God! As with silent hearts we bring to mind

Whatever evangelical or independent churches do about occasions known as festivals, the pressure to observe secular ones (New Year, Mother’s Day, Harvest, Anniversary) can be strong. Especially, but not only, in rural neighbourhoods, few are seen as more important than ‘Remembrance Sunday’; service times may be changed, unfamiliar silence requested, medals and flags on display. Yet some of the most popular material in demand among prayers and hymns falls far short (in several directions) of Christian standards or biblical norms. Emotions run high, war memories may still ache either after 60–70 years or from more recent ‘conflicts’, but there is also a longing for new approaches. It was this need and tension which prompted the Coventry Cathedral staff to commission Fred Kaan to frame this hymn.

It was required to match Charles Harris’s tune [THE] SUPREME SACRIFICE, itself composed for the dubiously sub-Christian text from 1917, O valiant hearts. The new words blended with the older music in the service broadcast from Coventry in Nov 1989, and were published in BBC Songs of Praise in 1997. GH and Christian Worship (1976) set the tune to Bonar’s 801; here it is arranged by Linda Mawson. Monk’s EVENTIDE (905) is another suggestion.

b Haarlem, Netherlands 1929.d Cumbria 2009. After a childhood under Nazi occupation when his parents sheltered Jewish people at great personal risk, he came to England to study in 1952. He ministered at Plymouth’s ‘Pilgrim Church’ where (they told him) ‘anything is possible!’ Yes, even the compiling in 1968 of Pilgrim Praise, including his own early hymn texts, a radically new departure matched by similar but different ventures elsewhere. This small blue collection comprised 50 sometimes stark texts, mostly his own but with 5 based on foreign-language originals, with a brief Foreword by Bruce Kenrick. FK was Sec of the International Congregational Council in Geneva from 1968, then an executive of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. He returned to the UK to serve 7 years as Provincial Moderator, a post he then relinquished for a further local pastorate. He has 6 collections of hymns and translations in print, including The Hymn Texts of Fred Kaan (1985), Planting Trees and Sowing Seeds (1989), and The Only Earth We Know (1999); his work has itself been translated into over 15 languages, and often tackles in verse issues of international justice, reconciliation and peace. 23 texts and versions, and 3 tunes, feature in Rejoice and Sing (1991), and 10 hymns in the N American The Presbyterian Hymnal (1990); from the A&M stable, Common Praise accepted 2 and Sing Praise, 3 more. One of his first was a characteristic text echoing a Dutch carol, Come and be surprised, all nations, while now one of his best-known is Put peace into each other’s hands (1987). A frequent lecturer in UK and USA, he has notably addressed and challenged conferences on ‘Peacemaking through Worship’. In 1979 Erik Routley called him ‘the archetypal “new-European��? hymn writer’ but also ‘unclassifiable’; others name him as ‘poet of the Christian anti-war movement’. He says of himself that he enjoys ‘the risk and excitement of ad hoc discipleship’; naturally, therefore, jazz is another of his loves. He retired to Glenridding, nr Patterdale, Cumbria in 1999, and in 2007 finally left the committee of the Hymn Society, having been elected an Hon Vice-President. See also Gillian Warson’s tribute, Healing the Nations: Fred Kaan, the man and his hymns (2006). No.922.