Great God, your love has called us here

Brian Wren’s verses, intended as a modern counterpart or ‘revisioning’ (not replacement) of And can it be (776), make a striking representative of the late 20th-c ‘explosion’ of hymnwriting. The author aimed to widen Wesley’s perspective ‘to include deliverance from sin as conditioned responses and entrapment in socio-economic structures’; the 1st-person pronouns are plural, not singular. In his Piece Together Praise (1995) it is headed ‘Cleansing and Deliverance’. The original text dates from April 1973 when it began ‘Lord God, your love …’ (so at 3.1 and 5.1); the author revised it in 1982 and 1989. It was dedicated to Erik Routley, published in the 1975 URC supplement New Church Praise, and soon found a place in many full-scale hymnals. John 13 is its main scriptural source; see also 315, note.

The words were written for Routley’s tune ABINGDON which he had composed for And can it be, and have been set to Norman Cocker’s RYBURN which has also been paired with the older hymn. For notes on Henry Carey’s SURREY, see 240.

b Romford, Essex 1936. Romford Liberty Grammar Sch; New Coll Oxford (BA Mod Langs 1960); Mansfield Coll Oxford 1960–62, followed by research on OT prophets (PhD 1968). He was ordained in 1965 to the Congregational (now URC) ministry, beginning at Hockley, Essex until 1970. He then worked with the Churches’ Committee on World Development, and 1976–83 for the Oxford-based Third World First. He has also worked with Christian Aid, Oxfam and War on Want, and in 1991 moved permanently to the USA. His hymnwriting began in 1962, and along with other books he has published several hymn-collections from Mainly Hymns (1980) onwards and including the autobiographical Piece Together Praise (1996), some texts revised many times as language and his own perception of it has moved on. In 1996 he wrote What Language Shall I Borrow?. He served on the committee for New Church Praise (1975); 13 of his items are in the 1991 URC book Rejoice and Sing, 10 in the Methodist Hymns and Psalms (1993). Formerly based in Decatur, Georgia, USA, he is represented in many current N American books. He was commended by Erik Routley in 1979 for ‘the felicitous expression of profound theological ideas’ and by Paul A Richardson (2005) for ‘the relation of a realistic view of daily life to an optimistic theology’. He has also taught and written on the vital connection between hymns and preaching. In 2009, living in NE Pennsylvania, he produced a further collection of texts 2004-08, Love’s Open Door. Nos.596, 650.