A hymn that has struck a responsive chord almost since it was written is the subject of a PBS Television special this month. Scheduled for airing on September 12, “Amazing Grace with Bill Moyers” tracks the popularity and power of this enduring hymn across continents and time.
“That’s one song that gets to everybody,” declares a voice-over narration at the outset. And through personal testimony and in a variety of geographic and musical settings, the point is made. Moyers, unobtrusive as he interviews “name” musicians ranging from Judy Collins, Jean Ritchie, and Johnny Cash, to operatic soprano Jessye Norman and the Boys’ Choir of Harlem, says of the hymn, “There’s a power of reconciliation that takes place when I hear it.” Moyers was compelled to learn about the song when he thought about it on his way home from the 1986 U.S.-Soviet summit in Iceland.
As amazing as the story of its influence is the story of the hymn’s writer, John Newton, whose conversion changed him from a slave trader to the ardent abolitionist who influenced William Wilber-force. Newton, the program points out, truly considered himself the “wretch” of the hymn’s first line.
The universality of the hymn’s transforming power is never more poignant than in the sequence filmed among prison inmates in Huntsville, Texas. As one inmate translated the hymn’s meaning, “The only way out is up.”
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