Amaz­ing Grace is one of the most recog­nis­able songs in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world — who hasn’t been exposed count­less times to these icon­ic open­ing lines?

Amaz­ing grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see

It was writ­ten in 1772 by Eng­lish Angli­can cler­gy­man John New­ton (1725–1807), drawn very much from per­son­al expe­ri­ence. He had grown up with­out any par­tic­u­lar reli­gious bent and after a time hav­ing been press­ganged into ser­vice with the Roy­al Navy, he became involved in the Atlantic slave trade. How­ev­er, in 1748 he was on a ves­sel caught up in a storm so vio­lent that he begged God for mer­cy and under­went (hav­ing pre­sum­ably got his feet back on ter­ra fir­ma) some­thing of a spir­i­tu­al con­ver­sion. There­after, New­ton gave up sea­far­ing, stud­ied Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy, and became a vocal abo­li­tion­ist. He once was lost but now was found.

New­ton was ordained into the Church of Eng­land in 1764, and took a post as curate at Olney in Buck­ing­hamshire, where he met and began to write hymns with William Cow­per (who him­self would become a cel­e­brat­ed poet and hymnodist). They wrote Amaz­ing Grace to illus­trate a ser­mon New­ton was giv­ing on New Year’s Day 1773 with the mes­sage that for­give­ness and redemp­tion are pos­si­ble regard­less of sins com­mit­ted and that the soul can be deliv­ered from despair through the mer­cy of God. It debuted in print in 1779 in their col­lab­o­ra­tive Olney Hymns.

At this stage, Amaz­ing Grace, like all the oth­er Olney hymns, was still rel­a­tive­ly obscure but it took off in the Unit­ed States when it was picked up and exten­sive­ly used by Bap­tist and Methodist preach­ers dur­ing the Protes­tant revival move­ment of the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry (the so-called Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing). In 1835, Amer­i­can com­pos­er William Walk­er set the words to the tune known as New Britain and this is the ver­sion you’ll hear today.

The song has unsur­pris­ing­ly become a sta­ple of Gospel music, and has also crossed over into sec­u­lar music with a par­tic­u­lar influ­ence in folk music. It’s been record­ed thou­sands of times in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, from Elvis Pres­ley to the Roy­al Scots Dra­goon Guards; today though, I offer a ver­sion by Amer­i­can folk singer Judy Collins, record­ed in 1993 with the Boys’ Choir of Harlem.