The Surprising History of a Hymn:
“The Little Brown Church in the Vale”

“The Little Brown Church in the Vale” is one of the most famous Congregational hymns, still celebrated at the church in Nashua, Iowa that inspired it. Yet the hymn has a surprising history. It began as a love ballad about a lost sweetheart and went on to become a celebrated gospel hymn about the rural roots of America's greatness.

Titled “The Little Brown Church,” but sometimes called “The Church in the Wildwood,” the song's evolution speaks to the ways in which nostalgia became central to the social and religious imagination of those American Protestants who call themselves “evangelicals.” Though it first appeared in college songbooks after its publication in 1865, “The Little Brown Church” eventually became a favorite of evangelists, revivalists, and other gospel singers at the dawn of the twentieth century.

For these new singers, “The Little Brown Church” spoke to more than just the simple faith they wished to restore. It also illustrated the centrality of white Protestants to the American experience at a moment when the hold these believers had on the nation was beginning to slip. And they would alter both the lyrics and the church's history to bring the two in line.

In this program, Dr. Christopher Cantwell discussed how the evolution of this hymn not only reveals the ways nostalgia for a bygone era became vital to those who think of themselves as evangelicals in the twentieth century, but also how evangelicalism itself is something of a historical construction.

This event was part of the CLA’s series, Congregationalism and the Arts, exploring Congregationalists' artistic expressions of faith, past and present.

SPEAKER BIO

Dr. Christopher D. Cantwell is Assistant Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago. He is a scholar of religion and former museum professional who is interested in the ways that Christianity, capitalism, and collective memory form and shape each other. His first book, titled The Bible Class Teacher: Memory and the Making of Modern charts the origins of America’s white evangelical nostalgia and will be out soon. This project was preceded by an edited collection on the religious life of working-class Christians called The Pew and the Picket Line, as well as an article on the work of printers at religious publishing houses.