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Podcast: Parish Presbyterian Church
Episode: 2 Corinthians 2:1-11 The Bonds of Love
Description: Presbyterian minister Henry van Dyke wrote Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee, an ecstatic celebration of Christian unity, in 1907. He intended the poem to be sung to the melody of the final movement of Beethoven's Symphony no. 9 in D minor, which was itself a setting of an earlier poem by Friedrich Schiller called "Ode to Joy." The Ode uses flowery and somewhat utopian eighteenth-century language to paint a picture of universal brotherhood under the watchful eye of a loving heavenly father. While Schiller's poem only hints at the potential of human unity in some distant future, Christians can point to...