Resounding Voices: A Hymn Supplement to Voices Found  

Submissions have closed. Resounding Voices has now been published! Download it in full HERE.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Submissions Open: January 1, 2023
Deadline: June 1, 2023

For the twentieth anniversary of the hymnal Voices Found,[1] the Women’s Sacred Music Project in partnership with The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada is curating Resounding Voices, a new collection of hymns, songs, and liturgical music by people who identify as women.[2] In our search, we long to address ideas, “which touch our hearts, fire our imagination, and encourage us to action.”[3] Themes may relate to Christian or Jewish religious traditions with or without referring to the Bible or other sacred texts. We also hope to honor the spiritual legacy of Voices Found by connecting with issues of moral justice in our day.

Voices Found, published in 2003, was one of the first ecumenical and interfaith hymnals by, for, and about women. It made three important contributions to hymnody: celebrating biblical and other visionary women of faith; expanding imagery for God by challenging masculine linguistic conventions; and acknowledging that a woman’s experience is part of human life. Seeing the feminine face of God allows us to see God’s divinity in women. In your submissions for Resounding Voices, we call on you to fill your hymns with this spirit.  

If works are selected for publication in Resounding Voices, applicants will receive an honorarium of $250 for each previously unpublished text or musical setting ($500 for both music and words). We also welcome submission of previously published hymns for inclusion in this collection, but no honorarium will be provided for these. The finished collection will be published online by The Hymn Society and The Hymn Society will own the copyrights to submitted materials unless a composer/text writer chooses to retain copyright, in which case, the honoraria for previously unpublished works are reduced to $125 and $250.

The deadline to submit materials is June 1, 2023, but writers are encouraged to submit material as early as possible. For submissions sent by the original deadline of May 1, applicants will be notified by July 1, 2023 if their work has been chosen. June 1 submission deadlines may be notified later. The entire collection will be published in late 2023.

Let me hear your voice. ~ Song of Solomon 2:14

Click to read a LETTER of INTRODUCTION from Janet Wootton, Executive President of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

A Letter from Janet Wootton, Executive President for the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland

Resounding Voices is a wonderful title for this great new enterprise. As the paper, “Re-Valuing Women Hymn Writers” says:

We have barely scratched the surface of what women have to offer in congregational song.

Women’s voices have been systematically silenced, through the apparent decree of a stern male God (Let women keep silence . . .). Women have been hidden, anonymized, confined to domestic matters then ridiculed for failing to engage with public issues. The result is that the rich experience of women, the story of transformation, activism, laughter and rage, has been expunged from the world’s narrative.

What is extraordinary is that female voices do make it through from time to time. There we are in scripture: divine Wisdom, rebellious midwives, first witnesses to the Resurrection. Here we are in life: fearless evangelists, transformers of society, prophets, preachers, singers, priests, speaking, with the authority of God and the integrity of the marginalized; echoing the voice of Jesus.

Today’s emerging truth is that women’s voices enter the arena in company with the glorious diversity of humankind, too long suppressed. In the forty years since the publication of The Hymnal and twenty years since Voices Found, we have begun to recognize the range of voices that have been silenced, and the amazing wealth of experience that is waiting to burst into expression.

So I hope that you will read the paper: “Re-Valuing Women Hymn Writers,” return to the texts that are sacred to you, relive the narratives of women and men hidden under generations of colonialism and patriarchy, open your heart to God, and write!

–Janet Wootton

GUIDELINES 

Questions? Contact Us!

Submission Form (Opens January 1st)


NOTES:

[1]  The hymnal came into being through the imagination of the Rt. Rev. Allen Bartlett, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, and Lisa Neufeld Thomas, a musician and member of Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Marilyn L. Haskel, herself a hymn writer, edited the collection for Church Publishing. 

[2]  Gender identity is one’s own internal sense of self and their gender, whether that is man, woman, neither or both. Unlike gender expression, gender identity is not outwardly visible to others.

For most people, gender identity aligns with the sex assigned at birth, the American Psychological Association notes. For transgender people, gender identity differs in varying degrees from the sex assigned at birth.

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/996319297/gender-identity-pronouns-expression-guide-lgbtq

[3]  Gillian Warson, Using Vintage Hymns in Worship: Hidden Treasures rediscovered for Today’s Church (Durham UK: Sacristy Press, 2021), p.3. 

[4] Words by Jan Struther.  Music from an Irish ballad. Hymn #482 in the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal.

[5] Words by  Jane Laurie Borthwick.  Music by Thomas Terius Noble.  Hymn # 541 in the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal.

[6] Words by Eleanor Farjeon.  Music from a Gaelic melody. Hymn # 8 in the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal

[7] Words by Christina Rossetti. Music by Gustav Theodore Holst.  Hymn #112   in the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal. 

[8] Words by Cecil Frances Alexander and James Waring McCrady.  Music by Henry John Gauntlett and Arthur Henry Mann. Hymn #102 in the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal.

[9] Words and music by Kathleen Thomerson.  Hymn # 490 in the 1982 Episcopal hymnal.

[10] Words by Rae E. Whitney.  Music by Orlando Gibbons and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Hymn # 499 in the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal.

[11] An exception may be made in the case of item 1b above where a previously published text is used that is in the public domain or for which the composer and the Women’s Sacred Music Project has been granted use permission by the author/author’s estate and/or publisher of the text.  Also, if the composer or author previously self-published, these works may be submitted.