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In the secular sense, people would see it as a song about transformation. And that's quite important to the whole American experience. Nearly everybody's related to somebody who was in some condition of poverty or persecution and they left, came to another country, started up again, and tried to improve themselves and make a better life for their kids. It segues into the American experience in a way that it doesn't in England.

And it's being passed on from generation to generation. It's like an inheritance in many American families.

Curiously, I had to learn the song from the folkies. In my particular church, the hymnal used a wretched tune, so we never sang those wonderful words.

In England it wasn't in a lot of hymnals. It wasn't even in the Episcopal hymnbook in America until the early '80s. It's ironic that Judy Collins is really responsible for putting it into a lot of British hymnbooks for the first time.

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Amazing Grace: The Story of America's Most Beloved Song by Steve Turner is this month's selection for the Christianity Today Editor's Bookshelf. Elsewhere on our site, you can:

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March (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47