(RNS) — James Walvin, a former Church of England choirboy and professor of history at the University of York, doesn’t remember encountering “Amazing Grace,” in song or in his hymnal. It wasn’t until ...

Many people think they know the story of the hymn,"Amazing Grace." The commonly accepted narrative presents its composer, John Newton, a young English captain of a late 18th-century slave ship, as a ...

Fifty years ago this week, Aretha Franklin went into a Missionary Baptist church in Los Angeles and recorded a transcendent two-LP album that became a landmark of American music. “Amazing Grace” went ...