The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released eight more hymns and songs for the new global hymnbook, “Hymns for Home and Church,” on Thursday, Oct. 29.
As more new hymns are released, they can be found in the Gospel Library on the Church’s website and the Gospel Library app, and at music.ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
To this point, the Church has now released 90 new songs online in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French in eight batches of releases.
The Church also announced on Thursday, Oct. 29, that the print version of the hymnbook will have 394 hymns. The print version is expected to be ready in those four languages by late 2027. Other language translations will follow.
German, Korean, Japanese and Tagalog have also received several batches by now, and Armenian, Cebuano, Indonesian, Italian, Malagasy, Samoan, Tongan, Vietnamese and Russian are all at earlier stages of the release.
Some of these newest songs will be familiar to many people. For example, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is a standard Christian Advent hymn, often sung and played during the Christmas season. “Be Thou My Vision” is a standard Irish Christian classic, and “Our Savior Brings Us Joy” originated in Swedish in the 1800s and is popular in African nations.
Another Christmas song added to the new hymnbook in this release is “A Quiet Night,” written by Ann Green Buys and submitted to the hymnbook committee in 2018.
The other new hymns in the batch are new submissions as well from Latter-day Saint songwriters.
The First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve have been intimately involved in every aspect of the new hymnbook, including the selection of hymns to be included in the print and digital versions. The hymns that have been approved — both new and old — accomplish the following five goals:
- Does the hymn increase faith in and worship of our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ?
- Does the hymn teach the core doctrine of the gospel with power and clarity?
- Does the hymn invite joyful singing at home and at church?
- Does the hymn comfort the weary and inspire members to endure in faith?
- Does the hymn unify members throughout the Church?
Not all of the current hymns in the current hymnbook will make it into the new book, Elder Dale G. Renlund explained in 2025.
“Your favorite hymn may not be included. So, keep your current hymnbook and continue to enjoy your old favorites at home,” he said.
Elder Mark D. Eddy, a General Authority Seventy and hymnbook adviser, said: “As we worship together by joyfully singing these hymns, we trust you will feel what we have felt in the preparation of this new hymnbook. We have found increased faith in the eternal truths taught in its lyrics, and courage and peace in the beautiful sound and structure of its music. May we receive what the Lord has prepared for each of us in these sacred songs of the heart.”
Stephen M. Jones, who is a member of the hymnbook committee, is chairing the music editorial subcommittee and has been part of this multi-year process of reviewing the Church’s current hymnbook and Children’s Songbook, hymns and songs from the current non-English Church hymnbooks, previously published hymns, existing hymns from other Christian traditions and over 17,000 original submissions.
Jones said the hymnbook committee would essentially say, “This looks interesting, but it doesn’t quite meet the goals of the Brethren.” And so the committee “would ship it to either the text or the music editing committees. And we would then suggest changes per their requests or their suggestions. And we’d go back and forth,” Jones said. “It was a lot of work.”
Some well-known hymns and songs, both Latter-day Saint and from other faith traditions, have undergone revisions to make them musically more successful or more doctrinally accurate. Changes or suggestions would then be sent to the authors and composers, if they were still living.
“We would go back and forth till it ironed out,” Jones said. “Our work was then passed on to Church leaders, who made final determinations about both the music and the lyrics.”
One of the goals of the new hymnbook was to help unify members throughout the Church. With more than 17 million members speaking 125 languages, the “Hymns for Home and Church” is truly a global hymnbook, allowing members to learn music that has been created and loved in other cultures around the world.
An article in the Liahona pointed out that after Emma Smith was directed to compile a hymnbook, most of the hymns in the subsequent 1835 hymnbook came from other Christian traditions. “But Emma and others looked forward to the day when the Church would be ‘blessed with a copious variety of the songs of Zion,’” the article said.
Now to this point of releasing songs in “Hymns for Home and Church,” 74% of all the hymns and songs have at least one contributor — such as author, composer or arranger — who is a Latter-day Saint.
