This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
A hymn is a song of praise, prayer or devotion composed for use in communal worship, distinct from scripture in that it is written by a known or anonymous author specifically to be sung rather than received as revealed text, and distinct from an ordinary devotional song in that a tradition has typically adopted it into regular, repeated liturgical use rather than treating it as one performer's individual composition.
An entry records a hymn's text and its role within its tradition's worship, when and how it is typically sung, on what occasions, and by whom, congregation, choir or a designated singer, since a hymn's place in a service is often as fixed by convention as its words are. Where a hymn carries a well documented tune tradition, the entry notes that too, since the same words are frequently set to more than one melody across different communities.
Hymnody varies enormously across traditions in both form and function, from the metrical psalms sung congregationally in Reformed Protestant worship to the chanted hymns of Eastern Orthodox liturgy to devotional bhajans sung in Hindu worship, and an entry describes a hymn within its own tradition's conventions rather than measuring it against any single tradition's idea of what a hymn should sound like or how it should be used.