Are British Evangelicals Singing Psalms?

I had a conversation with a twitter buddy a while back. Without going into the details my tweet was along the lines of 'Why don't you sing Psalms you heathen bunch?' His response was 'we do, you impatient ignoramus'. After all this is Twitter! Okay, maybe it wasn't quite like that and yes I know it's not Twitter anymore. 

His point was that sometimes we sing lines from Psalms, sometimes we sing sections and sometimes we sing other parts of Scripture. Infact we sing lots of the Psalms, so we're covered when it comes to sing Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.

It was late so we both called it quits and signed off for the night.

However, is what he said true? Are we fulfilling that command to sing Psalms in taking sections of Psalms and building songs around them? Is that what is actually happening?

I decided to dig a bit deeper. 

The first port of call was the CCLI website and their top ten. Of course many churches don’t use a projector so there will be many churches not included but I think it gives a flavour of what the British Churches might be singing. And this isn’t a comment on who is writing or how good or bad the theology might be, I just want to see if we are singing Psalms or portions of Psalms from the UK top ten.

1 In Christ alone, clearly a great hymn, I love it but no reference to any Psalm

2 10,000 reasons about two lines mangled, this is one we like to sing at Nazeing and I’ve heard it said many times that it is based on Psalm 103. But that is really stretching it. Two lines at most!

3 How great is our God by Chris Tomlin, one line

4 O Praise The Name (Anástasis) I’ve never sung this but looking up the lyrics I can see no Psalm reference

5 Cornerstone possibly a reference in two Psalms but stretching it.

6 Goodness of God. Mercy never fails. No references

7 This Is Amazing Grace, no reference

8 How great thou art zero, nada, I must admit I was getting a bit bored at this point.

9 What a beautiful name zero

10 Living hope zero

I went a bit further and finally found a popular song based on a Psalm and it was, you guessed it, Psalm 23 by Stuart Townend! 

My second port of call was a website with the top songs from Mission Praise, although I have no idea how they measure it and it wasn’t that dissimilar to CCLI making me think it was based on their reporting. 

Now clearly this isn’t a very deep scientific study but I’m fairly certain it’s not far off the mark.

My conclusion is a simple one. We really don’t seem to be singing Psalms and very few Psalm references.  

The two verses, Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16, are where Paul commands gathered believers to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. The gathered Church across the United Kingdom doesn’t seem to be doing that. Indeed it seems quite resistant, yet it is such a blessing and, of course, obedience to what Scripture commands. I’d love to see the FIEC, Keswick and other evangelical groups start to seriously sing them. Who knows? Maybe one day. I suspect somewhat cynically that only when the Getty's write a few more will people sing them. All credit to them for what they are doing but so far they are not whole Psalms set to music, only partial.

I love this quote. 'God likes Psalms. He wrote them and likes to hear them sung. If we love Him, we will make the effort to learn them, all of them and sing them on His throne on His day.' James B Jordan