The choir and Mr. Shea now sing for you “How Great Thou Art.”
Cliff Barrow’s announcement at Billy Graham’s New York Crusade at Madison Square Garden on June 16, 1957, preceded the televised performance that helped cement the hymn’s position as a fixture in American Protestant repertoire.
The choir of a whole lot began the performance with the last line of the chorus: “How great thou art, how great thou art.” Then George Beverly Shea’s famous baritone introduced the hymn to tens of millions of viewers—an estimated 96 million by the top of Graham’s New York Crusade.
As Shea sang the second verse, taking expressive liberties with the tempo, the text at the underside of the printed invited viewers to call the phone line “to start a relationship with Jesus Christ.”
2024 marks the seventy fifth anniversary of the publication of “How Great Thou Art,” and to rejoice the hymn’s legacy, songwriters Matt Redman and Mitch Wong contributed latest text for a collaborative recording, featuring an array of popular performers like Chris Tomlin, Matt Maher, Kari Jobe, Cody Carnes, and Naomi Raine.
“This is a hymn that everybody knows and loves,” Redman said in an interview with CT. “It felt quite daunting to are available and make changes.”
Redman and Wong’s version of the hymn, “How Great Thou Art! (Until That Day),” preserves the unique English text and nods to the song’s international origins and history. Their recording debuted Friday.
The timeless song captures the strain of the Christian life, having to live with eyes open to each the temporary and the everlasting. “We’ve got these two realities: the here and now, and the attractive reality of God’s endlessly reign and supreme plan,” Redman said.
Few hymns and sacred songs have achieved a position within the American national imagination as powerfully as “How Great Thou Art.” It was even the title track of Elvis Presley’s 1967 album, How Great Thou Art, which won the artist his first Grammy.
More recently, singers like Alan Jackson and Carrie Underwood have performed the hymn; Underwood’s rendition with Vince Gill on the Grand Ole Opry in 2011 was so well received that the country star made it a daily feature on her set lists, including during her Las Vegas residencies.
The evolution of the Nineteenth-century Swedish poem “O Store Gud” (“O Mighty God” or “O Great God”) into the present standard “How Great Thou Art” is an element of a centuries-old practice of borrowing and imitation in sacred music. It allows hymn writers to trade out one tune for one more, counting on metrical patterns to create latest easily singable songs.
“Songs like ‘How Great Thou Art,’ they’re great the way in which they’re,” said singer-songwriter Matt Maher. “But this is an element of a protracted tradition; composers have at all times taken lyrics and melodies and creatively adapted them.”
The original poem, written in 1885 by Carl Boberg, was set to a standard folk tune and published within the Swedish Missionary Alliance hymnbook in addition to a US Swedish hymnbook called Sionsharpen. Subsequent translations preserve Boberg’s concentrate on God’s power displayed in creation and human wonder.
The song was translated into Russian by I. S. Prokhanoff in 1908 and into German by Manfred von Glehn in 1912, making its method to the United States again by the use of the Russian translation in a set of hymns published by the American Bible Society in 1922.
The first English translation—“O Mighty God, When I Behold the Wonder”—got here just a few years later by E. Gustav Johnson, a comparatively literal reflection of the unique Swedish.
The version we all know and sing now got here from British missionary Stuart Hine, who learned the Russian version while ministering in western Ukraine within the Nineteen Thirties and eventually created his own translation in English. He wrote the fourth verse (“When Christ shall come …”) in 1948, moved by his encounters with a few of the Ukrainian refugees flooding into England within the aftermath of World War II.
Hine’s English version was featured alongside the Russian within the missionary magazine Grace and Peace, circulating the hymn to over 15 countries and eventually reaching George Beverly Shea and Billy Graham.
After the performances of “How Great Thou Art” during Graham’s New York Crusade in 1957, the hymn became a favourite among the many crowds that gathered to listen to the famous evangelist and amongst American congregations who now associated the song with the powerful revivalism witnessed at his events.
“We sang it a couple of hundred times on the insistence of the New York audiences,” Shea told CT in 2009. “And from then on, it became an ordinary at many of the crusades.”
One could argue that Hine’s decision to copyright the text and tune of “How Great Thou Art” halted the method that allowed the hymn to maneuver and adapt so freely between 1885 and his publication in 1949.
But it also allowed him to attempt to harness the song’s popularity and success for God’s kingdom, with royalties benefiting the Stuart Hine Trust. The UK-based organization funds Christian outreach and relief organizations all over the world, supporting Bible translation efforts and evangelism.
“When Carrie Underwood sings ‘How Great Thou Art’ in Vegas, that helps the song,” said Phil Loose, a volunteer trustee. “When people sing it, more royalties are available.”
If and when churches use Redman and Wong’s new edition, the songwriting royalties that typically flow to the cowriters may also go to the trust. It’s a striking example of how “music and mission collide,” said Loose.
Redman and Wong’s addition to “How Great Thou Art” comes after the fourth verse; it follows the structure of the verses but alters the normal melody, carrying on the forward-looking tone of Hine’s final verse:
Until that day
When heaven bids us welcome,
And as we walk this broken warring world,
Your kingdom come,
Deliver us from evil,
And we’ll proclaim our God how great You are!
Redman and Wong desired to acknowledge the connection between Stuart’s work in Ukraine and with Ukrainian refugees and the present conflict within the region.
“I wanted the word ‘war’ in there,” said Redman. “It’s form of a gritty word. But we’ve got to sing about each the on a regular basis and the everlasting.”
For Redman, “How Great Thou Art” is an example of a hymn that teaches and invites a response of praise—like inhaling and exhaling.
“I really like old hymns, but as wealthy and robust as they’re, sometimes they’ll offer a number of information and doctrine without inviting the singer to exhale, to reply in praise,” said Redman. “During the verses, I inhale. Then throughout the chorus, I get to exhale. The best hymns are each a chapel and a classroom.”
Maher finds that “How Great Thou Art” offers a splendidly compelling invitation to reply to encounters with God’s power in creation.
“‘Then sings my soul’ is something you possibly can grab with each hands,” said Maher. “It’s a response. It’s your invitation to reply.”
For Maher and Redman, the hymn offers doctrine and transcendence, it’s a classroom and a chapel. “How Great Thou Art” stays popular and resonant due to what it teaches and due to the response it invites.
It is an invite to sing, to praise, to approach God. Perhaps that is what made it such an excellent fit for Billy Graham’s Crusades, featured in arenas and on screens alongside an invite to salvation.
“It packs quite a theological punch,” said Redman. “There’s reenactment, realization, and anticipation. The song does an amazing job of encompassing all three.”
