THE HISTORY OF HYMNS IN THE CHURCH: WHAT CHURCHES NEED TO KNOW_ BY BISHOP SAHR ISAAC PETERSON

Funnily enough, if you ask a Christian about the background of some things in church, they'd feel so intimidated that you'd be hated with indignation (if a care isn't take). That's why we worship God in the church but without knowing God. Why? You can't even defend the scripture you're reading. Thus, I bring you a brief background of a woman, perhaps, you never knew, but really suffered behind most of the hymns you sing today. 

You even sing those songs while scrolling through WhatsApp. You sing them at funerals. You sing them on Sunday mars. Albeit, you never knew when and how those lines entered the church today. Well, sincerely speaking, I'm here to help you uncover the rare truth. 

For a start, when I first heard the name Fanny Crosby when I was struggling to pray and a hymn came on the radio, and I wept because the words seemed to know my heart before I even spoke. 

Fanny Crosby was a blind American hymn writer born in 1820, and though darkness took her sight at six weeks old, she said she would not trade her blindness for the world because it let her see Jesus more clearly. She wrote over 8,000 hymns in her lifetime. 

Songs like “Blessed Assurance,” “To God Be the Glory,” and “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior” were not just poems to her. They were prayers, testimonies, and sermons set to music. 

What moves me most about Fanny is that she lived the Bible instead of just reading it. 

She memorized large portions of Scripture as a child in the New York Institute for the Blind, and she would often say that the Word of God was the lamp that guided her steps. Even though people pitied her, she refused to be bitter. 

She visited hospitals, prisons, and mission halls in New York, singing to the broken and telling them about a Savior who sees us. She turned her pain into praise, and her praise into a lifeline for millions. 

As a Christian, I have come to learn that knowing the stories of people like Fanny is not just church history. 

It is survival. When I know how David cried out in the Psalms, how Paul sang in prison, how Fanny wrote “Blessed Assurance” out of trust and not sight, then I remember that I am not the first child of God to walk through a hard place. 

The Bible is not a dead book to me anymore. It is alive, and it is raising other living children. 

Methinks, I am urging you, my brother, my sister: know the stories. Know the Word. 

Let the lives of the saints and the truth of Scripture teach you how to live, how to worship in the dark, and how to keep singing. Because if a blind woman could see God so clearly, then surely we who have eyes can learn to walk as children of light too.

© Bishop Sahr Isaac Peterson

On Mentorship

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July 25th, Saturday, 2026.