The Scriptures exhort believers to exert effort in singing : "Speaking to yourselves [one to another; ERV] in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in [with; NASB] your heart to the Lord" (Eph. 5:19). Music has been an integral part of Christian worship borrowed from Judaism : "And when they had sung a hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives." (Mt. 26:30).

The struggles of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation produced as a by-product glorious music, and as is common with lovers of good music, little attention was paid to which side produced it as long as it expressed the necessary themes.

Froehlich's disciples spread through Eastern Europe, where converts from Lutheran, Roman, and Orthodox backgrounds blended their traditional music. Two major hymnals were used; the Zion's Harp and the Heft (or "Addition"). In the United States both were printed in German, and after the Great Split of 1903, both sides vied for the right to claim the hymnals as their own.

In 1924, the Apostolic Christian Church of America published a copyrighted English translation of the German Zion's Harp. That hymnal did not contain the Heft. Many of the Nazarean congregations were using editions of the Zion's Harp printed in Serbian, Hungarian, Romanian, and Slovak, which did contain the "Addition". Thus it was that in 1940 the Apostolic Christian Church (Nazarean) published a copyrighted hymnal titled "The Apostolic Christian Hymnal" with a subtitle, "A Compilation of Hymns for the Believers in Christ, Containing the Entire Zion Harfe and Heft in English". That translation from German to English (with considerable assistance from the German Language Department of the University of Syracuse) was not as literal as the 1924 translation, and the flow of the poetry is much smoother, in many cases following the KJV where hymns were derived from Scripture passages.

The 1940 translation was revised slightly in 1954 (#278, verse 2, showed a dramatic theological shift), reprinted in 1967, and in 1981 #320 was combined with #258 (they were traditionally sung as one song) and the hymn "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name" was inserted as #320.

The music presented here as recordings of congregational singing and special programs is the music of the Apostolic Christian Church (Nazarean).