Hymns of the City

Hymns of the City (1989). This is the title of a collection edited by John J. Vincent, a Methodist minister, and published by the Urban Theology Unit at Sheffield (1989, revised 1998). It is a collection of 31 texts (32 in the second edition), attempting to give voice to Christians living in cities, providing hymns for and from small congregations in inner city and housing estate churches. The preface claims that such hymns are about people’s real experience and not ‘the endless praise for no particular reason …of the affluent churches’, and the book is unashamedly political and radical in its content and style, including texts such as ‘Sing we a song of high revolt’* by Fred Kaan* set to...