Onward, Christian Soldiers

“Onward, Christian Soldiers” is a 19th-century English hymn. The words were written by Sabine Baring-Gould in 1865, and the music was composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1871. Sullivan named the tune “St Gertrude,” after the wife of his friend Ernest Clay Ker Seymer, at whose country home he composed the tune.The Salvation Army adopted the hymn as its favoured processional. The piece became Sullivan’s most popular hymn. The hymn’s theme is taken from references in the New Testament to the Christian being a soldier for Christ, for example II Timothy 2:3 (KJV): “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” The lyric was written as a processional hymn for children walking from Horbury Bridge, where Baring-Gould was curate, to Horbury St Peter’s Church near Wakefield, Yorkshire, at Whitsuntide in 1865. It was originally entitled, “Hymn for Procession with Cross and Banners.” According to the Centre for Church Music, Baring-Gould reportedly wrote “Onward, Christian Soldiers” in about 15 minutes, later apologising, “It was written in great haste, and I am afraid that some of the lines are faulty. He later allowed hymn-book compilers to alter the lyrics. For example, The Fellowship Hymn Book, with his permission, changed the phrase “one in hope and doctrine” to “one in hope and purpose.” For the 1909 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, he changed the fifth line of the same verse from “We are not divided” to “Though divisions harass.” However, Baring-Gould’s original words are used in most modern hymnals. Baring-Gould originally set the lyrics to a melody from the slow movement of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony in D, No. 15. This was printed in 1871 in an English church periodical, the Church Times. The hymn did not receive wide acceptance, however, until Sullivan wrote the tune “St. Gertrude” for it. Sullivan quoted the tune in his Boer War Te Deum, first performed in 1902, after his death. Another hymn sung to the St. Gertrude tune is “Forward Through the Ages”, written by Frederick Lucian Hosmer (1840–1929) in 1908. When Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt met in August 1941 on the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to agree the Atlantic Charter, a church service was held for which Prime Minister Churchill chose the hymns. He chose “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and afterwards made a radio broadcast explaining this choice: We sang “Onward, Christian Soldiers” indeed, and I felt that this was no vain presumption, but that we had the right to feel that we were serving a cause for the sake of which a trumpet has sounded from on high. When I looked upon that densely packed congregation of fighting men of the same language, of the same faith, of the same fundamental laws, of the same ideals … it swept across me that here was the only hope, but also the sure hope, of saving the world from measureless degradation. The song has been sung at many funerals, including at the funeral of American president Dwight D. Eisenhower at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., in March 1969. Apart from its obvious martial associations, the song has been associated with protest against the established order, particularly in the case of the civil rights movement. An attempt was made in the 1980s to strip “Onward, Christian Soldiers” from the United Methodist Hymnal and the Episcopal Hymnal 1982 due to perceived militarism. Outrage among church-goers caused both committees to back down. However, the hymn was omitted from both the 1990 and 2013 hymnals of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ] the Australian Hymn Book, published in 1977, its successor, Together in Song, (1999) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s 2006 hymnal. The Spiritualists’ National Union hymnbook has a variation on the hymn, entitled “Onward, Comrades, Onward”. In some modern Anglican hymn books, it is replaced with Onward, Christian Pilgrims set to the same tune.