Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
THE Very Revd Chris Butt, the Dean of St Christopher’s Cathedral in Bahrain, pictured right, displayed the luck of the Irish by winning a hymn competition to mark the 40th anniversary of the Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf.
Fresh from conducting the latest Hymns of Praise in which a select group of British expats burst into song with their favourites as well as explaining their choices to the congregation, our dean’s own hymn will be sung in churches across the diocese.
It received an airing too on Sunday at the BHUK 2016 service held to mark the 200th anniversary of formal British and Bahraini ties. There were 12 entries for the hymn competition, and the jury was unanimous in selecting Lord of the Church.
The winning one is set to the atmospheric Irish tune Londonderry Air – best known as the setting for Danny Boy, the haunting ballad by Frederic Weatherly. Chris told a friend of the Whisperer. “As far as I know, I’ve no Irish blood except a great uncle who died in Ireland.
There are a couple of hymns sung to the Danny Boy tune and I’ve always liked singing them. “I’m delighted but surprised at winning. It is the first hymn that I have written and I wrote it one Friday afternoon changing a few words the next morning before sending it off.”
His words include the timely lines: ‘Bring peace to nations caught in human conflict and light, where darkness causes so much fear. We come to you with hopes already kindled, a vision of the future full of peace, where lion and lamb will walk the path together and children, safe from fear, when wars have ceased’. We’ll all pray for that …
