The Golden Age of Hymns: Christian History Timeline
Dr. Paul Westermeyer is Professor of Church Music at Luther Northwestern Theological Seminary in St. Paul and author of The Church Musician (Harper & Row, 1988)
July 1, 1991
The Golden Age of Hymns
1702 Isaac Watts, “the liberator of the English
hymn,” becomes Minister of Mark Lane Church in London
1703 John Wesley, Methodist leader and hymn
translator/compiler, is born
1704 Johann A. Freylinghausen (son-in-law of
August Francke) publishes hymnal for pietists
1705
Horae Lyricae, first published
collection of Watts’s verse
1707 Isaac Watts’s landmark Hymns and Spiritual
Songs; Charles Wesley, writer of thousands of
hymns, born; as is Selina Hastings, Countess of
Huntingdon, who founds a branch of Calvinistic Methodists and
publishes more than 10 hymn collections
1709 Thomas Ken’s “Doxology” takes current
form
c. 1710 New “piano e forte” instrument gains
interest
1712 Cotton Mather publishes hymns by Watts in
the colonies; Freylinghausen’s second hymnal
1715 Watts’s children’s hymnal, Divine Songs for
Children
1717 William Williams, the “Isaac Watts of
Wales,” is born; he writes more than 800 Welsh and 100 English
hymns, among them “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”
1719 Isaac Watts’s The Psalms of David
Imitated in the Language of the New Testament
1721 First tunebooks for American singing
schools
1722 Conflicts over “Regular ” singing
(not lined-out) in some colonial churches; Count
Zinzendorf founds refuge for the Moravians; his nearly 2,000
hymns and piety stir John Wesley, who translates one hymn
as “Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness”
1729 Charles Wesley founds Holy Club at Oxford
that gives rise to Methodism; Benjamin Franklin reprints
Watts’s Psalms of David; Philip Doddridge, author
of 400-plus hymns such as “Hark, the Glad Sound!” opens
seminary
1734 John Cennick converted; an assistant to
George Whitefield, he writes “Children of the Heavenly King”
1735 John and Charles Wesley sail to Georgia
1737 John Wesley prepares the Charlestown
Collection of Psalms and Hymns—his first
hymnal, the first published in North America, and the first of
Church of England
1738 May 21, Charles Wesley’s conversion; May
24, John Wesley’s conversion; first American preaching tour of George Whitefield, who spreads Watts’s hymns
1739 Publication of the Wesleys’ Hymns and Sacred
Poems
1742 Jonathan Edwards uses Watts’s hymns in his
congregation; Wesleys’ Collection of Tunes As
Used at the Foundry
1744 First Methodist general conference
1748 John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace!;”
converted; Isaac Watts dies;
1749 Beginning of Calvinist-Arminian controversy
between Whitefield and Wesley; Charles Wesley marries
and publishes two-volume Hymns and Sacred Poems; papal
encyclical points to dangers of instruments and
theatricality
1753 George Whitefield publishes hymnal
1756 Charles Wesley’s last nationwide preaching
tour
1760s Conflicts in colonial churches: Watts’s
hymns vs. Psalms
1760 Martin Madan publishes hymnal; two volumes
of Anne Steele’s Poems on Subjects Chiefly
Devotional
1761 James Lyon’s Urania, important
American tunebook
1764 John Newton takes parish in Olney
1766
Newport Collection, early
American hymnal using several English authors
1769 Gerhard Tersteegen, German Reformed hymn
writer, dies; John Wesley translated his hymns
1770s James Montgomery, author of “Angels from
the Realms of Glory,” writing hymns
1770 George Whitefield dies; William
Billings’sNew-England Psalm-Singer, first all-American
tunebook
1771 Last edition of Freylinghausen’s hymnbook;
Wesley sends Francis Asbury to America
1776 Augustus Montague Toplady publishes hymnal
including his “Rock of Ages”
1779 Anglican minister John Newton and poet William
Cowper publish Olney Hymns, featuring “Amazing
Grace;” and “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken”
1780 John Wesley’s Collection
of Hymns for the Use of the People Called
Methodists
1783 Reginald Heber born, who later
writes “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty!”
1784 John Wesley outlines Sunday worship
service for American Methodists
1787 John Rippon’s Baptist hymnal
1788 Charles Wesley dies
1790s African-American “spiritual” developing
1791 John Wesley, William Williams, and
Countess of Huntingdon die
1797 Timothy Dwight revises Watts’s Psalms
and Hymns
1799 Richard Allen ordained Bishop of AME church; 2 years later produces 1st black hymnal for it
Church and World Events
1701 Yale founded
1702 Anne Queen of England (to 1714)
1703 Delaware founded
1704 John Locke dies
1705 Philip Jacob Spener, leader of German pietism,
dies;
1706 First American presbytery
1707 Bach’s first work
1711 Alexander Pope’s Essay on
Criticism;
Henry Melchior Muehlenberg, the “patriarch
of American Lutheranism,” born
1714 Fahrenheit’s thermometer
1715 “Sun King” Louis XIV dies
1718 William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania,
dies; “Blackbeard” the pirate dies
1719 Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
1720 Theodore J. Frelinghuysen’s preaching in New Jersey helps spark Great Awakening
1723 J. S. Bach becomes cantor at St. Thomas Church in
Leipzig
1724 Christianity banned in China
1725 Bering Straits discovered
1726 Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
1727 George II King of England (to 1760); Isaac Newton
dies
1728 William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and
Holy Life
1732 George Washington born; first edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack
1733 Oglethorpe founds Savannah, Georgia
1740–41 The Great Awakening peaks
1741 American Presbyterians split into “Old Lights”
and “New Lights” (to 1758); Jonathan Edwards’s “Sinners in the
Hands of an Angry God”
1742 First performance of Handel’s Messiah; Jews
expelled from Russia
1746 Princeton founded
1747 First German Reformed synod in America
1748 First Lutheran synod in America
1749 Fielding’s Tom Jones
1751 Diderot’s French Encyclopedia
1752 Franklin invents lightning conductor
1756 Mozart born
1759 Voltaire’s Candide; Handel dies
1760 George III King of England (to 1820)
1763 Treaty of Paris ends Seven-Years’ War
1766 Mason-Dixon Line
1767 Composer G. P. Telemann dies
1769 Junipero Serra founds San Diego; James Watt
patents steam engine
1770 Beethoven born; “Boston Massacre”; James
Hargreaves patents spinning jenny
1773 Boston Tea Party; Jesuits suppressed; Unitarian
denomination forms; Jesuits suppressed
1775 American Revolution begins (to 1783)
1776 Declaration of Independence; Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall of Roman Empire; Adam Smith’s
Wealth of Nations; Paine’s Common
Sense
1781 British surrender at Yorktown; Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason
1783 U.S. independence
1787 Constitutional Convention
1789 French Revolution; First U.S. Congress
1790 John Carroll first U.S. Catholic bishop
1790's Height of slave trade
1791 Mozart dies; U.S. Bill of Rights; Goethe directs
Weimar Court theater
1792 Birth of Charles G. Finney; William Carey founds
Baptist Missionary Society
1798 Coleridge and Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads
heralds Romantic Age
Copyright © 1991 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christian History magazine.
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