God of concrete, God of steel

God of concrete, God of steel. Richard Granville Jones* (1926-2022). Written in 1964 when Jones was a leading member of the ‘Renewal Group’ in Methodism, and first sung at the Sheffield Methodist District Synod in May of that year. It was inspired by a realisation of ‘the way in which all the symbols of the exciting modern world had become unrelated to our normal conception of God’, and by a complaint from a youth group that the imagery of hymnody was old-fashioned. It was printed in the Methodist Recorder on 14 May 1964, where its modernity was further emphasised by its title, ‘A Hymn for 1964’. It was a bold response to these perceived needs: it caused something of a sensation at the...