Jerusalem, My Happy Home

The morning reading today included the hymn "Jerusalem, my happy home," and I was not familiar with it, so I flipped to the bibliography and found even more I didn't know. The author was listed as FBP, 1583, meter CM (8686) and it's in the public domain (you don't have to have permission to use it). Who is FPB? I asked self. My three little hymn story paperbacks were silent that such a hymn was in use, but I did find the hymn in "Lutheran Book of Worship" which we use in our traditional services (from mid-1970s). It added the tune name American, Land of Rest. So I turned to the internet and after 2 tries with AI which was really out to lunch, I found: "F.B.P. These initials appear over the text of ‘Hierusalem my happie home’ (‘Jerusalem, my happy home’*) in a manuscript book in the British Library (Add. 15,225). The hymn is of 26 4-line stanzas, entitled ‘A Song Mad (i.e. ‘made’) by F:B:P. To the tune of Diana.’ The text is based on a passage from St. Augustine’s Meditations beginning ‘Mater Hierusalem, Civitas sancta Dei’. In the version ascribed to ‘F.B.P.’ the text suggests a Roman Catholic origin (as opposed to a Protestant text by W. Prid, for which see JJ, p. 581). There are references to ‘Our Ladie’ who ‘singes magnificat’, to Saints Augustine and Ambrose, and to Mary Magdalene: ‘There Magdalene hath left her mone’. The initials..." I don't have a subscription to that source, so it's all I got.

Another full source (see link below) added some verses (different than what I was reading) and possible 2nd author. Both Catholics and Protestants use this hymn and there's no doubt that the author was in some danger for writing it.

Jerusalem, My Happy Home: Lyrics, Meaning & Story - Happy Sabbath

God of our weary years

"God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land."

James Weldon Johnson, 1871-1938, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" (third stanza)

I could never understand how some think this poem/hymn could be controversial or that it belongs to only one group. It is universal, past, present and future, autobiographical from womb to tomb. From struggle to hope to victory.

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