Your 32 worst hymns

On to Round 2 of the World Cup of Bad Hymns, beginning on Tuesday 16th October. Now 32 examples of the poets' art remain, out of 64 originally, and there are eight groups of four from each of which two go through to the final 16.

Congratulations to Dan Schutte on getting three wonderfully appalling hymns through to the second round; Brian Howard, Estelle White and Marty Haugen are also going well.

All join in the singing, please.

Although officially neutral, I was disappointed that we lost "I watch the sunrise", "Colours of Day", "Enemy of apathy", "Our God reigns" and above all "Follow me" (the two shirts song), since this probably means that Fr Arfur will feel that it's OK to carry on using them at the church of St Daryl the Apostate. Oh well...

Title	Author	Rd 1	Rd 2
God's Spirit is in my heart	Alan Dale	2	1
Kumbayah	anon	10	6
Christ be our light	Bernadette Farrell	13	8
Bind us together, Lord	Bob Gillman	15	7
If I were a butterfly	Brian Howard	5	3
I just wanna be a sheep	Brian Howard	14	8
Walk in the Light	Damian Lundy	3	1
I, the Lord of sea and sky	Daniel Schutte	1	1
Let us build the city of God	Daniel Schutte	7	3
Come to the table of plenty	Daniel Schutte	16	7
Sing a new Church	Delores Dufner	6	4
Moses, I know you're the man	Estelle White	14	7
Cheep! said the sparrow on the chimney top	Estelle White	16	8
Shine, Jesus, shine	Graham Kendrick	10	5
This little light of mine	Harry Dixon Loes	4	1
I am the Living Bread	Ifeanyichukwu Eze	7	4
Eat this bread	Jacques Berthier	11	5
One bread, one body	John Foley	12	5
Gift of finest wheat	John Michael Talbot	1	2
Gloria (clap clap)	Martin Anderson	12	6
As the deer pants	Martin Nystrom	11	6
Let us build a house where love can dwell / All are welcome	Marty Haugen	5	4
Gather us in	Marty Haugen	6	3
Who is the alien	Mary Louise Bringle	9	5
The world is full of smelly feet	Michael Forster	8	3
On eagle's wings	Michael Joncas	4	2
Alleluia Ch-Ch	Paul Inwood	15	8
They'll know we are Christians by our love	Peter Scholtes	8	4
Jesus Christ the apple tree	R.H.	9	6
Lord of the Dance	Sidney Carter	2	2
Go, the Mass is ended	Sister Marie Lydia Pereira	3	2
I am the Bread of Life	Suzanne Toolan	13	7

Get voting!

Liturgical dancing - the only way to worship

Advent is here, and many readers have asked me, "How can I brighten my services with a little liturgical dancing? The traditional litany of the Mass is so predictable, with its obsessive focus on God, and my congregation is crying out for novelty and entertainment."

So we have got together with some of the greatest liturgical experts of our time, to present a new translation of the Mass that can be (and should be) danced to. Out go the ancient Latin texts, and in come Spirit-of-Vatican-II dances from the period with which our experts are most familiar, from the 1940s to the 1970s!

KYRIE (arr. P. Inwood)

One, Two, Three O'clock, Four O'clock rock,
Five, Six, Seven O'clock, Eight O'clock rock.
Nine, Ten, Eleven O'clock, Twelve O'clock rock,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight.

Dr Eccles, the Regius Professor of Liturgy at Oxford, explains: England's "Mr Liturgy" has chosen to replace the boring "Kyrie Eleison" stuff with a more rhythmic version, which marks the passage of the hours, while at the same time bringing us meekly to our Maker. It states our devout intentions for the Mass: "O Lord, we shall rock around the clock tonight."

GLORIA (arr. B. Farrell)

You put your left arm in,
Your left arm out.
In, out, in, out,
You shake it all about.
You do the Hokey Cokey and you turn around,
That's what it's all about!

Eccles: Bernie knows that all forms of worship are equally valid, even ones that don't have much to do with God, and so she has chosen to glorify the Lord by saying, in effect, "God created us to dance, and, when you get down to basics, that's what Christianity is all about."

CREDO (arr. D. Schutte)

Oh baby.
Yeah come on shake!
Oh, it's in the bag,
The hippy hippy shake!
Well now you shake it to the left,
Shake it to the right,
Do the hippy shake, shake,
With all your might!

Eccles: A powerful affirmation of faith from Dan Schutte, there. "Oh, it's in the bag," is a very concise summary of God's purpose in the world, I feel. "Do the hippy shake, shake, With all your might!" is certainly telling the world in no uncertain terms that we are backing God!

SANCTUS (arr. K. Mayhew)

Well, shake it up, baby, now (Shake it up, baby)!
Twist and shout (Twist and shout)!
C'mon c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, baby, now (Come on baby)!
Come on and work it on out (Work it on out)!

Eccles: A new take on the boring old "Holy, holy, holy" routine that drives so many people away. Kevin tells us to shake our bits to the Lord, and show Him we're gonna work it on out! This is just what we have come to expect from a man of sincere and deeply-held faith.

BENEDICTUS (arr. G. Kendrick)

You are the Dancing Queen, young and sweet, only seventeen.
Dancing Queen, feel the beat from the tambourine!
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life,
See that girl, watch that scene, digging the Dancing Queen!

Eccles: Well, "Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord" is very old-fashioned, and Graham has recognised that we may want to celebrate other blessed people, perhaps ones with a greater tendency to dance!

AGNUS DEI (arr. E. White)

Hands, knees, and boomps-a-daisy! I like a bustle that bends.
Hands, knees, and boomps-a-daisy! What is a boomp between 
   friends?
Hands, knees, oh, don't be lazy. Let's make the party a wow.
Now then, hands, knees, and boomps-a-daisy! Turn to your 
   partner and bow. Bow-wow!

Eccles: Estelle has gone for a more traditionalist liturgical dance, one in which physical contact is encouraged! "What is a boomp between friends?" we ask ourselves, and this is follows on naturally from the "Boomp of Peace" that many go-ahead parishes have introduced recently.

Bad hymns 26

Today is an historic occasion, as this is the first time that we are inviting back an Eccles Bad Hymn Award author who has already spoken to us. We talked to Estelle White a few months ago about her remarkable hymn The Perfect Face, but the nominations are for the hymn, not the author, so here she is again with Moses, I know you're the man.

E: Estelle, it always moves me when I see that one of your hymns is scheduled... in fact sometimes it moves me out of the church completely. Welcome back.

EW: It's great to be with you again, Eccles. You're really going to appreciate this hymn.

E: "Moses, I know you're the man" the Lord said.
"You're going to work out my plan..."
I've got it - A man, a plan, a canal - Panama! One of the world's great palindromes!

Moses's cunning plan is to lead his people across the Panama canal.

EW: No, no, Eccles, no canals. What the Lord says next is that Moses should lead the Israelites out of slavery and He will make them a wandering race, called the people of God.

E: Well that's a very good offer, if you like wandering, I suppose. Are you sure that the wandering idea didn't come later, when the Israelites started misbehaving? It's not in the original contract.

EW: Let me sing the chorus, Eccles, as you'll have to sing it four times yourself:

So ev'ry day
we're on our way,
for we're a travelling, wandering race
called the people of God.

E: I see... well, no, I don't. You're identifying us with the Israelites lost in the desert? Or some other walking party?

Is Estelle White thinking of us?

EW: Anyway, the rest of the hymn simply wrote itself. I rang all the changes on travelling, wandering, vagabond, moving... until I ran out of steam.

E: With some brilliant couplets on the way, I see.

Don't get too set in your ways,
Each step is only a phase.

This doesn't actually make a lot of sense if you think about it, does it? I would have preferred:

I seem to be lost in a maze:
It must be one of those days.

EW: Try this instead:

Look at the birds in the air,
They fly unhampered by care.

E: With respect, Estelle, are we not getting away from the main message of the song? We're having a race.

We're a travelling wandering race.

EW: Well, nearly right, Eccles. Anyway I am delighted to know that at least three separate people nominated my hymn.

E: Yes, I've arranged counselling for them. Estelle, thank you very much.

---

Previous entries for the Eccles Bad Hymn Award:

Lord of the Dance.    Shine, Jesus, shine.    Enemy of apathy.    Walk in the Light.
Kum Ba Yah.    Follow me.    God's Spirit is in my heart.    Imagine.    Alleluia Ch-ch.
It ain't necessarily so.    I, the Lord of sea and sky.    Colours of day.    The red flag.
Go, the Mass is ended.    I watch the sunrise.    Bind us together, Lord.    Our god reigns.
My way.    Ding-Dong! The witch is dead.    If I were a butterfly.
Journeys ended, journeys begun.    The Galilee song.    The perfect face.
Jesus Christ the apple tree.    On eagle's wings.

Bad Hymns 23

We are delighted to welcome Estelle White today, who has received so many nominations for the Eccles Bad Hymn Award that she should have been interviewed much sooner.

E: Estelle, nice to see you. Let's start with The Perfect Face, which starts "Hullo clouds! Hullo sky!"

EW: Actually, it's "I saw the grass, I saw the trees," Eccles. But your version is just as good.

Hullo clouds! Hullo sky!

E: Oh yes. Saw, not smoked, the grass, eh? And then you saw the boats along the shore?

EW: Yes, I was on holiday in Great Yarmouth.

I made my way into the town,
To the busy crowded streets:
The shops and stores and alleyways,
Through the squalor and the heat.

E: Still, you had a nice day for it, eh? By the way, this is a hymn, isn't it?

Note the reference to bacon (which will be important later).

EW: Well, I'm coming to that. You see, I was very unhappy because I had seen the perfect face:

Of a real and proper man:
The man who brought me from the dark
Into light — where life began.

E: I'm guessing that this has something to do with Christ, although you never actually mention Him? Still it had a very strange effect on you.

EW: Yes, every face I saw after that, including my own, was hideous to me:

The lines of envy around their lips
And the greed and the hate in their eyes.

Your face isn't much to write home about, now, is it, Eccles?

E: Cruel words, Estelle. Do you think God wants us to regard all his creation as hideous?

An ugly face (pulled specially for this blog).

EW: Too bad, I just can't stand "ordinary" faces any more. Eek! Put that mirror away!

E: Well, let's move on to what may be an even worse hymn. This one's all about grass, as well.

Autumn days when the grass is jewelled,
And the silk inside a chestnut shell,
Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled,
All these things I love so well.

EW: I'm also fond of raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens. But apparently that hymn has already been written.

Brown paper packages tied up with string...

E: Now what I look for in a hymn is a little spiritual nourishment. Do we get round to mentioning God at all?

EW: Aaagh, I knew I'd forgotten something! Still, there's always the chorus.

E: So I mustn't forget, no I mustn't forget
To say a great big thank you.

Although it isn't clear whether you're thanking the people who made the jet engines, or what.

EW: You'll like verse 2:

Smell of bacon as I fasten up my laces
And the song the milkman sings.

E: Help, I don't understand you at all, Estelle. Why do you have bacon in your shoes? And what is this song he's singing?

Estelle White's milkman, Ernie, sings a merry song.

EW: This isn't really your sort of hymn, is it, Eccles?

E: No, but Estelle, thank you for coming, and don't worry too much about the lack of religious content. It goes down very well with modern congregations, I'm told.

---

Previous entries for the Eccles Bad Hymn Award:

Lord of the Dance.    Shine, Jesus, shine.    Enemy of apathy.    Walk in the Light.
Kum Ba Yah.    Follow me.    God's Spirit is in my heart.    Imagine.    Alleluia Ch-ch.
It ain't necessarily so.    I, the Lord of sea and sky.    Colours of day.    The red flag.
Go, the Mass is ended.    I watch the sunrise.    Bind us together, Lord.    Our god reigns.
My way.    Ding-Dong! The witch is dead.    If I were a butterfly.
Journeys ended, journeys begun.    The Galilee song.