by Catherine Pepinster, Telegraph
It may not be the Corporation’s top priority, but for 65 years the religious programme has been a living expression of faith
I shed a tear at Mass last Sunday as the congregation sang Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer – overcome because this is the hymn that my Welsh relatives always sing at our family funerals. A very different hymn, the Roman Catholic Soul of My Saviour, has the same effect, taking me back instantly to convent school, with soprano voices flowing from the chapel amid the heady smell of incense. For hymns, much like Proust’s Madeleines, return us to the past, to times that have formed us.
The impact of hymns has powered one of the BBC’s longest-running shows which marks its 65th anniversary this weekend. Songs of Praise began in 1961 with its first programme recorded in the Tabernacle Chapel in Cardiff – a place of worship it has returned to several times. Footage of that first episode has been lost, but film of Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah – the alternative wording to the hymn I know so well – from 2011 in that same chapel, formed part of Sunday’s anniversary programme. The congregation’s voices were a match for any crowd belting out William Williams’s verses at a Welsh rugby international.
Many people love the show for sentimental reasons: they recognise a great Wesley composition from school assembly, say, or love Crimond because it is the version of The Lord’s My Shepherd sung at their family weddings. But the programme’s point is that it is also a living expression of faith, something brought home not only through the singing but also through interviews about people’s Christian beliefs inspiring contributions to their neighbourhoods, from working with the homeless to running food banks and groups for the elderly.