Classic Songs April 2, 2011

Amazing Grace

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I’m found,
was blind, but now I see

Sitting in class the other day, I started to wonder about some of the most sung songs of the faith. My mind drifted to the classic hymn, Amazing Grace. What brought this hymn across the pond from England, specifically with the melody we know it by now? Why has it become “[o]ne of the best loved and most often sung hymns in North America”?^[1] And what can we learn from it as worshipers and songwriters?

The story of Amazing Grace is the spiritual autobiography of its author, John Newton^[1]. Around Christmas in 1772^[2], he first penned the poem about his conversion to Christianity and the happy and grace-filled ending he was was awaiting. Newton’s father was a sailor and his mother died in his childhood, so he did not start with the religious convictions of his Jesuit father and anti-liturgy Anglican mother. He was sent away to boarding school, press-ganged in the service of the Royal Navy, and traded by the Navy to a slaver to be sold as a slave. He himself joined the slave trading business to earn enough money to win his wife. Inspired by a near-drowning incident on sea in 1748, the strong faith of his friend and marriage-target Mary Catlett, and the book Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, Newton concluded that only the grace of God could save him ^{[2] [1]}. Following his conversion and a stroke, Newton was given charge over a church and started to re-evaluate his, the Church’s, and the England’s treatment of slaves^[2]. Amazing Grace was among the 280 hymns of his that were published in a hymnbook of his first pastorate, the Church of England in Olney^[1].

The original publication of Amazing Grace was a collection of six stanzas of a poem in a common meter. There was no music with the text in Olney Hymns^[3]. The tune we know now as Amazing Grace was first known as “Harmony Grove” and paired four years earlier with the text of the Isaac Watts hymn “There is a Land of Pure Delight”. William Walker adapted the tune under the name “New Britain” and published the text of Amazing Grace under that title in his tune book The Southern Harmony in 1835. Since this time, the Newton’s text has been most commonly associated with the “New Britain” tune^[4].

John Julian writes in the 1907 Dictionary of Hymnology that Amazing Grace “is far from being a good example of Newton’s work.”^[1] So what is a good example of Newton’s work? No other John Newton hymn has been more used and loved by the American church. The simple, ABAB form, common meter lyrics that so broadly describe the human condition have universal relevance in the Church. While the specific parts of the lyrics refer to events in Newton’s life, such as his life has an abused, wretched, malaria infested man ^[2], his words have deep theological accuracy. Take for example the first stanza. Amazing grace relates to the theology of John (1:14, 16-17) and Paul (Romans 6, Ephesians 2:8, Titus 2:11). Grace, if it can anoint the lips, can be a sweet sound, or so I would think from Psalm 45:2. The lost and found ideas, expanded most in the parables of the lost sheep, coin, and son (Luke 15), are echoed in the Psalms (119:176) and the prophets (Jeremiah 50:6), and defined as a mission of Christ in Luke 19:10. The blindness made sight correlates directly with the Biblical conversion of the apostle Paul in Acts 9. While deeply personal and surprisingly simple, the ideas of the lyrics are also deeply Biblical.

The life of John Newton and his hymnwriting is a great model for the modern songwriter. In his pursuit of the imitation of Christ, his life reflected and responded to the grace he received. The fruit of his labor changed from enslavement to liberation, both spiritually and in the slave trade of the western world. As he walked in grace and proclaimed his testimony, he developed a song that describes and touches every Christian. There is deep value in the testimony of Scripture and personal testimony in songwriting, with a balance of simplicity and theological depth. John Newton’s honest evaluation of his life, made to be sung in his small parish, has had a big impact on the world. As he said at the end of his life, “There are two things I’ll never forget: that I was a great sinner, and that Jesus Christ is a greater Savior!”^[1]. From this personal truth came a most unforgettable corporate anthem.

Hymnary.org | http://www.hymnary.org/text/amazing_grace_how_sweet_the_sound
“Creation of Amazing Grace” | http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200149085/default.html
Olney Hymns at Library of Congress | http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.rbc.pre.79197/enlarge.html?page=94&section=&size=640
Timeline of Amazing Grace at Library of Congress | http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/grace/grace-timeline.html