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“AMAZING GRACE”: COMPOSER’S GLOBAL VISION AND THE CHALLENGE OF GRASSROOTS HYMN SINGING IN NIGERIA

🗓️ September 22, 2026 📚 The Multidisciplinary Review Vol. 1 Issue 3
Gabriel Ademola Oyeniyi, DMA1✉
1 Faculty of Church Music, Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso
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Abstract

The church in Nigeria is witnessing a decline in hymn singing. Younger generations are no longer brought up with hymn singing culture thus leading to generational gap in hymn singing. The classic hymn, ‘Amazing Grace’ which has been sung globally by many generations did not receive wide publicity among Yoruba speaking Christians in Nigeria. The hymn was made popular by Western gospel artists and is sung in English. Most local churches seldomly sing the hymn due to lack of translation into the vernacular (though a Pentecostal church has translated it for use in their services). Mostly, it is younger generations who listened to the hymn on tape are the ones who sing it and is often sung incorrectly. Though mainline denominations in Nigeria are known to be rich in hymn singing, which is one of their gospel heritages from the missionaries, ‘Amazing Grace’ is a hymn that is not sung by majority Christians despite its richness. The vision of every hymn composer is that people of all walks of life should be able to sing the hymn globally, in their tongues thereby being blessed by the hymn. This study investigated the lack of singing ‘Amazing Grace’ in mainline churches and examine the extent to which those who sing it are singing it correctly, through descriptive research method. The findings revealed lack of translation of the hymn in the vernacular of the local churches in the area of study, and there are conflicting translations among those who attempted the translation of the hymn into the vernacular; hence the hymn is not widely circulated among the majority worshippers. Findings also revealed that the hymn is commonly sung among literate worshippers who could sing the English version of the hymn. In order to involve the grassroots in the singing of this wonderful hymn, Christian musicologists need to play important roles to promote the singing of ‘Amazing Grace’ in people’s languages.
Keywords: Amazing Grace, Composer, Global Vision, Challenge, Grassroots, Hymn Singing, Nigeria

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© 2026 GNR Publication. Published under the CC BY 4.0 License. Archived in the Internet Archive. ISSN: 3139-6801.
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