of Bugs Bunny and Scooby Doo. The educational cartoons were School House Rock teaching us catchy ways to remember that Verbs were action words similar to a flying super hero and Conjunctions tied a sentence together as one train car pulls two together to form a train. My favorite was on how a Bill becomes a law sung by pitiful little Bill who wailed, “I’m just a bill, yes, I’m only a bill, and I’m sitting her on Capital Hill…” and took the unsuspecting viewer through the process of how a bill becomes a law. Continue reading “Can Hymns Happen?”
