Olney Hymns

The Olney Hymns /ˈoʊni/ were first published in February 1779 and are the combined work of curate John Newton (1725–1807) and his poet friend William Cowper (1731–1800).

The Olney Hymns are an illustration of the potent ideologies of the Evangelical movement, to which both men belonged, present in many communities in England at the time.

"Amazing Grace" as it is popularly known was first set to the tune "New Britain" by William Walker in The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion in 1835.

Notable local Dissenters included John Bunyan, from Bedford, author of the Pilgrim's Progress, and another important hymn writer, Philip Doddridge (1702–51), from Northampton.

Newton's own associations with Dissenters (his mother was one) meant he was in a position to conciliate with, rather than confront, his parishioners, and he quickly achieved a reputation as a popular preacher.

Within his first year at Olney a gallery was added to the church to increase its congregational capacity, and the weekly prayer-meetings were moved in 1769 to Lord Dartmouth's mansion, the Great House, to accommodate even greater numbers.

Cowper was liable to bouts of severe depression throughout his adult life, and during a period in an asylum he was counselled by his cousin, Martin Madan, an Evangelical clergyman.

The Olney Hymns are in part an expression of Newton's and Cowper's personal religious faith and experience, and a reflection of the principal tenets of the Evangelical faith: the inherent sinfulness of man; religious conversion; atonement; activism; devotion to the Bible; God's providence; and the belief in an eternal life after death.

In the Church of England, hymns other than metrical psalms were of questionable legality until the 1820s, as they were not explicitly sanctioned by the Book of Common Prayer.

Newton also explains his two primary motives for publishing: his desire to promote "the faith and comfort of sincere Christians", and as a permanent record of his friendship with Cowper.

For example, the tune Austria (originally Haydn's "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser", an Austrian patriotic anthem) is associated today with the hymn Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken, just as New Britain, an American folk melody believed to be Scottish or Irish in origin, has since the 1830s been associated with Amazing Grace.

Book I holds that the Bible is the ultimate source of religious authority, and its hymns are written to provide the believer, through simple language, with a thorough understanding of its contents.

The relative rise in popularity of the Evangelical movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was due to a number of reasons: the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent break-up of, particularly, rural communities, was an unsettling influence on a parish like Olney; Methodism had seen a significant growth in popularity in the same period; and Evangelicalism was gradually finding its way into the established Church of England.