I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the in-between hymns.
Today’s song is Make Me a Channel of Your Peace from 1967.
This one is based on a prayer attributed to Francis of Assisi. I remember hearing a kids choir sing it in Mass back when I was a Roman Catholic. I think Mission Praise, a modern evangelical hymn book, includes it. Sometimes evangelicals are a little uneasy with Roman Catholic saints, because people pray to them, and even if they were devout, they might have been a incorrect in their theological outlook.
Yet, I’ve often heard people like Francis, Augustine, Thomas à Kempis, and even Thomas Aquinas spoken about in positive terms. Perhaps if they had been alive at the time of the Reformation, they might have been happy to accept the criticisms of people like Luther and Calvin. They might have even led it themselves. They key thing is that they had a personal commitment to Christ, something that evangelical Christians emphasize.
So this hymn is a prayer, a desire that God would use us to bless others. Maggie Thatcher is often criticized for quoting the prayer when she became Prime Minister. The left-wing folk didn’t see her policies as a blessing. But it says something about the influence of Francis and others like him, who sought to implement the teaching of Christ, even if they might have been confused about some aspects of it. The actual prayer was almost certainly written in the 19th Century. Maybe it was inspired by Francis, but historians see no evidence that he wrote it. But who cares who wrote it? And the song was published in 1967, when the hippies were telling us that they had the answer; “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”. Well, there was an emphasis on love, but the hippies didn’t last quite as long as Christianity 😀.
Anyway, here are some other versions of the song:
Hibernia Gospel 