The Rt. Revd Timothy Dudley-Smith OBE, honoured by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to hymn singing, has died peacefully in Cambridge at the age of 97.
He wrote more than 400 hymns for Christian worship, including “Declare, O my soul, the greatness of the Lord!”, “Lord, all these years your love has preserved and guided you” and “Name of all Majesty”.
Dudley-Smith is an ordained minister in the Church of England and former Bishop of Thetford. He was also General Secretary of the Church Pastoral Aid Society (1965-1973) and Director of the Evangelical Alliance (1987-1992).
Honors
When Timothy Dudley-Smith began writing poetry over sixty years ago, he could never have imagined that it would become hymns. He believed that the genre was beyond his reach because he lacked “any musical talent”.
Despite his doubts, he wrote hundreds of hymns, including metrical settings of individual psalms and other texts of the Holy Scriptures, Christmas carols, and texts on Christian discipleship and teaching.
Dudley-Smith was awarded the OBE in 2003 for his “services to hymn writing”. Other recognitions for his work as a hymn writer included an honorary doctorate in theology from Durham University, a Lambeth MLitt, and membership of the Hymn Society of the USA and Canada.
Biblical Truth
Dudley-Smith was of the opinion that a good hymn must be “faithful to divine revelation and Christian experience.”
To be faithful to divine revelation, he explained, means to be faithful to the revelation of the Bible – whether it be a revelation of the nature of God, of the person and work of Christ, or of the dignity, humiliation and destiny of man and woman.
Referring to the Christian experience, he said, “It is the privilege of the hymn writer to offer the faithful words with which to express the longings and feelings of the heart.”
Ministry
Dudley-Smith was born on Boxing Day 1926 in Manchester, where his father was a teacher. He later moved to Derbyshire and grew up there.
As a student, he first studied mathematics and then theology at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After graduating in 1947, he prepared for ministry in the Church of England at Ridley Hall Theological College.
After being ordained as a curate at St Paul’s Church, Erith, Kent, in 1950, he was appointed head of the Cambridge University Mission in Bermondsey. In 1954, he took dozens of boys from the mission to hear Billy Graham preach in Haringey, during the American evangelist’s first visit to Britain.
Gift
After 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 1991.
At an event to mark his 80th birthday, the late colleague and hymn writer Michael Saward remarked: “He tells us that ‘writing hymns has been a most enriching and totally unexpected gift to me.'”
“We, his friends and colleagues, thank God for the obvious demonstration of these gifts by a first-class craftsman who can regularly build a bespoke Rolls Royce.”
He became a widower in 2007 and leaves behind a son and two daughters.
