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Amazing Grace at 250: Global Heritage and Contested Legacies book cover

1st Edition

Amazing Grace at 250 Global Heritage and Contested Legacies

Edited By Martin V. Clarke, Gareth Atkins Copyright 2026
310 Pages 15 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

310 Pages 15 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This book focuses on arguably the best-known Christian hymn worldwide. From the slave trade to the civil rights movement and from obscurity in its country of origin to global recognition, the origins, history, influence, and legacy of “Amazing Grace” are uniquely complex. The volume brings together historians, theologians, literary scholars, and musicologists to shed new light on the ways in... Read more

List of contributors

Faith’s Review and Expectation by John Newton

Foreword by Anthony G. Reddie

Introduction
Gareth Atkins and Martin V. Clarke

Part One: Global Heritage

1. The Enduring Textual Power of Amazing Grace”: John Newton’s Hymn as Exemplary Devotional Verse
Nancy Jiwon Cho

2. What is so Amazing about Grace? “Amazing Grace” in the Contexts of Eighteenth-Century Theology and Hymnody
Markus Rathey

3. Awaiting Grace: A Hymn Comes Home
Janet Wootton

4. From “Amazing Grace” to “Preciosa Graça”: Transnational Echoes of a Protestant Hymn
Marcell Silva Steuernagel

5. “Amazing Grace” and New Britain Beyond the Anglophone World: German Paraphrases and New Texts, 1971-2023
Walter Kurt Kreyszig

6. Recontextualizing “Amazing Grace” in Hong Kong: Its Social and Pastoral Meanings
Lam Yee-Lok Enoch

Part Two: Music and Musicians

7. “How Sweet the Sound”: “Amazing Grace” and the Eventual Ubiquity of NEW BRITAIN
Daniel Johnson

8. “Amazing Grace,” Aretha, and the Transcendent
Matthew A. Williams

9. Retuning “Amazing Grace”
Martin V. Clarke

10. Amazing Affordances: Revealing the idiomaticity of the harmonica through a classic hymn
Mikael Bäckman

Part Three: Contested Legacies

11. “Now I See:” Discussing blindness in hymnody
Gillian Warson

12. “Amazing Grace” for Lawyers: lessons from the first 250 years
Simon Lee

13. Through many dangers: “Amazing Grace” as an act of congregational care during crisis
Fiona Evison

14. “Amazing Grace” in Virtual Space: Two Pandemic Performances on YouTube
Mark Porter

15. The Making of Forever? A Poet’s Practice-Steeped Reflection
Rommi Smith

Index

Biography

Martin V. Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Music at The Open University, UK.

Gareth Atkins is Fellow, Tutor, and Director of Studies in History at Queens’ College, University of Cambridge, UK.

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