Have Thine Own Way, Lord: A Song History

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The text of “Have Thine Own Way, Lord” is credited to Adelaide Addison Pollard (1862–1934), an Iowa-born woman trained in elocution who taught in Chicago girls’ schools before becoming an itinerant Bible teacher, working alongside evangelists and at a missionary training school in Nyack, New York.[1][2][3] The words are usually dated 1902, though Hymnary.org’s text entry gives 1906.[1][2][3] The story usually told is that Pollard, discouraged after failing to raise money for a missionary journey to Africa, was moved by an elderly woman’s simple prayer of surrender at a prayer meeting and wrote the hymn soon afterward.[1][3] The Hymnology Archive notes that the familiar telling traces to a Salvation Army writer in 1961, that a longer 1967 retelling tied the hymn to the potter of Jeremiah 18, and that the composer said nothing about the hymn in his 1924 memoir of gospel-hymn stories.[2] It is best read as tradition rather than established fact. Accounts of her later travels also differ: Discipleship Ministries and Hymnary.org say she reached Africa briefly before the First World War, while the Hymnology Archive, drawing on passport records, documents a stay in South Africa in 1920.[3][1][2]

Black-and-white photograph of a potter in Nazareth shaping clay at a wheel beside a work table

A potter at work, showing table and wheel, Nazareth. Matson Photo Service, 1940. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

The music is by George C. Stebbins (1846–1945), a leading gospel-song composer of the Moody and Sankey circle, whose tune is called ADELAIDE (occasionally HOLY DESIRE).[2][4] Words and tune first appeared together in the Northfield Hymnal with Alexander’s Supplement, issued by Biglow & Main in 1907.[1][2] The melody is plain and singable, moving mostly by step within less than an octave, in the short-lined meter 5.4.5.4 D.[2][4] Hymnary.org traces the text through several hundred hymnals, and it has been translated into languages including Spanish, French, Chinese and Swahili.[1][2] Some recent hymnals have altered its wording, notably a second-stanza image of being washed white, after debate over its racial overtones; The United Methodist Hymnal prints a revised text.[2][3]

The hymn also crossed into popular recording; online discographies list country singer Eddy Arnold among the artists who have recorded it.[5][6] For mountain dulcimer players, it is included in Stephen Seifert’s gospel collection Join the Jam: Gospel Edition.[7]

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Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "Have Thine Own Way, Lord".
  2. Hymnology Archive: "Have thine own way, Lord".
  3. Discipleship Ministries (United Methodist Church): "History of Hymns: Have Thine Own Way, Lord".
  4. Hymnary.org: "ADELAIDE (Stebbins)".
  5. Wikipedia: "Have Thine Own Way, Lord".
  6. SecondHandSongs: "Have Thine Own Way, Lord".
  7. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam Gospel Edition".