Amazing Grace and its legacies: reflections at 250

The Open University’s Music Department, the Cowper & Newton Museum and Olney Parish Church are delighted to be co-hosting this conference as part of a year-long programme of events to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of ‘Amazing Grace’, widely believed to have first been sung at Olney on 1 January 1773.

The conference takes place over two days

Friday 15 July: a full schedule of papers on the hymn and its legacies held at The Open University’s Walton Hall campus.

Saturday 16 July: keynote lectures, a roundtable panel, and a lecture-recital held at Olney Parish Church. Keynote speakers are Prof D. Bruce Hindmarsh, author of John Newton and the English Evangelical Tradition: Between the Conversions of Wesley and Wilberforce and Prof Anthony G. Reddie, author of Is God Colour-Blind? Insights from Black Theology for Christian Faith and Ministry. The roundtable panel will include the Rt Rev’d Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Bishop of Dover, and the Rev’d Dr Janet Wootton, President of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 

There will also be a concert held at Olney Parish Church on Sunday 17 July, to which all delegates are warmly welcome.

For further information, please contact the conference organiser on amazing-grace@open.ac.uk.