You may have missed the news.  Just this last month the Hymn Society in the U.S. and Canada announced the greatest hymn of all time.  Yes, I clicked on the bait.

It turns out that the hymn society has an annual conference, and no one outside of the small group of people who attend hymn conferences much care about it, or about the Hymn Society, for that matter.  They decided they’d try for a little free P.R., and someone came up with a March Madness-like bracketed tournament to decide the greatest hymn of all time.

They started with four divisions, each with eight seeded hymns.  Hymns were picked and seeded based on hymnal references, online hits and other criteria.  They included data from sites that track both contemporary and traditional hymns and praise songs, so there was at least some attempt to go beyond the songs with which one might imagine those who attend hymn society conferences are most familiar. Continue reading →