During the Summer of 2004, LCR counted down the Top 10 hymns of all time as selected by members of the congregation and submitted to the ELCA for church officials to consider as a new hymnal is being developed.
Worship and Music Chair John Frith has prepared introductions for each of the hymns that briefly describes how each came to be written and little-known details about them. We have also provided links to midi files so you can hear the melodies as well.
Our No. 10 hymn dates to 1776, when an Englishman named Augustus M. Toplady reportedly took refuge under a rocky overhang during a storm and wrote down the words on a playing card. The music composed by Thomas Hastings in 1830 to accompany the words, and the hymn quickly became popular. It was played at the funerals of such 19th Century statesmen as England’s Prime Minister William Gladstone and American President Benjamin Harrison. And just last month, a military band played it late on a Friday afternoon as President Reagan’s body was being brought to his library in Simi Valley for burial.
A missionary in India asked a young Hindu Bible student to translate the hymn into the native dialect to help Indians understand Christianity. Here’s what the young man came up with:
Very old stone, split for my benefit
Let me absent myself under one of your fragments.
I think we can agree that the original words work much better.
Coming in at No. 9 on the LCR Top 10 Countdown is the only selection from With One Voice to make the list, although several other hymns received several votes. This hymn had been sung for many years but never written down before a Swedish musicologist, Anders Nyberg, visited South Africa in 1978 at the invitation of the “black” Lutheran Church. Nyberg and his group gave concerts but also listened to many local choirs and singers.
And at a girls’ school in Natal, he heard a song called Siyahamba, a traditional freedom song sung in response to the persecution and oppression felt by black South Africans during the Apartheid era. Siyahamba was released in the West in 1984 as part of a collection entitled Freedom Is Coming: Songs of Protest and Praise From South Africa.
The United Church of Christ was the first major U.S. denomination to include this song in a hymnal, but the ELCA and others soon followed. Christine Howlett, a soprano from a Lutheran congregation in Alexandria, VA., probably sums up why the hymn has quickly become so popular in the U.S.: "This is one you can really just open out. You don't have to have any reserve. You can sing your heart out."
And that’s true at LCR as well.
One of the reasons the ELCA is looking to develop a new hymnal is to add more diversity. Ironically, our existing hymnals already have more diversity than we might imagine.
LCR’s Hymn #8, “Faith of Our Fathers,” appears to refer to the faith shown by the Christian martyrs throughout the ages, but in reality it was written to honor the Roman Catholics who gave their lives during the reign of Henry VIII. Here’s one verse that didn’t make it into the Lutheran Book of Worship:
“Faith of our fathers/Mary’s prayers/Shall win our country back to thee/And through the truth that comes from God/England shall then indeed be free.”
The text was written by an Englishman named Frederick William Faber, the son of a Calvinist clergyman who himself became an Anglican minister in 1843. But three years into his ministry, he became influenced by a “high church” movement promoting more liturgical and ceremonial church services. So like many Englishmen – and women – during the 1840s and ‘50s, he converted to Catholicism and became known as Father Wilfrid.
But he missed the congregational singing he was used to and made it his life’s mission to write hymns that promoted the history and teachings of the Catholic Church. He wrote 150 hymns before his early death at the age of 49 and was honored by the Pope with a Doctor of Divinity degree.
“Faith of Our Fathers” was written in 1849 and set to music originally used for another Catholic hymn in the 1870s. And regardless of what Father Wilfrid had in mind, it’s become a favorite for Christians of all denominations.
Hymn #7 in the LCR Top 10 countdown dates back to 1677, when the words were included a German Jesuit hymnal or songbook called the Munster Gesangbuch. But despite its Catholic origins, it is now firmly identified with American Lutherans. In fact, there are dozens of Lutheran churches named after this hymn.
The words were translated from German in 1873 and published in the Lutheran Sunday-School Book by Joseph A. Seiss, a prominent Lutheran pastor, author, and a founder of the General Council, one of the first efforts to unify the many Lutheran church bodies in the U.S. Another translation of the hymn – “Fairest Lord Jesus” – is used by many other Protestant churches. The fourth verse is the same in both versions.
The tune comes from a folk tune from Silesia, now part of southern Poland but formerly part of Austria and then Germany. It’s called the “Crusader’s Hymn” because it was erroneously thought to date from the time of the Crusades.
Interestingly enough, the Rev. Seiss also wrote extensively about the end times, the meaning of Revelations and the Great Pyramid in Egypt, and how the Gospel story can be seen in the signs of the zodiac. But while some of his writings may seem a bit eccentric today, his translation of this hymn remains a classic.
Coming in at #6 is a hymn that’s been called “the ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ of this century.”
Like several other of our Top 10 selections, the words to this hymn were written by the son of a minister – George William Kitchin, a 19th century English scholar and university administrator. In 1916, four years after his death, the lyrics were modified into their current form by an Anglican minister, Michael Robert Newbolt. But it’s probably the triumphant melody that makes this hymn so popular today.
The tune, “Crucifer,” was composed by Sydney Hugo Nicholson, one of the most renowned figures in early 20th century English church music. Besides serving as the organist, composer, and music director for such cathedrals as Westminster Abbey, he founded a school for church music and was eventually knighted for his contributions. Nicholson put the lyrics to his composition and included the hymn in a 1916 music book he edited. But the piece did not become popular until the 1970s, when it was included in a number of American Protestant hymnals, including the LBW.
The hymn calls Christians to bring the story of the cross to the entire world. We are to “lift high the cross” for the world to see, so that they might come and adore Christ, the victorious king.
Joseph Scriven suffered great tragedy in his life, but his faith in Christ led him to write a masterpiece of comfort and consolation.
Scriven was born in Dublin in 1819, the son of a prosperous family. But when he was 25, tragedy struck on the day before his wedding when his fiancée was thrown from her horse while crossing a bridge and drowned as he waited for her on the other shore.
He emigrated to Canada to live in a religious community. And 10 years after his fiancée’s death, he again became engaged, but again tragedy struck. Amazingly, his new bride-to-be also fell into an icy lake and became seriously ill, dying three years later.
A couple of years after his second fiancée’s accident, he learned that his mother, still in Ireland, was seriously ill. Drawing on his life experiences, he composed a poem to comfort her which he entitled “Pray Without Ceasing.”
Accounts differ, but apparently he published the poem in a local newspaper several years later and it was put to music by an American named Charles C. Converse and published in an 1875 collection of hymns.
Ironically, Scriven himself drowned in August 1886. Seriously depressed and in ill health, no one knows for sure if his death was accidental or a suicide. Shortly before his death, a caregiver asked if he indeed had written the piece. He replied, “The Lord and I did it between us.”
If anyone ever needed a friend, it was Joseph Scriven. And what a friend he had – in Jesus.
In one sense, Hymn # 4 on the LCR Top 10 list really needs no introduction. The story of how John Newton, the hard-living captain of a British slave ship, rediscovered his faith in the midst of a tremendous storm and eventually wrote the words to what has become America’s most popular hymn is widely known. But there’s a lot more to the story of “Amazing Grace.”
Newton, for example, left the profitable slave trade after a serious illness and eventually became a leading abolitionist. He taught himself Latin and a number of other subjects, and eventually decided to become a minister. Although his Methodist tendencies made it difficult, he eventually was ordained a minister in the Church of England and was assigned to a small country parish.
Among the hundreds of hymns he wrote was “Amazing Grace,” apparently written for a church service on Jan. 1, 1773, and published in a book of hymns in 1779. But the hymn was not particularly well-received at home – it was in the rural American South that the piece began its journey to popularity.
In 1835, the lyrics were put to a tune called “New Britain,” the origins of which are not known, in an enormously popular music book called Southern Harmony. Popular among both poor whites and black slaves as an anthem of hope, “Amazing Grace” probably would have faded into obscurity if the hymn hadn’t been used by a popular Northern evangelist in the late 19th century and included in several hymn books – all set to other music.
Then about 1900, the hymn was once again set to a modernized form of “New Britain,” and Newton’s final verse was dropped as too Calvinistic for the times. Instead, a verse from an 1820s hymn called “Jerusalem My Happy Home” was substituted – the one beginning, “When we’ve been there 10,000 years.” In a fascinating twist, that stanza was first associated with “Amazing Grace” in a passage in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic Uncle Tom.
Since the 1970s, “Amazing Grace” has achieved popularity with a new audience as it has been recorded by dozens of secular artists – ranging from Elvis to Tiny Tim to Destiny’s Choice – but most notably by Judy Collins, whose a cappella 1970 rendition was a top 10 single.
Fellow folksinger Joan Baez, who also recorded the song, said recently that she didn’t understand why anyone would see “Amazing Grace” as religious. Millions of Christians would ask, how can anyone see it as being anything but religious?
Although this hymn was declared by the great British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as “the world’s greatest hymn,” it only ranks #3 on the LCR Top 10 countdown.
The hymn was written for use on Trinity Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost, by a 19th century Anglican clergyman named Reginald Heber, a distinguished cleric and a member of a prominent Tory family with such impeccable credentials that he helped make congregational song respectable in the English church.
Named Bishop of Calcutta in 1823, Heber first published this hymn in 1826, the year he died in his early 40s after a lengthy church service in the hot Indian sun. It has been sung in the U.S. since about 1850, and since 1861 has always been sung to the stirring tune “Nicaea.”
That tune was composed by a child prodigy named John Bacchus Dykes, another clergyman who became the organist in his father’s church when he was just 10 and who wrote more than 300 hymn tunes before his untimely death at 52, reportedly from overwork.
The hymn has been included in more than 1,200 American hymnals over the years, and while written to help worshippers observe Trinity Sunday, it has been sung by such denominations as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and – ironically – the Unitarians.
One imagines that the Reverend Heber would not approve of the contemporary rendition of his famous hymn, since he objected strongly to addressing God “with ditties of embraces and passion, or in language which it would be disgraceful in an earthly sovereign to endure.” But old style or new, it’s still a classic statement of our faith – “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
Hymn #2 on the LCR Top 10 list is another Lutheran hymn – by way of an American publishing house, an English missionary in Russia, the Billy Graham Crusade – and even Elvis.
The original words to this hymn were written in 1886 by a Swedish Lutheran pastor named Carl Boberg. The pastor was visiting a beautiful country estate when a midday thunderstorm suddenly came up, only to be replaced soon afterwards by a clear, brilliant sun. In the aftermath of the storm, the air was still and the only sounds he heard were birds singing in the trees. Inspired by what he had just experienced, he wrote a nine-stanza poem of praise and adoration. A few years later, he was surprised to hear his words sung at a church conference, put to the words of an old Swedish folk tune.
But the story doesn’t end there.
In the early 20th century, the hymn was translated into several languages, including Russian. In the early1920s, the Russian version was included in a hymnal printed by the American Bible Society, and copies found their way to Ukraine, where an English evangelist named Stuart Hine was amazed at how strongly his congregation reacted to the piece. He rewrote Boberg’s original text into three English verses, drawing on his own experiences hiking in the Carpathian Mountains and emphasizing the miracle of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Hine returned to England when World War II broke out and spent time ministering to refugees. The one thing on all their minds was, “When will we be going home?” This inspired his fourth verse, reflecting the final “going home” for believers. He published the finished hymn in a gospel magazine in 1949, and missionaries around the world requested reprints. One of those reprints found its way into the hands of Billy Graham’s longtime vocalist and music director, George Beverly Shea, who changed two words* and sang the hymn for the first time in 1955. The hymn became a staple during Graham’s many televised crusades for years to come.
Oh yes, Elvis. In 1967, the King spotlighted this now well-known hymn in his first gospel album and even released it as a single. The album earned Elvis his first Grammy, while Shea’s rendition was ranked as one of the 365 top-selling recordings of the entire 20th century. In 1974, a Christian publication ranked it the #1 hymn in America.
And closer to home, the July issue of The Lutheran reported that participants in the ELCA’s hymn survey have selected it one of the “essential” hymns when it comes to choosing music for future worship resources. So it appears that LCR members will continue singing “How Great Thou Art” for many years to come.
* Shea changed “consider all the works thy hands have made” to “consider all the worlds thy hands have made” and “I hear the mighty thunder” to “I hear the rolling thunder.”
It is indeed right and salutary that LCR’s #1 hymn should be the battle hymn of the Reformation, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” For the hymn combines Martin Luther’s skills as a theologian, preacher, poet, and musician.
Luther’s theological greatness is well known, but he was an equally accomplished musician. Not only was he a talented lute player but he paid his school fees by singing in the streets. And he carried that appreciation of music into his religious efforts. In fact, Luther believed so strongly in the power of song that he compiled nine hymnals for use in congregational singing.
Based on the 46th Psalm, “Ein’ Feste Berg” was written in the late 1520s, a decade after the 95 Theses were nailed to the castle door. The Reformation was threatened both by a resurgent Holy Roman Empire and by quarrels over points of doctrine by the reformers themselves.
As Luther wrote, “The only comfort against raging Satan is that we have God’s Word to save the souls of believers.” In 1529, he took that theme and wrote the great hymn for the Diet of Speyer, when the brief period of religious tolerance was rescinded. The words and music so captured the spirit of the Reformation that when Protestants were forced into exile or martyred during the coming years, this great hymn was often what they sung.
“Luther’s hymns have led more souls to perdition than all his books and sermons,” wrote one enemy of the Reformation. But let the Great Reformer have the last word:
“After theology, there is nothing that can be placed on a level with music. It drives out the devil and makes people cheerful. It is a gift that God gave to birds and to men. We need to remove hymn singing from the domain of monks and priests and set the laity to singing. By the singing of hymns, the laity can publicly express their love to the Almighty God.”
So let this Lutheran congregation stand and join in the timeless words of Martin Luther’s greatest hit: “A Mighty Fortress Is our God.”