What Protestants Think of Saints

“I sing a song of the saints of God.” So begins a hymn in the Presbyterian Hymnal, which goes on to describe the saints as “patient and brave and true, who toiled and fought and lived and died, for the Lord they loved and knew.” It’s a peppy little hymn, sometimes called a “children’s hymn,” written in 1929 by a British woman named Lesbia Scott. Although it lacks the solemnity and gravity of another All Saints’ Day hymn, “For All the Saints,” it expresses some lovely theology about who Protestants understand saints to be.