It's not a reprint. Why Sacred Harp singers are revamping an iconic pre-Civil War hymnal

BREMEN, Ga. (AP) — Singers at Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church in West Georgia treat their red hymnals like extensions of themselves, never straying far from their copies of “The Sacred Harp” and its music notes shaped like triangles, ovals, squares and diamonds.

In four-part harmony, they sing together for hours, carrying on a more than 180-year-old American folk tradition that is as much about the community as it is the music.

It’s no accident “The Sacred Harp” is still in use today, and a new edition — the first in 34 years — is on its way.

Since the Christian songbook’s pre-Civil War publication, groups of Sacred Harp singers have periodically worked together to revise it, preserving its history and breathing new life into it. It’s a renewal, not a reprint, said David Ivey, a lifelong singer and chair of the Sacred Harp Publishing Company’s revision and music committee.

“That’s credited for keeping our book vibrant and alive,” said Ivey.

First published in 1844 by West Georgia editors and compilers Benjamin F. White and Elisha J. King, revisions of the shape-note hymnal make space for songs by living composers, said Jesse P. Karlsberg, a committee member and expert on the tradition.

“This is a book that was published before my great-grandparents were born and I think people will be singing from it long after I’m dead,” said Karlsberg, who met his wife through the a cappella group practice, which is central to his academic career. It's also his spiritual community.

“It's changed my life to become a Sacred Harp singer.”

The nine-member revision committee feels tremendous responsibility, said Ivey, who also worked on the most recent 1991 edition.

Sacred Harp singers are not historical reenactors, he said. They use their hymnals week after week. Some treat them like scrapbooks or family Bibles, tucking mementos between pages, taking notes in the margins and passing them down. Memories and emotions get attached to specific songs, and favorites in life can become memorials in death.

“The book is precious to people,” said Ivey, on a March afternoon surrounded by songbooks and related materials at the nonprofit publishing company’s museum in Carrollton, Georgia.

Sacred Harp singing is a remarkably well-documented tradition. The small, unassuming museum — about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Atlanta near the Alabama state line — stewards a trove of recordings and meeting minutes of singing events.

The upcoming edition is years in the making. The revision, authorized by the publishing company's board of directors in October 2018, was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It now will be released in September at the annual convention of the United Sacred Harp Musical Association in Atlanta.

Ivey hopes singers fall in love with it, though he knows there is nervousness in the Sacred Harp community. For now, many of the changes are under wraps.

Assembled to be representative of the community, the committee is being methodical and making decisions through consensus, Ivey said. Though most will remain, some old songs will be cut and new ones added. They invited singer input, holding community meetings and singing events to help evaluate the more than 1,100 new songs submitted for consideration.

Sarah George, who met her husband through Sacred Harp and included it in their Episcopal wedding, hopes his compositions make the 2025 edition and their son grows up seeing his dad’s name in the songbook they will sing out of most weekends.

More so, George is wishing for a revival.

Her hope for "the revision is that it reminds people and reminds singers that we’re not doing something antiquated and folksy. We’re doing something that is a living, breathing worship tradition and music tradition,” said George, during a weekend of singing at Holly Springs.

Dozens gathered at the church for the Georgia State Sacred Harp Convention. Its back-to-back days of singing were interrupted by little other than potluck lunches and fellowship.

Sharing a pew with her daughter and granddaughter, Sheri Taylor explained that her family has sung from “The Sacred Harp” for generations. Her grandfather built a church specifically for singing events.

“I was raised in it,” said Taylor.

They've also known songwriters. Her daughter Laura Wood has fond childhood memories of singing with the late Hugh McGraw, a torchbearer of the tradition who oversaw the 1991 edition. While her mother is wary of the upcoming revision, knowing some songs won't be included, Wood is excited for it.

At Holly Springs, they joined the chorus of voices bouncing off the church's floor-to-ceiling wood planks and followed along in their songbooks. Wood felt connected to her family, especially her late grandmother.

“I can feel them with me,” she said.

Like all Sacred Harp events, it was not a performance. “The Sacred Harp” is meant to be sung by everyone — loudly.

Anyone can lead a song of their choosing from the hymnal's 554 options, but a song can only be sung once per event with few exceptions. Also called fa-sol-la singing, the group sight-reads the songs using the book's unique musical notations, sounding first its shape notes — fa, sol, la and mi — and then its lyrics.

“The whole idea is to make singing accessible to anyone,” said Karlsberg. “For many of us, it’s a moving and spiritual experience. It’s also a chance to see our dear friends.”

The shape-note tradition emerged from New England’s 18th century singing school movement that aimed to improve Protestant church music and expanded into a social activity. Over time, “The Sacred Harp” became synonymous with this choral tradition.

“The Sacred Harp” was designed to be neither denominational nor doctrinal, Karlsberg said. Many of its lyrics were composed by Christian reformers from England, such as Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley, he said. It was rarely used during church services.

Instead, the hymnal was part of the social fabric of the rural South, though racially segregated, Karlsberg said. Before emancipation, enslaved singers were part of white-run Sacred Harp events; post-Reconstruction, Black singers founded their own conventions, he said. “The Sacred Harp” eventually expanded to cities and beyond the South, including other countries.

“The Sacred Harp” is still sung in its hollow square formation. Singers organize into four voice parts: treble, alto, tenor and bass. Each group takes a side, facing an opening in the center where a rotating song leader guides the group and keeps time as dozens of voices come from all sides.

“It’s a high. I mean it’s just an almost indescribable feeling,” said Karen Rollins, a longtime singer and committee member.

At the museum, Rollins carefully turned the pages of her first edition copy of “The Sacred Harp,” and explained how the tradition is part of her fiber and faith. She often picks a Sunday singing over church.

“I like the fact that we can all sing — no matter who we are, what color, what religion, whatever — that we can sing with these people and never, never get upset talking about anything that might divide us,” she said.

Though many are Christian, Sacred Harp singers include people of other faiths and no faith, including LGBTQ+ community members who found church uncomfortable but miss congregational singing.

“It’s the good part of church for the people who grew up with it,” said Sam Kleinman, who stepped into the opening at Holly Springs to lead song No. 564 “Zion.” He is part of the vibrant shape-note singing community in New York City, that meets at St. John’s Lutheran Church near the historic Stonewall Inn.

Kleinman, who is Jewish but not observant, said he doesn’t have a religious connection to the lyrics and finds singing in a group cathartic.

Whereas Nathan Rees, a committee member and Sacred Harp museum curator, finds spiritual depth in the often-somber words.

“It just seems transcendent sometimes when you’re singing this, and you’re thinking about the history of the people who wrote these texts, the bigger history of just Christian devotion, and then also the history of music and this community,” he said.

At Holly Springs, Rees took his turn as song leader, choosing No. 374, “Oh, Sing with Me!” The group did as the 1859 song directed — loudly and in harmony like so many Sacred Harp singers before them.

“There’s no other experience to me that feels as elevating,” he said, “like you’re just escaping the world for a little while.”

This story has been updated to correct that“Oh, Sing with Me!” is from 1859, instead of 1895.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

CORRECTS TO PRIMROSE, NOT PRIMEROSE - A 1911 edition of "The Sacred Harp," a shape-note hymnal from the 1800s, opened to song No. 43, "Primrose Hill," at the Sacred Harp Publishing Company and Museum in Carrollton, Ga., on Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

In this photo provided by the Library of Congress, Hugh McGraw leads singers at the South Georgia Sacred Harp Singing Convention in Tifton, Ga., on May 1, 1977. (Howard W. Marshall/Library of Congress via AP)

Sacred Harp singers sit among the headstones at Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church for a midday potluck in Bremen, Ga., on Saturday, March 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Nathan Rees, a committee member and Sacred Harp museum curator, at The Sacred Harp Publishing Company and Museum in Carrolton, Ga., on Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

In this photo provided by the State Archives of Florida, M.L. Long leads sacred harp singers at the S.E. Alabama & Florida Union Sacred Harp Sing in Campbellton, Fla., on Nov. 24, 1980. (Peggy A. Bulger/State Archives of Florida via AP)

Rodney Ivey keeps time while singing from the tenor section at a Sacred Harp singing event at Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church in Bremen, Ga., on Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Sheri Taylor, left, sits with her daughter, Laura Wood, and granddaughter, Riley McKibbin, 11, while singing from "The Sacred Harp" in the tenor section at Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church in Bremen, Ga., on Saturday, March 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Sarah George, who met her husband through Sacred Harp singing, holds their son while leading a song from the hollow square at a Sacred Harp gathering in Bremen, Ga., at Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church on Saturday, March 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Isaac Green, 34, sings in the tenor section during a Sacred Harp singing event at Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church in Bremen, Ga., on Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Isaac Green, 34, covers his eyes while praying before a Sacred Harp singing event at Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church in Bremen, Ga., on Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Trees encircle Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church, which has been a historical meeting site for Sacred Harp singers for generations, in Bremen, Ga., on Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Matt Hinton, a shape-note singer, leads a song at a Sacred Harp singing event held at Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church in Bremen, Ga., on Saturday, March 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

A 1911 edition of "The Sacred Harp," a shape-note hymnal from the 1800s, opened to song No. 43, "Primerose Hill," at the Sacred Harp Publishing Company and Museum in Carrollton, Ga., on Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Andy Ditzler stands in the center of a hollow square, "The Sacred Harp" formation in which singers organize into four voice parts and face each other to create an opening in the middle, at Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church in Bremen, Ga., on Saturday, March 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)