Sing a happy hallelujah

Sing a happy hallelujah. Shirley Erena Murray* (1931-2020). Written in 1989 and given its first performance at the World Council of Churches Assembly in Canberra, Australia, in the same year, this hymn is dedicated to the writer’s son Alistair, and is one of a number of hymns expressing Shirley Murray’s infectious sense of delight and joy. As she says, ‘despite all, I know God must have a sense of humour’. It was first published in Murray’s American collection, In Every Corner, Sing: The Hymns of Shirley Erena Murray (1992) and has since been published in Alleluia Aotearoa (1993) set to a joyous syncopated tune by Colin Gibson*, named STANSFIELD, after the Dunedin street in which a friend...