Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 08:1 (Winter 1994)
Article: English Women Hymnwriters
Author: Julia Ann Flora

PP 8:1 (Winter 1994) p. 8

English Women Hymnwriters

Julia Ann Flora

Julia Ann Flora is a student of hymnology, who has done research at Ashland Seminary specializing in women hymn writers.

The nineteenth-century secular women’s movement paved the way in many countries for more women’s education, writing, and publishing. The church also benefited by this escalation of women in leadership; many Christian hymnbooks printed material by women for the first time.

Revivals and church renewal movements contributed to the outburst of inspiration for women to reach higher ideals and intellectual achievement. Preceding the period of women hymnwriters, the eighteenth century experienced the Wesleyan groups breaking away from the Church of England, “societies” which later became the Methodist denomination. Their leader John Wesley worked with his brother Charles, who provided the music for their evangelistic meetings.

The Wesleyans emphasized a personal experience of accepting Christ as Savior. They became more subjective in their worship, as opposed to the more objective Anglicans. Consequently their hymns emphasized the life-saving aspect of Christianity.

A large number of English women hymnwriters were associated with the “evangelical wing” or “evangelical side” of the Church of England. This group was influenced by the Wesleys, but did not want to break from the Anglican tradition.

Charlotte Elliott

Such a hymnwriter was Charlotte Elliott, who wrote what has been called the world’s greatest soul-winning hymn, “Just As I Am.” The most popular and the first of one hundred fifty hymn texts she wrote during her literary career, it has been translated into nearly every language.

Charlotte Elliott was born in Clapham, England in 1789, a year after Charles Wesley died, and lived for eighty-two years. Even though her life was long she lived most of it as an invalid because of a serious illness which struck her at age thirty-two. Her life was transformed after she met the evangelist Cesar Malan, with whom she corresponded for forty years.

Much of her poetry appeared in Hymns for a Week, which sold forty thousand copies. She published other books, and for twenty-five years (1834-1859) she edited a periodical called Christian Remembrancer Pocketbook where she contributed many of her own hymns.

“Just As I Am” was written in 1836 when she was forty-seven. Her minister brother was raising funds to help Mary’s Hall, Brighton, a college for the daughters of poor clergymen. A bazaar was held for this purpose, and all the Elliott family were busy preparing for it. Charlotte was awake most of the night before the bazaar feeling sad that...