18 pages • 36-minute read
Amazing Grace
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Light Shining Out of Darkness” by William Cowper (1774)
English poet Cowper and Newton were friends who composed poetry together and published their work in the same collection. Like in Newton’s hymn, Cowper’s hymn presents God as an indomitable force that provides permanence and supplies hope within a precarious world. However, unlike Newton, whose God is an intangible force of grace, Cowper gives his version of God concrete traits like “footsteps” (Line 3).
“Blowin’ in the Wind” by Bob Dylan (1962)
Like “Amazing Grace,” “Blowin’ in the Wind” explicitly portrays the precarious world. The solution to the violence and iniquity lies in the wind—a powerful force that offers the stability of omnipresence and can bolster people the way that Newton’s God uplifts Newton’s speaker.
“Speech to the Young” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1991)
In this poetic address, Brooks’s speaker tells young people not to strive for dramatic triumphs but to humbly engage with the present—a message starkly different from Newton’s narrative of conversion. Salvation and transformation doesn’t occur through a theatrical embrace of God; rather, progress manifests doggedly and quietly.
Further Literary Resources
The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (1678)
Newton read and lectured on Bunyan’s Christian allegory, which focuses on a man who, like Newton’s speaker, is in search of salvation. God’s grace fortifies Bunyan’s protagonist, Christian, who eventually finds heavenly reward alongside his Christiana. While Bunyan’s story presents salvation as an active quest that readers must undertake despite its dangers, “Amazing Grace” shows God’s grace as the active force and the speaker as its passive recipient.
Amazing Grace: The Story of America’s Most Beloved Song by Steve Turner (2002)
Turner provides a multilayered account of “Amazing Grace.” He supplies a detailed biography of Newton and his life and illuminates how “Amazing Grace” went from a relatively unexceptional British hymn to one the most famous songs in the United States. He then provides a comprehensive overview of how “Amazing Grace” inserted itself into popular culture, and he offers a few interpretations of the hymn.
Listen to Poem
Barack Obama sings “Amazing Grace” by John Newton
There are many renditions of “Amazing Grace.” A variety of musicians have recorded the song, including Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Judy Collins. At the 2015 funeral for South Carolina State Senator the Reverend Clementa Pickney, President Barack Obama sang the hymn. Pickney was one of nine people who died on June 17, 2015, during a racist attack on Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
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