We'll Understand It Better By And By: A Song History

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Charles Albert Tindley (1851–1933), born in Worcester County, Maryland, went from working as janitor at Philadelphia's Bainbridge Street Methodist Church to becoming its pastor in 1902, and under him the congregation grew into a 10,000-member church later named Tindley Temple.[1] He wrote this hymn during his Bainbridge Street pastorate, and it first appeared in the 1905 first edition of his collection Soul Echoes.[2] Hymnologist Carlton Young places it among eight Tindley hymns from a strained period when the congregation was negotiating to buy the former Westminster Presbyterian Church building.[1] Tindley could not write music himself and leaned on colleagues, among them Francis A. Clark, to notate his songs; the sources consulted here do not settle who should be credited with the melody, known as BY AND BY.[2]

A carved limestone pulpit with a curving stair rail, decorated with rows of robed angels in relief.

Karl Theodore Bitter, All Angels' Church Pulpit and Choir Rail, limestone, oak, and walnut, 1900. A carved stone pulpit of 1900 from a New York church, shown for the American churches of the years when Tindley became pastor at Bainbridge Street and wrote this hymn; the pulpit has no connection to Tindley or the song.

Tindley's hymns, which began appearing in print in 1901, set the pattern for the written-out sacred repertoire that would come to be known as gospel, and they were taken up by Black and white congregations of many denominations.[3] This one has traveled especially widely: Hymnary.org counts it in 128 hymnals, among them The United Methodist Hymnal, Lift Every Voice and Sing II and the African American Heritage Hymnal.[4] Not every edition kept his version intact; B.B. McKinney's 1937 Southern Baptist arrangement reordered the stanzas, added a new one, smoothed out most of the dotted rhythms and gave Tindley no proper credit.[2] Writing for Discipleship Ministries, C. Michael Hawn reads the hymn not as escapism but as a theology of hope rooted in 1 Corinthians 13:12.[1]

Larry and Elaine Conger include it in Standard And Bass Dulcimer Duets, one of 20 pieces in this Fingers Of Steel book written for a DAD standard dulcimer and a bass dulcimer pitched an octave below, with an MP3 of every song.[5]

Our book that contains the song "We'll Understand It Better By And By"

Sources

  1. Discipleship Ministries: "History of Hymns: We'll Understand It Better By and By".
  2. Hymnology Archive: "We'll understand it better by and by".
  3. Carnegie Hall Timeline of African American Music: "Gospel Hymn".
  4. Hymnary.org: "We'll Understand It Better By and By".
  5. Fingers Of Steel: "Elaine And Larry Conger, Standard And Bass Dulcimer Duets".
  6. Image: Karl Theodore Bitter, All Angels' Church Pulpit and Choir Rail, limestone, oak, and walnut, 1900. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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