One more step along the world I go

One more step along the world I go. Sydney Carter* (1915-2004). Written for a service at the end of the summer term at Southwark Cathedral School, London, in 1971, and published in Carter’s Riding a Tune (1971), it has appeared in over 30 hymn and worship song collections. It has been the most used hymn reported in copyright returns from schools for a number of years. It has been criticized as being almost devoid of content, and clearly has no mention of God. But Carter calls it a hymn — ‘An Amen song’ — in Green Print for Song (1974). The context in which it sung imports the meaning, as it must have done in its first use, sung by children about to leave one school to join another. Besides...