Linda Wilberger Egan

Linda Wilberger Egan (born 1946) is an American church musician, organist, hymn writer, and composer whose career has combined congregational music, sacred-music education, and liturgical work. She earned a bachelor’s degree in music education at Gettysburg College with a double emphasis in voice and organ and later studied at Union Theological Seminary’s School of Sacred Music. Her training placed her within the professional church-music world at a time when many American congregations were expanding their musical language beyond older hymnbook repertories.

From 1979 to 1984 Egan served as director of music at Trinity Episcopal Church in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. During that period she also worked as a musician for the Diocese of Pennsylvania’s Well Woman Project, a Venture in Mission initiative that explored liturgical expression attentive to women’s spiritual experience. She subsequently served Lutheran, United Methodist, and Presbyterian congregations, demonstrating a career that crossed denominational boundaries while remaining centered on worship and congregational song.

Egan later became minister of music at Pohick Episcopal Church in Lorton, Virginia, beginning in 2006. Her best-known hymn contribution is the 1980 song paired with her own tune BALLAD, a work that reflects her interest in biblical narrative, women’s witness in the Gospels, and accessible congregational participation. Her writing and composing show a practical church musician’s concern for text, story, rhythm, and the ability of a congregation to enter a biblical scene through song.

Egan’s significance in hymnody lies less in a large catalog than in the distinctive perspective of her surviving published work: she brought women who recognize, receive, and proclaim the identity of Jesus to the center of congregational singing.