The BBC’s Sunday show Songs of Praise surveyed Brits in 2005:
1. How Great Thou Art
2. Dear Lord and Father of Mankind by John Greenleaf Whittier.
3. The Day Thou Gavest
4. Be Thou My Vision
5. Love Divine, All Loves Excelling
6. Be Still, For the Presence of the Lord
7. Make Me a Channel
8. Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer
9. In Christ Alone by Stuart Townsend and Keith Getty
10. Shine, Jesus, Shine by Graham Kendrick.
Favorite Hymns of United Methodists by Dean McIntyre (2006).
1. “Amazing Grace”
2. “Here I Am, Lord”
3. “How Great Thou Art”
4. “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing”
5. “Hymn of Promise”
6. “In the Garden”
7. “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”
8. “Holy, Holy, Holy”
9. “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”
10. “Spirit Song”; “Blessed Assurance”
Christianity Today had about 500 respondents to its survey in 2001 of favorite hymns and praise songs:
1. Amazing Grace
2. How Great Thou Art
3. Because He Lives
4. Great Is Thy Faithfulness
5. The Old Rugged Cross
6. What a Friend We Have In Jesus
7. To God Be the Glory
8. Majesty
9. Shout to the Lord
10. Holy, Holy, Holy
PopularHymns.com administered a poll from December 2007 to February 2008, and these were their top ten:
1. Amazing Grace
2. How Great Thou Art
3. In the Garden
4. Be Thou My Vision
5. Great Is Thy Faithfulness
6. It is Well
7. What A Friend We Have in Jesus
8. Blessed Assurance
9. Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
10. Holy, Holy, Holy
I deduce from these other hymn poll results that:
1. Amazing Grace will be in my top ten unless a bunch of Brits get in and clog up the works with the likes of American poet John Greenleaf Whittier.
2. How Great Thou Art is likely to make the top ten, too, even though Brown Bear Daughter can’t stand it. She’s fond of minor key mysterious sounding hymns, and How Great THou Art is much too rolling, majestic, and triumphant for her teen emo sensibilities.
3. Methodists sing a couple of hymns the rest of us haven’t heard. Hymn of Promise?
4. I don’t understand the popularity of a certain hymn which shall remain nameless, but which reminds me of the poem The Old Oaken Bucket, sentimental and slightly vapid.
5. I’m mostly in agreement with all of these polls. These are all fine hymns.
6. My poll may be redundant, but I’m enjoying it anyway. Please send your list of top ten hymns in today so that I can enjoy more.
I’ve never been a fan of How Great Thou Art.
Along the lines of my complaint about NetHymnal ripping off the Cyber Hymnal, I object to the way Manna Music and Stuart Hine claimed copyright in a translation without apparently having secured the permission of the owner, and also without as far as I can see acknowledging the author in the copyright notices they required royalty-payers to print. The hymn is by Carl Boberg, and I included a different translation of it in my top ten, partly out of a protest(ant) inclination and partly because I actually think it’s better than Hine’s version. The one I nominated was “O Mighty God, when I behold the wonder” from the Covenant Hymnal, but there’s also “O mighty God, when I survey in wonder”, in the UCC’s New Century Hymnal, that I would prefer over Hine’s. (With all due respect (however much that might be) to Elvis.)
A number of other takes on the top ten have been posted the last couple days at BaptistLife.com. Amazing the diversity both within and between lists.
I’m so sorry that I didn’t get a chance to submit my top 10 favorite hymns. Top 10? I probably have top 100 but I can give you ten without looking in any of my hymnals. This is my favorite sort of music– My ipod has as many hymns as anything else. Thanks for doing this, I understand I won’t get my submmissions counted, but I had to respond.
1. Holy Holy Holy. First in hymnals and first in my heart.
2. Day by Day. It’s the first hymn I ever memorized. My mother taught it to me. We went to a church in Sweden and sang along in english
3. And Can It Be. An old pastor used to say, sing the exclamation points!
4. Great is thy Faithfulness
5. To God be the Glory
6. Wonderful Grace of jesus
7. Trust and Obey — the cry of my heart
8. Christ the Lord is Risen Today — the reason I sing!
9. Joy to the World — it’s so much more than christmas!
10.now thank we all our God — it’s the hymn we had at our wedding… I love the second stanza…
O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!