[Fiji Hill]

The Methodists in the Methodist town of Ocean Grove, NJ, have a choir that sings the great Protestant songs during their services - pure Americana. Not only do they have a great choir, they hire four singers every summer from the Metropolitan Opera to augment the singing. So somebody is doing it right!

The pastor at the First Methodist Church in Fullerton, Calif., who is Korean, also chooses great Protestant songs for our services. Yesterday, we closed the service with William Cornell's "Wonderful Peace" (1889). Songs by the great hymn writers Charles H. Gabriel, Fanny Crosby, Daniel Towner, William Howard Doane and others can also be heard at our services.

[miss marmelstein]

I love, love, love the traditional Protestant music - and I speak as a Catholic. The hymns are so beautiful and so emblematic of the best of Americana.

I have a cd of the film score of “How the West Was Won,” and it features gorgeous hymns - as well as traditional folk. That film introduced me to those hymns.