Purpose

The purpose of the St. Louis Peace Choir is twofold:
– to help each other learn to sing in harmony
– to maintain a free online repository of selected egalitarian/peace songs for choral groups

Active Pacifism

It is possible to use songs and stories to help keep a society in balance and to help protect it from irrational hatreds and fears. The St. Louis Peace Choir is committed to such Active Pacifism.

Organization

The St. Louis Peace Choir is organized as a diverse, member-led democracy.  Responsibilities such as directing and music selection are shared.  Our songs are secular and non-political because we follow the precept that singers should never be expected to sing words that they wouldn’t want to speak.

Peace Song Repository

All of the scores and recordings of the St. Louis Peace Choir are put into the public domain and housed in our REPOSITORY. They may be freely copied and used by other choirs, classrooms, and singers.

Sources for our Peace Songs

We’re always on the lookout for short, meaningful, egalitarian, public domain peace songs that we can arrange into SATB harmony. As a rather new organization, we’ve been relying on the Secular Hymnal (secularhymnal.com) for our song material. But that can’t last forever. If you can introduce us to other songs, please do! (sing@stlpeacechoir.org)

Virtual Choir

In addition to our monthly Circle Choir, we’ve started a “Virtual Choir” for those who live too far away to attend our St. Louis sessions. Click on the link to find the current song being recorded.

Network of Peace Choirs

We’ve begun inviting cities throughout the country and the world to form their own Peace Choirs so that we may visit each other and share our musical resources. We will list our sister Peace Choirs as they respond to our invitation:

St. Louis Peace Calendar (stlpeace.org)

We maintain the St. Louis Peace Calendar – a calendar of upcoming peace events in the St. Louis Area. These include community meetings, lectures, rallies, films, protests, marches and other events open to the public that lead to greater understanding and social harmony.

Funding

None. The St. Louis Peace Choir does not solicit funds because our expenses are so minimal (music sheets, website). Everybody is a volunteer. We have no owners, no property, no legal name, no bank account. Although we do bring a donation box to our monthly gatherings, its total contents are given to our host (the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis) as a good-will offering to help defray the building-use costs that we incur.

Our History

For nearly 2 decades a group of St. Louis peace advocates would meet every Sunday evening on the steps of St. Louis University’s “College Church” (St. Francis Xavier) at Grand and Lindell. Regardless of the weather, they’d stand outside in a candlelight “peace vigil” holding banners and signs promoting peaceful change as the heavy traffic slowly inched to-and-from the Grand Center entertainment venues.

Mary Wuller and her friends began these weekly gatherings in reaction to the climate of hate and vengeance that the 9-11 tragedy had whipped-up.

When Secretary Michael later joined the group, he began creating short egalitarian songs for the group to sing in unison at the end of their half-hour vigils. At first the song-sheets were sealed in plastic to protect them from the rain and snow. Later they were bound into booklets with the title: “St. Louis Peace Choir”. That’s how the peace choir got its start. The peace vigils ended several years later with the Covid-19 virus, but their songs of hope and peace were put online where they were (and continue to be) freely downloaded by singers and choral groups around the world.

On the 3rd Sunday of October, 2023, five friends got together for the first monthly gathering of the new St. Louis Peace Choir. It continues to this day.