Timothy Dudley-Smith, writer of “Tell Out, My Soul,” “Lord, for the Years,” “Sing a New Song,” and greater than 400 other hymns, died in Cambridge, England, on August 12. He was 97.
Dudley-Smith was a Church of England bishop, serving because the suffragan, or assistant bishop, of Thetford in Norwich for 12 years before he retired in 1991. Prior to taking a position in leadership, he served as director of the Church Pastoral Aid Society.
He was all the time more widely known, nevertheless, for his hymns. Many Anglicans deeply cherished his words.
“These hymns restore our faith, not only within the gospel, but additionally within the motion of singing that gospel together, with heart, and soul, and voice,” a retired English professor on the University of Durham wrote in 2006. “Dudley-Smith never lets us down. There aren’t any weak lines, no approximate rhymes, no distortions of syntax, no fumbled metres … no bad hymns.”
Dudley-Smith’s hottest hymn, “Tell Out, My Soul,” has been published 190 times in Great Britain and can also be popular within the US and elsewhere. It was first written in 1961, and by 1985, appeared in 42 percent of all contemporary hymnals, based on hymnary.org.
Ten of Dudley-Smith’s other songs have been published greater than two dozen times. “Faithful Vigil Ended”—“Faithful vigil ended / watching waiting stop / Master, grant thy servant / his discharge in peace”—has appeared in 28 different hymnals. “Name of All Majesty,” written in 1979, appears in greater than 70, including translations in French, Korean, and Chinese.
Dudley-Smith was a committed evangelical and identified with evangelicalism from childhood. But his work was embraced across party lines within the Church of England.
Ian Bradley, a church historian, hymnal editor, and BBC journalist, wrote that Dudley-Smith represented “a really orthodox Anglican tradition of hymn writing” and was “unashamedly evangelical.” At the identical time, his work was seen as “very English,” based on Bradley, and in some way “broad enough to encompass Noël Coward, W. S. Gilbert, Stephen Sondheim, and Shakespeare, in addition to J. I. Packer and Martyn Lloyd-Jones.”
Dudley-Smith, for his part, was often very modest about his hymns. He incessantly noted he wasn’t actually musical and didn’t write any of the music, just the metrical poetry that could possibly be put to numerous singable melodies. He titled his 2017 book on hymn writing A Functional Art.
“Not all our hymn texts might be, and even ought to be, Rolls-Royces,” Dudley-Smith wrote, “but they need to all be decently roadworthy, and as true to Scripture, as free from blemish, as rigorously constructed, as appealing to the imagination, heart, and can, and as user-friendly as we will make them.”
Dudley-Smith was born to folks Phyllis and Arthur in Manchester on December 26, 1926—Boxing Day. His father was a schoolteacher who incessantly read poetry to his children, often putting them to bed with verses from A. E. Housman, Walter de la Mare, and Alfred Tennyson:
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are usually not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we’re, we’re;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To Strive, to hunt, to search out, and never to yeild
That trinity of Victorian poets got here to be his favorites, followed by Twentieth-century British figures akin to T. S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, and John Betjeman.
When Dudley-Smith was 11, his father died. He later recalled that was a pivotal moment for his faith.
“I had prayed after I knew he was unwell, and you may think that my prayers not altering the situation would have put me off,” he said in an interview. “But it didn’t. It introduced me to my need of a heavenly Father.”
Around the identical time, Dudley-Smith decided he desired to be a minister.
“Someone at a family tea party said to me (as they did in those days), ‘What are you going to be while you grow up?’ I discovered myself replying, ‘I’m going to be a parson.’ It just got here out. It was the primary I knew of it myself!” he said.
Dudley-Smith was energetic in Scripture Union and learned the Bible within the group’s children’s programs. His faith deepened at a boys’ summer camp run by the conservative evangelical Church of England cleric E. J. H. Nash.
When he went to Cambridge, he considered pursing an education in math and education, like his late father, but ultimately selected theology. He studied at Pembroke College after which did ordination training at Ridely Hall, each in Cambridge.
Dudley-Smith was ordained as a deacon in 1950 and a priest in ’51. His bishop—a former Olympic athlete and rugby player often known as “the flying curate”—supported evangelist Billy Graham’s trip to England in 1954 and encouraged Dudley-Smith to become involved. The young minister helped ferry droves of schoolboys to the north London racetrack where Graham preached for 4 weeks, after which, responding to popular demand, prolonged his stay for 2 additional months.
The following 12 months, Dudley-Smith joined the staff of the Evangelical Alliance and have become editor of the organization’s magazine, Crusade.
His journalism won accolades from the priest accountable for religious broadcasting for BBC. The magazine was “something distinctly latest in religious journalism in Britain. It was a glossy magazine … it had cartoons and a way of humour, and it mixed devotional material with commentary on world events and—its editor’s trademark innovation—serious poetry.”
Dudley-Smith’s love of poetry was well-known by colleagues, and he also wrote his own verse. He had considered trying to put in writing songs but dismissed the chance.
“I’m totally unmusical!” he said. “I can’t sing in tune and infrequently change key without knowing it.”
In the early Sixties, nevertheless, a priest working on the brand new Anglican Hymnbook approached him and asked if he wrote hymns. When he said no, the priest said, “Have you written any verse that may make a hymn?” And the reply to that was yes.
Dudley-Smith had been assigning someone to review the New English Bible for the Crusade and happened to have a look at Mary’s song of praise, the Magnificat, in Luke 1.
“Their version of Mary’s song begins, ‘Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord,’” Dudley-Smith later recalled. “I said to myself, ‘That’s verse,’ and wrote up 4 short verses.”
It became his first and hottest hymn:
Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord!
Unnumbered blessings, give my spirit voice;
tender to me the promise of his word;
in God my Saviour shall my heart rejoice.
The hymnal editors, nevertheless, first set it to a tune that didn’t work. At a conference of 600 clergy working through the songs, people actually quit singing it halfway through. Then the words were set to Woodlands, a tune composed within the early 1900s, and that worked. The hymn was well received and got here to be widely sung.
The poet Betjeman said it was “one in every of the few modern hymns that may truly last.”
The editors of the brand new Anglican Hymnbook suggested more religious themes that Dudley-Smith could write on, and he made hymn writing an everyday a part of his life and ministry. He published a volume of his hymns in 1966 and one other in ’69. Together, they sold multiple million copies.
His prodigious output drew comparisons to Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley, and a few contemporaries hailed him as the best evangelical hymn author of his day.
Dudley-Smith’s daughter Caroline Gill recalls he would write a lot of the hymns while on holiday in Cornwall.
“My father would rise early to pore prayerfully over his Bible and write in his manuscript book, which contained snatches of text that had accrued throughout the 12 months, able to be honed into hymns,” Gill wrote. “My father occasionally worked on a text on the beach, between a pasty lunch and a day surf.”
Though he wrote loads, it didn’t all the time flow. He wanted his hymns to be easy and deep, heartfelt and clear, biblical but uncontroversial. Too much repetition would make him cringe, and he also recoiled from approximate rhymes, like sin and king. He described his process as slow, careful, and laborious.
“I find you’ve got to be prepared for 2 lines from a few hours’ work,” he once said, “and on subsequent review to scrap them.”
The work was value it, though, due to impact the hymns had on people’s lives.
“Many people learn more theology from hymns than from anywhere else,” Dudley-Smith said. “They provide a company participation in a singular way, enabling an expression of praise, penitence, commitment, and an entire range of things together. Also, I feel, for many individuals, the hymn offers the possibility to specific emotions that are of their hearts, but which they’d find difficulty in articulating themselves.”
Dudley-Smith’s second-most popular hymn, “Lore, for the Years,” became popular at Church of England New Year’s services and anniversaries. It was also used to solemnize national religious ceremonies within the UK, including the enthronement of the Anglican archbishop in 1991 and Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee in 2002.
He was made an officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire—several ranks below a knighthood—in 2003 for his “services to hymnody.”
Dudley-Smith also wrote a licensed two-volume biography of evangelical leader John Stott, who was a private friend. Vol. 1 was titled John Stott: The Making of a Leader; Vol. 2, John Stott: A Global Ministry. He edited an anthology of Charles Wesley’s hymns and a set of English hymns, and continued writing his own hymns into retirement.
“Hymn writing has been for me a most enriching and fully unexpected gift,” he said.
He called it “one of the best of all trades.”
Dudley-Smith’s wife, June Arlette MacDonald, died in 2007 after 48 years of marriage. He is survived by daughters Caroline Gill and Sarah Walter and son James Dudley-Smith, who followed him into ministry within the Church of England.
