Praise The Lord

“Praise the Lord,” said the publisher, “and also please see our very reasonable retail prices.”

Praise the Lord (1972) from Geoffrey Chapman Publishers is one of those wonderfully earnest early-’70s Catholic books that clearly expected Vatican II enthusiasm to last forever. It comes from that era when publishers genuinely believed you could fix most liturgical confusion with a slim, nicely typeset volume and some cheerful exhortations to sing together without frightening the congregation.

This is not a megachurch production manual, a worship-band strategy guide, or a “10 Easy Steps to a Vibrant Praise Lifestyle.” This is old-school: hymnbook-adjacent, parish-friendly, and designed for people who know what a missal is and can find the Collect without crying. You can practically smell the incense and industrial-strength floor polish.

Published by Geoffrey Chapman Publishers (who had a strong line in gently serious religious books), this 1972 relic carries the gloriously retro ISBN: 0225658399 and the quiet confidence of a volume that expects to live on a church shelf, be opened on Sundays, and be occasionally dropped by an acolyte with clammy hands.

Condition: Good, as interpreted by Crappy Old Books, roughly means:

• Binding sound, pages all present, no mysteriously missing bits between “Praise” and “the Lord.”

• Some shelf wear and rubbing to the cover, in that distinctive “stored in a vestry cupboard next to a box of candles and a broken overhead projector” way.

• Light tanning to the paper, which only enhances the liturgical ambience.

• You may find an old parish stamp, a faint pencilled price, or—if you’re lucky—a long-faded bookmark from a diocesan conference in 1978.

Inside, you can expect:

• Pious, straightforward content aimed at helping ordinary churchgoers do exactly what it says on the cover without getting too theologically entangled.

• A tone that is devout but not terrifying; more “kindly parish priest explaining things over weak coffee” than “revivalist shouting from a television studio.”

• Layout and design that scream 1970s Catholic publishing: functional, respectable, and utterly convinced that brown and orange are perfectly acceptable liturgical colours for book covers.

Perfect for:

• Liturgical nostalgics who enjoy the calm, tidy optimism of post-Vatican II printed materials.

• Curious modern Christians who want to see what “praise” looked like before data projectors and worship slides in gradient teal.

• Secular collectors of odd religious ephemera who just like owning books that sound like they were free with a parish magazine.

So here it is: Praise the Lord (1972), Condition: Good, as sold by Crappy Old Books—a gently worn little time capsule from a world where praise was printed, bound, and shelved in the sacristy, ready for use whenever the organist turned up on time.

Keep browsing: See more Music books Other books by Geoffrey Chapman Publishers