"I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I hope to be. But by the grace of God, I am certainly not what I was." -- John Newton Christopher Smith had never heard of John Newton when, with a little ...

As we look at another New Year’s Day, it’s a good time to reflect on a song that unites rather than divides us: the Rev. John Newton’s hymn “Amazing Grace.” The hymn first appeared in Newton’s New ...

The Daily Yonder highlights a centuries-old Appalachian hymn singing tradition, still uplifting souls through heartfelt ...

This New Year’s Day marked the 250th anniversary of one of the most enduring hymns of all time. Around the world, choirs, community groups and individuals came together to sing Amazing Grace to ...

Amazing Grace. By James Walvin. University of California Press; 216 pages; $19.95 and £16.99 A short but fascinating book by James Walvin, a professor at the University of York and an expert on ...

Sign up for our Daily eBlast to get coverage on Black communities from the media company who has been doing it right for over 132 years. Sign up It was 1972 when ...

Amazing Grace might be the ultimate song of redemption, steeped in two centuries of black history, but its writer had also been a slave ship captain. Amazing Grace was the perfect choice. It is easy ...

On a recent trip to the S.C. coast, my wife and I stopped for breakfast at a place that has become a familiar landmark along interstate highways. As Clare and I waited for a table, we browsed the maze ...

Despite its bucolic name, the quiet hamlet of Sandy Point Town, St. Kitts, on a friendly island in the West Indies, has a history written in blood. In the 18th century, Sandy Point offered Caribbean ...

The concert film "Amazing Grace" accomplishes something I thought impossible - capturing the Holy Ghost on celluloid. Over two days in 1972, director Sydney Pollack filmed Aretha Franklin as she was ...