Who composed the music for the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers?
Onward, Christian Soldiers Onward, Christian Soldiers "Onward, Christian Soldiers" is a 19th-century English hymn. The words were written by Sabine Baring-Gould in 1865, and the music was composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1871. Sullivan named the tune "St. Gertrude," after the wife of his friend Ernest Clay Ker Seymer, at whose country home he composed the tune. The Salvation Army adopted the hymn as its favoured processional. The piece became Sullivan's most popular hymn. The hymn's theme is taken from references in the New Testament to the Christian being a soldier for Christ, for example II Timothy 2:3 (KJV): "Thou therefore endure hardness,
Onward, Christian Pilgrims hymn in them. Onward, Christian Pilgrims "Onward, Christian Pilgrims" is a 20th-century Christian hymn by David Wright. It was composed in 1982, is based on "Onward, Christian Soldiers", and was intended as a non-militaristic version of the earlier hymn. "Onward, Christian Soldiers" was written in 1865 and uses New Testament military metaphors of Christians as soldiers. In the 1980s there was a growing movement against the notion of Christian military references, leading to some churches in the United States dropping it from their hymn books. In the United Kingdom, after the Falklands War, David Wright attempted to revive "Onward, Christian