The Psalter for Christian Worship

This collection of Psalms is worded beautifully. Having been searching, when I found this, for musical settings of Psalms, I was disappointed to find there was no music, but rather text only. This book was listed as a resource in a document I had used, but the listing did not indicate the source of the tune used with the text from this book. It will still be a very useful volume.

This book provides the texts for singing the psalter to familar tunes. The versification is conservative, retaining the 2nd person familar "thy", "thou" of the best-loved English translations. The result is familar but not forced verses that scan easily into familar tunes. Indexes include suggested hymn tunes and liturgical use (calendar).There is a brief introduction giving the history of the reformation Psalters within the Church of Scotland context. This is so brief that it has little value and, in fact, detracts from the book by demonstrating the author's lack of knowledge in regards to the plain song tradition of the psalter. Nonetheless, this is a resource will worth having for anyone with need to use psalms in prayer or song.

Michael Morgan, organist at Central Presbyterian in Atlanta, has painstakingly paraphrased all 150 Psalms beautifully capturing the sense and style of each with a poetry that makes them mean something in our vernacular. This book may be read as devotional poetry, or sung to popular hymntunes. Mr. Morgan has included an index of meter and suggested tunes that will encourage congregational singing. While using inclusive language, the texts do not suffer from a forced lack of pronouns (as so many biblical texts do) but are very true to the original psalmists intent. This is a powerful and important gift to the church at large and should be on the shelf of every minister and church musician.