The hymn Amazing Grace is amazingly ubiquitous. I've no idea how many renderings of it there are. But without straining a single mental muscle I can list the following which I've heard at least once, and one or two of them countless times
The Pipes and Drums and Military band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards
Judy Collins
Jessye Norman
The Blind Brothers of Alabama
Elvis
Susan Boyle
Paul Potts
Aretha Franklin
Mahalia Jackson
But the most spectacularly over the top rendering I've ever heard is on the Lesley Garrett CD Amazing Grace. By over the top I mean no criticism whatsoever. For once a full orchestra, a soprano showing off, and creative choreography does justice to a song written out of appalling human abuse, and yet which celebrates a faith in which the gift of God is the power of love to restore and renew human brokenness, to break down dividing walls of hostility, to begin the work of the reconciliation of all things in Christ.
I know no better portrayal of John Newton's lifelong sorrow for his own actions than Albert Finnie's anguished and sympathetic portrayal in the DVD of the recent film. The sorrow and anger of the converted slaver, the inability to erase the past, the felt insufficiency of personal forgiveness from God to complete the circle of reconciliation, until there is forgiveness from those who have been wronged, and until the wrong itself is abolished, highlights a crucial theological and pastoral insight. Forgiveness by God can never exclude the necessity of that kind of repentance that brings us to those we have wronged to state the wrong, to confess our sins against them, to say we are sorry, to ask what would heal or help restore a relationship so damaged, and to give ourselves to the abolition of such patterns of behaviour as caused the wrong in the first place.
Given such human misery inflicted by the slave trade, and a Gospel of utter surprising love, and the tragedy of human history that can never be reversed, more is required in the singing of Amazing Grace than anodyne and safe renderings that are musically competent, even brilliant. I'm not even sure that the hymn is best sung as a congregational praise song, unless there is an awareness not only of its provenance, but of the complicity of Christianity in human trafficking, and an open knowledge that such trade was providing the economic sub-structure of an empire that still shapes contemporary attitudes to the worlds and cultures of other people. Something needs to jolt us awake to what is being sung, and to our capacity to be blind, culpably and callously blind to the suffering of others, often enough only because it is culturally approved and economically convenient.
The track in the Garrett version begins with African voices singing Alleluia but in rhythms reminiscent of the workforce, the clanking of irons is heard here and throughout the first sections, and the first bars introduce the wistful sound of wind instruments rising in aspiration and longing before the first words are sung. The slow build of the song towards the climax begins with solo voice, then the rhythm and clicking of African percussion, before a soprano descant and then the choral voices offer a supportive base for soprano pyrotechnics which are not the least out of place - there is a soaring hopefulness and triumph that simply defies the inhumanity out of which this hymn emerged.
Amazing Grace is one of the few hymns that needs more than one rendering to come anywhere near doing justice to the ambivalence of its provenance and the intensity of the personal experience of conversion out of which it came. For quite other reasons the version by the Blind Boys of Alabama is equally compelling - arranged and sung to the tune House of the Rising Sun.
It too explores the ambiguities and certainties of a hymn which it seems is popular well beyond the evangelical circles out of which it came and within which it still resonates in personal experiences of God. And it does so within the musical idiom of African American people, for whom the words touch deep into their personal and social history. How there can be congruence between a hymn written by a converted slave trader, and the great, great, great, great grandchildren of people stolen from their home of land and family, is one of the mysteries of that grace that is sung about in this hymn. Maybe there is no congruence in grace - it doesn't fit with our human standards of guilt, just deserts, cruelty, inhumane thoughtlessness - it contradicts and seeks to transform them.
I reckon a whole seminar could be built around exploring the text and sub text of this hymn, based on the way people have sung it, and hear it. A time of learning when we are honest and open to the ambiguities out of which this anthem of grace came, which emerged from such tragic times. yes, and which is sung in times still tragic, with our own sins of oppression, and perhaps our own blindness to our complicity in the structures of sin that condemn countless millions to the slaveries that are essential to globalised markets on the current models.
Does anyone else know renderings of Amazing Grace that you have found are as richly textured in musical and spiritual reach? Just decided I'd like to do such a seminar or retreat evening.
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