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No. It's more like the greatest hits of many centuries I think, a typical hymnal, and let me tell you how I know.By "sifted" do you mean "censored"...?
When I was a young child my mother would drop me off at my grandparents in Austin for the summer basically, and they went to a large (for that time) Church of Christ on the UT campus (one of the largest universities in the U.S.). In the summer when I went with them 3 times a week, and on Christmas break again, even during those times when the great majority of college students were gone, that church attendance was in the upper 300s. It was much larger than the wide variety of other churches I attended in youth. (and had a pretty good preacher, who made me strain as a 12 yr old I remember trying to plumb all the meanings he was getting at). We attended every week 3 times, though all of my childhood basically. So, I learned their songs like the back of my hand, right.
Now, some 45 years later, I'm living in a different part of the country (Midwest), and going to what might appear a very different church, Lutheran, right. Think big differences. At least on the surface, and no doubt the doctrinaire could make an impressive list. Ok, so, we have a singing service recently where our choir leader is having the congregation make song suggestions, and all the old Lutherans that grew up in this church are calling out suggestions.
They are the same songs.
To a large degree. I think 2/3rd of them about were the songs I'd sang as a kid 45 years before in a very different denomination.
How Great Thou Art
Holy Holy Holy ("Holy, Holy, Holy!" is a Christian hymn written by Reginald Heber (1783–1826).
Amazing Grace
and so on.
So, this isn't about sifting to censor, these hymnals, but it's about picking out the greatest hits, if you like.
Hymnals can be, often are, a collection of favorite songs from centuries from a wide variety of churches.
If you go to a Traditional Service at whatever church and sing along, odds are high you will sing some songs (at least sometimes, and maybe often) written by composers from other denominations, or just (some songs) composers not really from a denomination in particular. (I'm not claiming hymnals in various denominations have no censoring of some songs, but rather that the songs we all love in all this wide range of diverse churches -- they are overlapping strongly -- they are largely the same great hymns, and they transcend denomination. That's the kind of high standard I hope to search out here and there, when lucky, in the wide range of contemporary music also).
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