Welcome to The 12 Days of Christmas Songs: an attempt to uncover the forgotten history of some of the most memorable festive tunes. From December 14 through 25, we’ll be tackling one secular song and ...

(RNS) — A new documentary details a project to revamp an 1,800-year-old hymn for a modern audience. The Oxyrhynchus Hymn is the oldest surviving Christian hymn with musical notation — and was ...

This week, NPR inaugurates a new series called American Anthem, exploring songs that tap into the collective emotions of listeners and performers around an issue or ...

Four months after March Madness, hymn lovers are awaiting the outcome of a different kind of tournament that will answer this question: “What’s the greatest hymn of all time?” Will it be “Holy, Holy, ...

The 27 worship songs that have made the hymnal cut time and again. There are many ways to identify the most lasting or best loved hymns among American Protestants. But what would we find by looking at ...

Compiling a hymnal for his fellow Methodists in 1761, John Wesley admonished them to “sing lustily,” keeping always “an eye to God in every word you sing.” True to his urging, Methodists have always ...

(RNS) — In the 1890s, a pair of British archaeologists began digging in an ancient rubbish heap at the edge of the ruins of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, looking for a glimpse into the city’s past. They’d ...