Religions Around The World

In the early morning hours, monks can be seen walking on their alms round in Kanchanaburi, Thailand
Showing humility and detachment from worldly goods, the monk walks slowly and only stops if he is called. Standing quietly, with his bowl open, the local Buddhists give him rice, or flowers, or an envelope containing money.  In return, the monks bless the local Buddhists and wish them a long and fruitful life.
Christians Celebrate Good Friday
Enacting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in St. Mary's Church in Secunderabad, India. Only 2.3% of India's population is Christian. 
Ancient interior mosaic in the Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora
The Church of the Holy Saviour in Istanbul, Turkey is a medieval Byzantine Greek Orthodox church.
Dome of the Rock located in the Old City of Jerusalem
The site's great significance for Muslims derives from traditions connecting it to the creation of the world and to the belief that the Prophet Muhammad's Night Journey to heaven started from the rock at the center of the structure.
Holi Festival in Mathura, India
Holi is a Hindu festival that marks the end of winter. Also known as the “festival of colors”,  Holi is primarily observed in South Asia but has spread across the world in celebration of love and the changing of the seasons.
Jewish father and daughter pray at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, Israel.
Known in Hebrew as the Western Wall, it is one of the holiest sites in the world. The description, "place of weeping", originated from the Jewish practice of mourning the destruction of the Temple and praying for its rebuilding at the site of the Western Wall.
People praying in Mengjia Longshan Temple in Taipei, Taiwan
The temple is dedicated to both Taoism and Buddhism.
People praying in the Grand Mosque in Ulu Cami
This is the most important mosque in Bursa, Turkey and a landmark of early Ottoman architecture built in 1399.
Savior Transfiguration Cathedral of the Savior Monastery of St. Euthymius
Located in Suzdal, Russia, this is a church rite of sanctification of apples and grapes in honor of the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord.
Fushimi Inari Shrine is located in Kyoto, Japan
It is famous for its thousands of vermilion torii gates, which straddle a network of trails behind its main buildings. Fushimi Inari is the most important Shinto shrine dedicated to Inari, the Shinto god of rice.
Ladles at the purification fountain in the Hakone Shrine
Located in Hakone, Japan, this shrine is a Japanese Shinto shrine.  At the purification fountain, ritual washings are performed by individuals when they visit a shrine. This ritual symbolizes the inner purity necessary for a truly human and spiritual life.
Hanging Gardens of Haifa are garden terraces around the Shrine of the Báb on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel
They are one of the most visited tourist attractions in Israel. The Shrine of the Báb is where the remains of the Báb, founder of the Bábí Faith and forerunner of Bahá'u'lláh in the Bahá'í Faith, have been buried; it is considered to be the second holiest place on Earth for Bahá'ís.
Pilgrims praying at the Pool of the Nectar of Immortality and Golden Temple
Located in Amritsar, India, the Golden Temple is one of the most revered spiritual sites of Sikhism. It is a place of worship for men and women from all walks of life and all religions to worship God equally. Over 100,000 people visit the shrine daily.
Entrance gateway of Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple Kowloon
Located in Hong Kong, China, the temple is dedicated to Wong Tai Sin, or the Great Immortal Wong. The Taoist temple is famed for the many prayers answered: "What you request is what you get" via a practice called kau cim.
Christian women worship at a church in Bois Neus, Haiti.
Haiti's population is 94.8 percent Christian, primarily Catholic. This makes them one of the most heavily Christian countries in the world.

What the new LDS hymns say about Mormon theology

(RNS) — Many years ago, I was called to be my ward’s Primary chorister. Soon after, the Primary president took me aside and told me I had just been given the most important job in the entire Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It was rather stunning. We are not accustomed to thinking of the chorister job as a very important position. Basically, your role is to help the children learn the songs for their annual Primary program. It also helps if you can keep them from killing each other when they get bored. (This was particularly important back at that time, when we still had three hours of church, which meant nearly two hours of Primary.)

Her reasoning, the Primary president explained, was that these kids would likely forget almost every talk or sermon they heard growing up in the church — but the songs they learned by heart would stay with them for the rest of their lives.

I realized she was completely correct about this. I didn’t grow up in religion, but the Girl Scout songs, McDonald’s advertisements and pop music of my childhood are likely the only things I will remember verbatim when I’m in a nursing home and I’ve forgotten the names of all my beloved family members.

That wise Primary president recognized something we don’t tend to discuss in the church much: Hymns and children’s songs are the best teachers of theology. They have a liturgical function; we have repeated them so often that they become available to us in our hours of need – anytime, anywhere. Once we learn them, they lodge in our hearts and minds as the scaffolding of our future faith.

I’ve thought about this over the last few weeks as our little ward choir has been preparing for Sunday’s special Christmas sacrament meeting, where we will sing two of the 13 new hymns that the LDS church added to its collection in May 2024. More are coming soon, and by 2030 we will have up to 500 hymns and children’s songs in a single, global hymnal that all members around the world will be using.

So we’re only in the early stages of the hymnal overhaul, but the baker’s dozen of new musical offerings can tell us a great deal about the theological legacy of Russell M. Nelson’s presidency.

That legacy is that we’re Christians, we’re Christians, we’re Christians.

To demonstrate that connection, several of the new hymns aren’t new at all, but rather beloved Protestant classics that so far have come from Euro-American sources. (Since one of the stated reasons for revising the hymnal is that the old hymnal expresses only “limited cultural representation of the global church,” I expect those sources to diversify as more hymns are released.)

We’ve got “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” which was the No. 1 request when church members were asked to submit ideas and suggestions for the new hymnal. This one isn’t so much new to Latter-day Saints as restored, since it was in the hymnal for several decades before the 1985 edition we currently use. If I had to guess a theological reason why it was removed and then restored, it would be that this is primarily a hymn about God’s grace, a concept that some LDS leaders were often deeply uncomfortable with.

In 1984, for example, Elder Bruce R. McConkie decried the “delusion and mania that prevails to this day in the great evangelical body of Protestantism … the doctrine that we are justified by faith alone, without the works of the law. It is the doctrine that we are saved by grace alone, without works. It is the doctrine that we may be born again simply by confessing the Lord Jesus with our lips while we continue to live in our sins.”

The last two decades have seen a theological shift away from McConkie’s extremism and toward a reconciliation with the idea of grace, though our version of it is not as radical a view of grace as some evangelical Christians have espoused.

In fact, we’re so comfortable with grace now that another of the newly added hymns is “Amazing Grace,” the standard-bearer for that theological concept. But as the liner notes make clear, even this has a history of being in an earlier LDS hymnbook (1841), so there’s precedent.

Precedent is important to us, but so is moving forward. It’s vital to look at the theology of the brand-new hymns selected for inclusion out of, apparently, more than 17,000 submissions.

Here, too, we see an emphasis on classical Protestant theology. “Bread of Life, Living Water” focuses on the precious gifts of Christ’s atonement, while “As Bread Is Broken” ties LDS weekly sacrament traditions with Christ’s suffering on the cross. “Gethsemane” brings both of those themes to fruition with a focus on how they can transform us individually: “Jesus loves me/So he gives this gift to me/In Gethsemane.”

Don’t get me wrong; I think these hymns are beautiful. But then again, I’m a convert from Protestantism, so of course I feel right at home with them.

Maybe the point becomes clearer when we think about the kinds of themes present in earlier LDS hymns but manifestly not here: There’s no discussion of Zion as the gathering of God’s people, for example, and no focus on key geographic locations like Missouri, which we have classically been taught have vital roles to play in the last days.

When the new hymnal is finalized, I’m predicting we’ll see a real gutting of the content from about #33 to somewhere in the mid-50s. The hymns that can be recast with “Zion” as an idealized “pure in heart” theme can stay (e.g., #41, #47), while the ones that explicitly refer to Zion as a mountain refuge or that are just too weird to play nicely with Protestant rapprochement may quietly disappear. I’d be surprised if “Adam-ondi-Ahman” (#49) makes the cut.

If there’s going to be anything that sets our hymns apart from Protestants’ going forward, I predict it will be a focus on obeying church leaders. That’s certainly been a theme of General Conference in recent years.

In terms of hymnody, I doubt that emphasis on lauding modern prophets and apostles will rise to the idolatrous levels of “Praise to the Man” (#27, which actually positions Joseph Smith in the role of a Christlike intercessor on the other side of the veil).

But the main theological point will be clear: Latter-day Saints are Christians, and our view of Christ is as orthodox as those of any other churches! … BUT we also have the only true prophet living on the earth today.

 

Related content:

Mormon author says “Grace Is Not God’s Backup Plan”

Mormon works vs. evangelical grace? Not so fast

Mormon grace revisited

 

 

Original Source:

https://religionnews.com/2024/12/20/what-the-new-lds-hymns-say-about-mormon-theology/