The songs most-mentioned in this thread (after John Lennon's "Imagine") are "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "I'm Working on a Building". These are hardly the only alternatives to "Imagine", but still I wanted to check them out.

I found that"OCS" was written by one Sabine Baring-Gould (words) and Arthur S. Sullivan (music). I know of him, but I'm not so familiar with her. (My Mother is one of the world's biggest "Gilbert & Sullivan" fans.) Talk about politically incorrect... try having the C of E kids sing "I've Got a Little List"!

"IWOAB" was certainly NOT written by "Cowboy Junkies". My edition of Tony Russell's discography gives the first recording as that of the Carter family in 1934 on Bluebird and also sold on the Monkey Ward label. I'm sure that they didn't write it even if the label says they did. I've heard it played by bluegrass gospel bands on TV and in jams.

I got a good Methodist upbringing, myself, and I've always felt that the problem with religion and politics is that religion needs protection from politicians, and not the other way around. That's why I can't understand the British state church thing (being a non-conformist and all that...). The one thing I have taken from the organized American United Methodist Church is a wonderful book called "Songs of Zion" published by Abingdon in Nashville in 1981. I can't recommend this book highly enough.   It is full of songs that would be much much better choices than any of the songs mentioned so far (with the possible exception of IWOAB). My daughter's High School Choir sang one of them: "The Storm is Passing Over" by Charles Albert Tindley, and it was to me the highlight of their concert. (This was a public American High School, which is to say a Government run school for all my UK readers who probably already know the American idiom.)

And finally, as to "the meek shall inherit the earth". This is undoubtedly true. It is a sort of corrolary to "the peg that sticks up is soon hammered down". If you were to view the streets of my native Southern California in time lapse photography you would see a large group of the meek gradually inheriting this piece of earth.

Joe