more fun hymn facts

Tonight, night three in the four part series on the history of hymns that I've been attending, we focused on older and more contemporary American hymns. Here's what I learned: John Quincy Adams wrote a Psalter and a number of hymns after his presidency. Can you imagine any of our current presidential candidates writing hymns?  Composer Jaroslav Vajda was a Missouri Synod Lutheran. It took 50 years for the hymn "Rock of Ages," originally written as a Camp Meeting or Revival song, to be accepted as suitable for inclusion in a hymnal. Singing Schools were started at the end of the 17th century to teach people to read music so they could sign psalms and hymns. A side note here - the hymnal my father used as a boy contained only the words, no music. That's it, that's all I know.