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Fanny Crosby, America’s Hymn Queen

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Mercy Crosby held her tiny daughter’s hands as little Fanny’s face contorted in a scream of pure agony.

“Doctor, are you sure you have to do this to her?,” Mercy asked through tears of anguish.

“Mrs. Crosby, I know it’s hard to hear little Fanny scream like this, but we must draw out the infection. These hot mustard poultices are the best way to do it.”

“But she is so small, only six weeks old. Maybe we should wait until our regular doctor returns to town.” Mercy tried her best to shut out tiny Fanny’s screams, but it proved too difficult. If anything, her screams were getting louder.

The impatient doctor replied, “Mrs. Crosby, as I told you, waiting would only make the infection worse. I know the treatment hurts Fanny, but it’s much better to treat the infection immediately. You never know what may happen if an eye infection is left untreated.”

Mercy reluctantly accepted the doctor’s diagnosis. Although Fanny’s screams eventually subsided to a whimper, they still lingered in her mother’s memory. The infection in Fanny’s eyes did go away, but her corneas had been burned in the process and scars began to form over them. In the weeks that followed, long after the unknown doctor left town, John and Mercy realized that their daughter was not responding to visual stimuli. Soon, their worst fears were realized: young Fanny was completely blind. The doctor was revealed to be a quack and disappeared. In time, she would become America’s hymn queen.

The future musical monarch, Fanny Jane Crosby, was born on March 24, 1820, in the village of Brewster, fifty miles north of New York City, the only child of John and Mercy Crosby. When she was six months old, her father died. Her mother was forced to work as a maid and she was mostly raised by her Christian grandmother. These women grounded her in Christian principles and instilled in her an abiding faith in God.  

Fanny would later write of her grandmother: “My grandmother was more to me than I could ever express by word or pen.” Her grandmother Eunice took the time to help her granddaughter “see” the world around her. They spent hours walking in the meadow, where Eunice would describe the sights around her in as vivid detail as possible. Many hours would also be spent in an old rocking chair where Eunice would describe to Fanny the intricate details of flowers and birds around her, or the beauty of sunrise or sunset.

Although Fanny was blind, she never considered herself handicapped. She did many of the things that other children did and accepted her blindness with a positive attitude that is evident in a poem that she wrote when she was just eight years old. She maintained this positive outlook her whole life and considered her blindness a blessing and not a curse. She refused to feel sorry for herself. She once stated, “It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me.”

“I think it is a great pity that the Master did not give you sight when he showered so many other gifts upon you,” remarked one well-meaning preacher.

Fanny Crosby responded at once, as she had heard such comments before. “Do you know that if at birth I had been able to make one petition, it would have been that I was born blind?” said the poet, who had been able to see only for her first six weeks of life. “Because when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior.”

Grandma Eunice spent many hours reading the Bible to Fanny and teaching her the importance of prayer and a close relationship with God. She soon discovered Fanny’s amazing gift for memorization. She encouraged her to memorize long passages of the Bible. She memorized five chapters of the Bible per week from age ten; by age fifteen, she had memorized the four gospels, the Pentateuch, the book of Proverbs, the Song of Solomon and many of the Psalms. Fanny remarked, “The Holy Book has nurtured my whole life.”

Her mother’s hard work paid off. Shortly before her fifteenth birthday, Fanny was sent to the recently founded New York Institute for the Blind. Lessons were taught by lecture, as Braille was not widely used at this time. Her phenomenal memory helped her retain the information she heard and she enjoyed her studies.

In 1843, she joined the Institute faculty and taught history and rhetoric for the next fifteen years. During this time, she gained recognition as a poet and rubbed shoulders with well-known people such as President James K. Polk, Henry Clay, and William Cullen Bryant. She also recited poetry before a joint session of Congress in April 1846 to advocate for the education of the blind. The audience included Jefferson Davis and former president James Quincy Adams. When she finished her recitation, the applause was so deafening it sounded like thunder and frightened her. Her encore was so moving that it moved many Congressmen to tears. She even befriended future president Grover Cleveland, then age 17, while teaching at the Institute. The two spent hours together at the end of each day and he often transcribed the poems that she dictated to him. He wrote her a recommendation that was published in her 1906 autobiography. She wrote a poem to be read at the dedication of Cleveland’s birthplace at Caldwell, New Jersey, being unable to attend due to ill health.

Fanny and others at the Institute often travelled giving concerts and programs to make people aware of the school and what it offered to the blind. On one such trip, Fanny met an acquaintance that would prove significant for her life. Mary Van Alstine was so impressed by the Institute that she determined to send her twelve-year-old boy there as soon as she could. She wanted Fanny to be his instructor and told the twenty-three-old teacher, “Take good care of my boy!” She did take good care of him but what no one realized is that the two would later marry!

“Van,” as Fanny called him, was the first of the school’s students to attend “regular college.” After obtaining his teaching certificate, he returned to the Institute as a music teacher, where he and Fanny connected over their mutual love of music and poetry. Despite the age difference, their friendship blossomed into love, and on March 5, 1858, the two married. Considered one of New York’s best organists, he wrote the music to many of her hymns. Fanny put the music to only a few of her hymns, even though she played piano, guitar, harp, and other instruments. More often than not, musicians came to her for lyrics.

For example, one day musician William Doane dropped by her home for a surprise visit, begging her to put some words to a tune he had recently written and which he was to perform at an upcoming Sunday School convention. The only problem was that his train to the convention was leaving in 35 minutes. He sat at the piano and played the tune.

“Your music says, ‘Safe in the Arms of Jesus,’” Crosby remarked. She quickly scribbled down the lyrics. “Read it on the train and hurry. You don’t want to be late!” It became one of her most famous hymns.

Fanny is best remembered for the nearly 9,000 hymns she wrote. Amazingly, she did not start writing hymns until her forties. Publisher and hymn writer William B. Bradbury was not happy with the quality of the hymns that were submitted to him for publication. He had heard of Fanny’s talent and after verifying her ability, he hired her to write hymns telling her, “As long as I have a publishing house, you will have work.”

Though she was under contract to submit three hymns a week to her publisher and often wrote six or seven a day, many became incredibly popular. When Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey began to use them in their crusades, they received even more attention. Among them are “Blessed Assurance,” “All the Way My Savior Leads Me,” “To God Be the Glory,” “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior,” “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” “Rescue the Perishing,” and “Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross.”

From 1871 to 1908, she worked with Ira Sankey who helped turn her into a household name for Protestants around the globe. While Sankey was the premier promoter of gospel songs, Crosby was their premier provider. Sankey and Moody brought many of her hymns to the attention of Christians in the United States and Britain. Crosby was friends with Ira Sankey and his wife, Frances, and often stayed at their home in Northfield, Massachusetts, for the annual Summer Christian Workers’ Conference, and later at their home in Brooklyn. After Sankey’s eyesight was destroyed by glaucoma in March 1903, their friendship grew even deeper and they continued to compose hymns together at his home.

She once described her writing process in this way: “It may seem a little old-fashioned, always to begin one’s work with prayer, but I never undertake a hymn without first asking the good Lord to be my inspiration.” And God never ceased to provide inspiration for her music.

Though she is best remembered for her hymns, she wanted to be remembered as a rescue mission worker. She even said that her official occupation was mission worker.

Many of her hymns were inspired by her work in city missions. She was inspired to write Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior, after speaking at a service at the Manhattan Prison in 1868, after hearing comments by the prisoner asking the Lord not to pass them by. It became her first hymn to have global appeal, after it was used by Sankey at Moody’s crusade in Britain in 1874. Sankey commented that no hymn was more popular at those London meetings than this one.

Crosby and her husband had lived in area of New York City such as Hell’s Kitchen, the Bowery, and the Tenderloin. She was acutely aware of the great needs of the immigrants pouring into the city and of the urban poor. She was passionate about helping them through working at city missions and other urban ministries. She wrote, “From the time I received my first check for my poems, I made up my mind to open my hand wide to those who needed assistance.” She was said to have had a horror of wealth throughout her life. She never set prices for her speaking engagements, often refused honoraria, and what little she did accept she gave away at the first opportunity. She and her husband organized concerts, with half the proceeds being given to aid the poor. Throughout New York City, her love for the poor and efforts to help them were well-known. She and her husband could have lived comfortably off the money she was making through her hymns, but they chose to use the money to embetter the lives of the poor.

Her hymn-writing declined in later years, but she remained active in speaking engagements and in mission work until almost the day she died. She met with presidents, generals, and dignitaries.

Crosby died at Bridgeport on February 12, 1915, after a six-month illness, age 94; her husband predeceased her. She was buried in the town cemetery near her mother and other family members. Per her own request, a small gravestone was erected which read, “Aunt Fanny: she hath done what she could; Fanny J. Crosby.” In 1955, a large marble monument was erected which dwarfed the original gravestone and has the first stanza of Blessed Assurance written on it.

In 1975, she was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and is known at the “Queen of Gospel Song Writers.” The Episcopal Church remembers her on February 11.

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Desire to Work for Others: Katherine Drexel

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Katherine Drexel, born on November 26, 1858 in Philadelphia, was born into the wealthiest families in America. She was the daughter of an investment banker. Her family owned a considerable fortune. Her uncle was the founder of Drexel University. When her father died, he established a trust for his three daughters worth fourteen million dollars. Devout Catholics, all three of them regarded their fortune as an opportunity to glorify God through the service of others.

As a young and wealthy woman, she made her social debut in 1879. However watching her stepmother’s three year battle with cancer taught her money could not save her from pain and death. Her life took a profound turn. She had several marriage proposals. But she decided to give herself and her fortune to God. There were plenty of claims on her generosity. But Katherine felt a special dedication to those who were ignored by the Church, especially blacks and Native Americans. She was appalled by the treatment of Native Americans. She endowed scores of schools on Indian reservations and supported Catholic missions on reservations. She also established 50 missions for Native American in 16 states. In 1878 during a private audience with Pope Leo XIII she begged the pope to send priests to serve the Native Americans. He responded, “Why not become a missionary yourself?” It was another turning point.

Finding no existing religious orders corresponding to her sense of mission, she founded her own: The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People. A few months later, the Philadelphia Archbishop Ryan blessed the cornerstone of the motherhouse in Bensalem, PA. In the first of many incidents that indicated not all shared her concern for social justice, a stick of dynamite was discovered near the site. She insisted that her sisters rely on alms, while she reserved her fortune for initiatives such as the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions and the founding of Xavier University in New Orleans, the first Catholic College established for black students. Such efforts on behalf of blacks drew the ire of the KKK who made multiple threats. Segregationalists harassed her work even burning a school in Philadelphia. But by 1942, Drexel and her order founded and established a system of black Catholic schools in 13 states, plus 40 mission centers and 23 rural schools.

In 1935, Drexel suffered a heart attack and in 1937 she relinquished the office of superior general. Though becoming gradually more infirm, she was able to devote the rest of her life to Eucharistic adoration and therefore fulfilling her lifelong desire for a contemplative life. Over the course of six decades, Mother Katherine spent about $20 million dollars of her fortune building schools and churches, as well as the paying the salaries of teachers in rural schools for blacks and Indians.

Mother Drexel, whose life spanned the era of slavery and the dawn of the civil rights movement, died on March 3, 1955, at the age of 96. She was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000. Numerous schools, parishes and churches are named in her honor.

Mother Drexel: “Often in my desire to work for others…some hostile influence renders me powerless. My prayers seem to avail nothing…In such cases I must not grieve. I am only treading in my Master’s steps.”

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Prohibition in America

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American consumption of alcohol has never been a joke, and in spite of many attempts to treat it that way, neither was the effort to control it. Consumption of alcohol was a lot higher than it was today. There were five times the amount of saloons and historians sometimes referred to nineteenth-century America as the “alcoholic republic.” Behind the Eighteenth Amendment (1919), which prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors,” lay more than a century of organized effort to stem the flow of alcohol. It may come as a surprise to some people that the temperance movement, which confusingly has always meant total abstinence, had nothing to do at all with the Puritans. Cotton Mather declared wine to be “of God” and drunkenness of the devil. The movement arose out of complex developments at the start of the nineteenth century. The overproduction of corn (more salable as whiskey than as grain) and the social anxieties that came from the westward movement and the swift democratization of national life combined to create a staggering liquor problem. In some regions, annual consumption of absolute alcohol exceeded ten gallons for each adult white male. Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln were only a few of the public figures who spoke out against the national excess of alcohol. 

But evangelical leaders, with Lyman Beecher in the vanguard, became the chief opponents of booze. In their minds the progress of the gospel and the moral perfection depended on the control of alcohol. Neal Dow, who spearheaded the campaign for the first state prohibition law (Maine, 1846) called the effort “Christ’s work” for which “every true soldier of the Cross” should fight.

After the Civil War, the prohibition movement went national. Americans were actually drinking less. Yet the hazards of overindulgence seemed greater in the new cities and in its effects upon industrial production. The tavern, once a place of community conviviality, had now become the saloon. And the saloon business-the “whore-making, criminal-making, madman-acting business”as prohibitionists called it-loomed as threatening to America as Communism would in the 1950s.

The campaign for prohibition involved many people. Methodist Frances Willard, a sometime associate of Dwight Moody, was the driving force the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Her public activity, which included women’s suffrage, marked a new prominence for women’s evangelical reform in the U.S. The Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893, became a national movement and the most effective lobbying tool for prohibition in the states and in Congress. The Methodists, with their perfectionist theology, led most of the Anglo-American Protestant denominations in the fight. Some Catholics, preeminently archbishop John Ireland, also joined the fight against alcohol. These Catholics saw prohibition both as a means to end a social ill and prove the Americanness of their denomination, whose Irish and German members routinely slandered them as drunkards. Businessman, social scientists, and proponents of the social gospel also added their voices to the effort to remake American life. And World War I, which linked the crimes of the Kaiser to brewers, set the stage for passing the Prohibition Amendment.

But, as we all know, this great moral experiment failed in many ways. The “great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose,” as Herbert Hoover called it, did not remake America the perfect moral nation. It did not as Billy Sunday predicted “turn our prisons into factories and our jails into corncribs.” Although prohibition probably improved public health and morals generally in the nation, it also led to public mockery of the law, to the massive strengthening of the organized crime, and with widespread disillusionment with efforts to enshrine the ideals of nineteenth century reform into national legislation. 

Prohibition was a disaster for the country. It led to a massive stranglehold of organized crime and a nation of bootlegging criminals, and cost the federal government billions of dollars in lost tax revenue. And tax is no laughing matter and now more than ever the government needs cash. With the stock market crash of 1929, the country is broke. A tax on alcohol is a solution. So in December 1933, the eighteenth amendment is repealed–killed for the need for cold hard cash. It’s a remarkable u-turn; the only time an amendment to the Constitution is repealed. Yet the issues which Prohibition movement raised still remain for Christians to this day. The debate continues and sometimes rages in the church. And the answer depends on who you talk to. 

 

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The American Church: Voluntary, Pragmatic, Primitive

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The American church is something unique. The dawn of religious freedom brought a whole new situation to the new nation. For the very first time, a predominantly Christian nation released the church from state control and allowed different denominations to compete for members and operate freely. The end result was that no church could rely on state imposed authority and had to work hard for the voluntary response of the people. Gone were the days when being in Massachusetts automatically made you Congregationalist. You could be a part of any church you chose. It was entirely your choice where to attend worship. And that was something entirely new.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “The Americans demanded that they were free, masterless individuals; they sought absolute independence and equality of status. They imagine that their whole destiny is in their own hands…They acquire the habit of always considering themselves as standing alone.” (Democracy in America)

What you had were not churches in the traditional sense nor exclusive sects, but rather denominations that were purposive in character, what Sidney Mead described as “a voluntary association of like-hearted and like-minded individuals, who are united on the basis of common beliefs for the purpose of accomplishing tangible and defined objectives. Even Lyman Beecher, a Yankee Congregationalist, who had much to fear with the end of state support, came to believe that it was “the best thing that ever happened to the State of Connecticut.” The churches were thrown “on their own resources and on God,” had increased dramatically their influence “by voluntary efforts, societies, missions and revivals.”

This meant that the church in America was anything but monolithic. One historian has written, “The colonial legacy of pluralism, compounded now by a certain propensity to divide old denominations and organize fresh ones, left many wondering how to cope with fragmentation as a central feature of church life.” Some ministers who greatly valued tradition found little consolation in the multiplication of denominations.

But the multiplication of denominations was mostly seen in a positive light. One leading evangelical said, “Each denomination is working out some problem in the Christian life, developing some portion of truth. Each has its part to perform, its particular work to do for the Kingdom of Christ, which it, in the present condition of things, is better equipped to do than any other.” As a Baptist editor wrote, “However we may wish all men to become Baptists, we will all become evangelical Christians.” It was this evangelical core that helped maintain in America a surprisingly unified Christian culture.

This voluntary principle brought the Christian faith to the common man. The arcane and abstract gave way to practical insights that could be understood by all. The Presbyterians welcomed into their ranks the young revivalist Charles G. Finney, a man without a theological education or any real knowledge of the Westminister Confession. With the undeniable power of his revivalism, however, theological objections came across as scholastic nit-picking.

An active and success-oriented Christianity perfectly suited the newborn American republic. It was an age inspired by the myths of the self-made man and made rich and prosperous by the efforts of an aspiring entrepreneurs. What you had was an American church with considerable vitality. But this also lead to problems becoming oversimplified, leaving complex issues reduced to bare choice between contrasting alternatives. The Second Great Awakening produced no theologian of great stature. It may have actually given the impression that serious intellectual activity could be counterproductive of genuine piety. One observer was forced to confess, “There is an impression somewhat general that a vigorous and highly cultivated intellect is not consistent with distinguished holiness; and that those who live in the clearest sunshine of communication with God must withdraw from the bleak atmosphere of human science…that an intellectual clergyman is deficient in piety, and that an eminently pious minister is deficient in intellect.”

Elias Smith, founder of the Christian Connection, writing around 1810, “I am a Christian calling no man father or master; holding as abominable in the sight of God, everything highly esteemed among men, such as Calvinism, Arminianism, freewillism, universalism, reverend, parsons, chaplains, doctors of divinity, clergy, bands, surplices, notes, creeds, covenants, platforms.”

Or as the Methodist circuit rider, Peter Cartwright wrote, “The Presbyterians, and other Calvinistic branches of the Protestant Church, used to contend from educated ministry, for pews, for instrumental music, for a congregational or stated salaried ministry. The Methodists universally opposed these ideas; and the illiterate Methodist preachers actually set the world on fire (the American world at least), while they were lighting their matches!”

And the American church made little use of the accumulated wisdom of the ages. Being inspired by the hope of a pure beginning to which return was possible-“the New Testament Church,” Americans usually viewed the intervening eighteen hundred years as a tale of aberration and corruption which was best left ignored. And this ahistorical approach flourished in a republic which took pride in its ability to put aside the decaying traditions of Europe.

But such attitudes brought into question the traditional function and significance of the traditional church. Institutional reordering became the new norm after 1800. An example of this was the formation of the “Christians” by Barton W. Stone (1772-1844) and the “Disciples” by Alexander Campbell (1788-1866). Stone and five colleagues not just left the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky in the aftermath of the Cane Ridge Revival but went on to issue a manifesto, “The Last Will and Testament of Springfield Presbytery,” which denied the validity of any church organization whatsoever. Campbell rejected the notion that the Disciples were a church or a denomination and said that he did not want to even hear the term church government: “We have no system of our own, or of others, to substitute in lieu of the reigning systems. We aim only at substituting the New Testament.” As Campbell also wrote, “Open the New Testament as if mortal man had never seen it before.”

But the hope that a New Testament polity could emerge naturally had an unsettling effect in several denominations. Defections and splintering were rampant. The Methodists whose discipline and hierarchy never pretended to be democratic, were particularly beset with defections on issues with polity. The ideal of primitivism which American democracy had accelerated, made fragile any ecclesiastical polity that did not spring from the uncoerced will of the individual.

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America: The Land of Dissenters

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The American Revolution followed closely on the heels of the Great Awakening. This momentous religious event contained seeds for potential social change. Now the Awakening did not cause the Revolution, but it did anticipate it in many ways including the assertion of the rights of individual in whatever social level to challenge the established authority. This country is a land of dissenters and it has been since its inception. 

The most important link with the Revolution and a much older tradition of Protestant dissent that the Awakening reinforced. This went back to Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Commonwealth in the 1650s. The American colonies were populated mostly with people, especially New England Congregationalists and Scotch Irish Presbyterians, who thought of themselves as heirs to that valuable heritage. In their eyes, they were Dissenters rather than part of the powerful Anglican establishment. The Awakening intensified the dissenting tradition in America and increased their numbers. When the Revolution started, Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Baptists were almost invariably on its side.

George Marsden points out that one of the overlooked aspects of early America is its almost tribal ethnoreligious diversities. Politically, the most significant was the Scotch-Irish. During the reign of Elizabeth I, these Scots migrated to Ulster or Northern Ireland. As Scots, they disliked the English and as Presbyterians they disliked the Anglican church. During the course of the eighteenth century, they sailed in large numbers to the colonies, making up about one fourth of the population in Pennsylvania. They developed a strong animosity to the ruling Quakers, who were English and whose pacifist beliefs the gun toting Scotch-Irish saw as cowardly. They eventually brought Quaker rule to an end. Their even stronger hostility toward the English Anglicans, who were in control of the imperial government, was a major ingredient in the Revolution. Interestingly, the British sometimes referred to the American army as Presbyterian. But it was not just the Presbyterians. The Congregationalists in New England had a long and bitter history of antagonism with the Church of England. 

There was also a tradition of political dissent during the eighteenth century. The thought of English Dissenters was almost universally appropriated by the American revolutionaries. This thought first developed in the 1720s and it has been referred to as the Real Whig, or Commonwealth tradition. The commonwealth referred to the time of Puritan rule in England in the 1660s. These eighteenth century commonwealth men were heirs to this heritage because they belonged to nonconformist or dissenting denominations. 

Yet we most also recognize the importance and political implications in England of having an established church. Mirroring the practices of old Christendom, the Church of England was practically a department of the state and political power was tied to church membership. Other denominations were tolerated, but the memories of the Puritan takeover was recent enough that Anglicans were not ready to give up their political and social control. During the 1700s in England, if one were to hold public office or attend Oxford or Cambridge, one had to belong to the Church of England. 

This ties in to the most striking factor of religious dissent in the colonies was what one historian called the “Great Fear” or the fear of the American bishop. Anglicans in America operated at a considerable inconvenience by having no resident bishop by having no resident bishop since the church holds that the direct laying on of hands by a bishop was essential to ordination of clergy. Yet the same republican Americans, including many Anglicans, who opposed the new taxes for the empire were dead set against such an otherwise sensible proposal for an American bishop. They saw it as a major step toward imposing on the colonies the whole of the English hierarchical model for governing society.

Religion was a significant factor but it was not an isolated variable in the political events. Instead, the resurgence of dissenting religious heritages during the Great Awakening reinforced other ethnic and regional loyalties that contributed to the Revolution. Dissent was and is an important American tradition, whether it be religious or political. I spoke of the Whigs, they are one of the topics coming up, in particular, their view of history.