December 9, 2002
Texas Baptist layman helped make
'Amazing Grace' popular, but with a twist
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___A Texas Baptist layman helped put John Newton's "Amazing Grace" on the map, according to a leading Baptist hymnologist.
___But the way most Americans sing the popular hymn today isn't exactly the way it was first sung in the 1770s, according to William Reynolds, distinguished professor of church music at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and editor of the 1975 Baptist Hymnal.
___"Baptist layman Robert H. Coleman played a major role in the popularizing of 'Amazing Grace' as we know it today," Reynolds said. Coleman, based in Dallas, was a leading publisher of hymnals in the early 20th century.
___From 1909 to 1939, Coleman published 33 hymnals, and all of them designed for congregational singing included "Amazing Grace," Reynolds noted.
___Coleman's influence was broadened beyond hymnal publishing, Reynolds added, because he served as music leader for annual meetings of both the Southern Baptist Convention and the Northern Baptist Convention before and after World War I.
(illustration by Birmingham News)
See related story:
Amazing Grace & race examined in new history
___The version of "Amazing Grace" published and promoted by Coleman, however, bore at least two primary changes from its origin.
___First, Coleman attached Newton's hymn text to the tune New Britain, also the practice of his printer, Edwin Excell of Chicago. They followed a practice first documented in 1835, at least 56 years after Newton wrote the hymn.
___"Amazing Grace" is set in what musicians call common meter, which means it can be easily sung to a variety of tunes written in the same meter. From 1789 to 1997, "Amazing Grace" was published in hundreds of hymnals set to at least two dozen tunes, Reynolds explained.
___Two of the most popular were Arlington, best known among Baptists as the tune for "Am I A Soldier of the Cross," and Warwick, a tune not used in Baptist hymnals within the last century.
___William Walker first attached the tune New Britain to "Amazing Grace" in his "Southern Harmony," published in 1835, Reynolds said. "The tune is anonymous, and Walker named it New Britain but left no explanation for doing so."
___Baptists were among the first to embrace the new tune for "Amazing Grace," Reynolds reported. "The first four church hymnals to accept the tune New Britain were Baptist collections."
___Among those were collections published by Basil Manly Jr., founder of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and H.N. Lincoln, a singing school teacher and member of First Baptist Church of Dallas.
___The second major change in "Amazing Grace" since its origin is the addition of what Baptists today sing as the fourth and final stanza, beginning, "When we've been there, 10,000 years."
___In 1910, Excell published "Amazing Grace" in a book titled "Devotional Hymns" and included the new stanza for the first time.
___"There is no explanation of where he found this stanza," Reynolds said. "By adding it to the first three of John Newton's stanzas, it implied that Newton should be credited with all four stanzas."
___The anonymous stanza, however, can be found attached earlier to the hymn "Jerusalem, My Happy Home."
___Where Excell found it and why he chose it are not known, Reynolds said.
___While Baptists were quick to embrace the new stanza, other Christian denominations were not, he explained. Methodist hymnals, for example, did not embrace the stanza until 1989.
___Regardless, "Amazing Grace" has become one of the most recognized songs on the planet.
___It was picked up and performed by folk singers in the late 1930s and '40s, Reynolds said. And then Judy Collins brought it to an even wider audience in the late 1960s.
___Collins wrote about her connection with the hymn in her book titled "Singing Lessons." She tells about attending an encounter group where everyone wanted to sing a song to cap an especially meaningful dialogue.
___"The only song everyone knew all the words to was 'Amazing Grace,' and I led the singing, as I knew it well," she wrote. "Later, Mark, my producer, told me he thought we should record it. I thought it was a wonderful idea. I didn't know what else to do about the war in Vietnam. I had marched. I had voted. I had gone to jail on political actions and worked for the candidates I believed in. The war was still raging. There was nothing left to do, I thought, but to pray and sing hymns to life. Nothing left but to sing 'Amazing Grace.'"
___The song became an instant hit on her 1970 album "Whales and Nighingales."
___A year later, the tune was recorded by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards using bagpipes and drums--a recording that also gained international attention.
___More recently, the hymn was the subject of a Bill Moyers PBS special in 1990.
___The hymn and the tune New Britain are so well-known today that "Amazing Grace" has become "an unofficial national hymn for America," Reynolds suggested. "An individual can start singing the hymn spontaneously in any gathering of people, and the group will join in and be able to sing two or three stanzas from memory."
___That's an amazing reach from the English village of Olney, where Newton and his wife, Mary, settled in 1764 for him to become the new curate of the Anglican parish church.
Get printer-friendly version of this story
Send this story to a friend
News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!/ Signup for FirstLook
