The Rt Revd Timothy Dudley-Smith OBE, honoured by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to hymnody, has died peacefully in Cambridge aged 97.
He wrote more than 400 hymns for Christian worship, including ‘Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord!’, ‘Lord, for the years Your love has kept and guided’, and ‘Name of all majesty’.
An ordained minister in the Church of England and former Bishop of Thetford, Dudley-Smith also served as General Secretary of the Church Pastoral Aid Society (1965-1973), and Director of the Evangelical Alliance (1987-1992).
Honours
When Timothy Dudley-Smith first started writing poems over sixty years ago, he never imagined they would become hymns, believing the genre was closed to him as he lacked “all musical ability”.
However, despite his doubts, he would go on to author hundreds of hymns, including metrical settings of individual psalms and other scriptures, Christmas carols, and texts on Christian discipleship and doctrine.
In honour of his “services to hymnody”, Dudley-Smith was awarded an OBE in 2003. Further recognition for his work as a hymn writer included an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the University of Durham, a Lambeth MLitt, and fellowship of the The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada.
Biblical truth
Dudley-Smith contended that a good hymn “must be true to divine revelation and true to Christian experience”.
True to divine revelation, he explained, means “true to the revelation of the Bible – whether a revelation of the nature of God, of the person and work of Christ, or the dignity, degradation and destiny of men and women”.
In relation to Christian experience, he said: “It is the hymn writer’s privilege to offer to the worshippers words in which to clothe and express the aspirations and emotions of the heart.”
Ministry
Born in Manchester on Boxing Day in 1926, where his father was a school master, Dudley-Smith would subsequently move to, and be raised in, Derbyshire.
As an undergraduate, he first read maths, and then theology at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Following his graduation in 1947, he prepared for ministry in the Church of England at Ridley Hall theological college.
After his ordination in 1950 as curate at St Paul’s in Erith, Kent, he was appointed Head of the Cambridge University Mission in Bermondsey. In 1954, he took scores of boys from the mission to hear Billy Graham preach in Haringey, during the US evangelist’s first visit to the UK.
Gift
Subsequent to his time with the Church Pastoral Aid Society, Dudley-Smith was appointed Archdeacon of Norwich in 1973 and Bishop of Thetford in 1981, where he remained until his retirement in 1992.
At an event to celebrate his 80th birthday, fellow hymn writer Michael Saward remarked: “He tells us that ‘hymn-writing has been for me a most enriching and entirely unexpected gift’”.
“We, his friends and colleagues, thank God for the evident demonstration of these gifts by a first-class tradesman, who can regularly construct a Rolls Royce to order.”
He was widowed in 2007, and is survived by a son and two daughters.