Christian Life Hymnal [Hardcover]

I own dozens of hymnals, mostly fairly recent (meaning published in the last forty years), and I love singing hymns. I would have to say that this is one of the most attractive collections I've seen for use in a hymn sing, and many congregations would probably find it a good choice for a pew hymnal. It has almost all of the "old favorites" that a Baptist or Methodist is likely to want to request at such a singing, as well as almost all of the old standby hymns of mainline American protestantism, and no specific sectarian bias that I can detect aside from a general conservatism. Most of the texts are not appreciably modernized or gender-neutralized (though it does give "Good Christian *Friends*, Rejoice"). Where there are two common tune traditions for a given text current in American protestantism, both are often accommodated (e.g. "O Little Town of Bethlehem" to both Forest Green and St. Louis; "Come, Thou Long-expected Jesus" to both Hyfrydol and Stuttgart). Among the roughly 600 songs, there are 16 by Fanny Crosby, 24 by Charles Wesley (who turns 300 this year) and 20 by Isaac Watts. Recent hymns are fewer, but there are several by Keith Getty, Hillsong's "Shout to the Lord", and some others of the type. Almost nothing from the mainline hymnic "explosion" of recent decades, though: 1 by Fred Pratt Green, 0 each by Wren, Troeger & Dudley-Smith... To my surprise, only one Gaither piece, no Andraé Crouch, and no "Victory in Jesus" or "I'll Fly Away"! So it's only 5 stars, not six. But then, my six star dream hymnal would have to be at least twice as thick and twice as costly.

Dear Amazon Shopper,
This hymnal offered such an appealing collection of songs that I bought twenty of them for my home. Now I regret doing so.

Before buying The Christian Life Hymnal you should know that it has altered the traditional songs to make them gender neutral. Nowhere in the introduction or accompanying material do they say that they have done this. If they had, I would not have purchased these hymnals. It is very distracting to worship when the poetic language of the original version has been converted to sloppy English with gender neutral language. If you know any of the traditional hymns, you will HATE the changes and you will have to spend hours correcting your hymnal.

What follows are just a few annoying examples of the changes that the editors of the hymnal made (the reality is that they changed every gender reference that they could except for those referring to Jesus as the Son and God as the Father):

HOLY, HOLY, HOLY
"Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide Thee, though the eye of sinfulness Thy glory may not see" instead of "though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see" (Do the editors not see that "sinfulness" does not make the personal connection between mankind and his sin? Is it "sinfulness" itself that does not see God's glory? How stupid and theologically misleading!)

HARK! THE HERALD ANGELS SING
"pleased as man with us to dwell" instead of "pleased as man with men to dwell"
"born that we no more may die" instead of "born that man no more may die"
"born to raise us from the earth, born to give us second birth" instead of "born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth." (Do the editors not see the reference to the resurrection of the Son in the words "raise the sons of earth"?)

JOYFUL, JOYFUL, WE ADORE THEE
"love divine is reigning o'er us, leading us with mercy's hand" instead of "father love is reigning o'er us, brother love binds man to man" (Do the editors really think that "love divine" has the same emotional and personal connection as "father love"?)

GOOD CHRISTIAN FRIENDS, REJOICE
"good Christian friends, rejoice" instead of "good Christian men, rejoice" (Do they editors really think that Christians might think that Christian women should not rejoice!)

I love the collection of songs, but the changes ruin the flow and poetry of the originals while adding nothing (everyone knows that "brother love" includes "sister love"!). The editors should not have changed the originals, but if they felt the necessity to do so, they should have made that very clear in their promotional materials. Somewhere they should have mentioned that they neutralized the language. I hope that they will publish another edition where they retain the original language.

My family wanted several (matching!) hymnals for our family devotional time, and so my internet search begun. I wanted a hymnal that had all of the old standard doctrinally-rich ones, such as "A Mighty Fortress is our God," "Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise," "The Church's One Foundation." It's amazing how many hymals I found that did not contain all three of these! I also wanted other favorites of ours that are common, but not quite as high up there on the list of standard hymns that most Christians (at least before the last decade or so) know, such as "Day by Day," "Be Thou My Vision," and "And Can It Be."

This hymal was a perfect fit for us. It contained all of those. It also has a few newer ones that are broadly known such as, "As the Deer" and "In Christ Alone" by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend. All of them, however, could be considered "hymns" with depth to them. In other words, there are none of the ones that are pure praise choruses.

Each hymn does have a verse cited at the top, and the translation used varies. We don't care for some of the translations used, but that's not a deal-breaker for us. We can always look it up in our New King James version.

We've been very happy with our set of hymnals. They're great for using within the family, having a hymn sing with friends, or in a church setting. Note that when there are several potential musical selections for a particular hymn, they are often all presented.