Here hangs a man discarded

Here hangs a man discarded. Brian Arthur Wren* (1936- ). Written in June 1973 and published in New Church Praise (1975). It is found in Wren’s Mainly Hymns (Leeds, 1980) and in Faith Looking Forward (1983). In these books it is headed ‘Hope against hope’ with a reference to 1 Corinthians 1: 18-31. The hymn was revised in 1994 for Faith Renewed (1995). There it is described as ‘prompted by Douglas John Hall’s Hope Against Hope and Paul Tillich’s The Courage to Be’: Tillich describes three inbuilt human anxieties: fate (= calamity) and death, guilt and condemnation, and emptiness and despair. To the first and second, traditional faith says ‘Christ is risen: we shall live with God’, and ‘your...