Wash, O God, our sons and daughters

Wash, O God, our sons and daughters. Ruth C. Duck* (1947-2024). This was written in 1987 at the request of the Hymnal Revision Committee of UMH, and published in that book in 1989. It is a hymn that can be used for infant and adult baptism, or for the renewal of the baptismal covenant; but VU provides in addition an altered text for adult baptism beginning ‘Wash us, God, your sons and daughters/ newborn creatures of your womb’, followed by ‘us’ as a pronoun and ‘our’ as a possessive pronoun throughout Verse 2 line 2, ‘by your milk may we be fed’, was originally ‘at your breast may we be fed’, which caused some controversy in the UMH committee because of ‘the perceived sexually explicit...