When the Church of Jesus/ Shuts its outer door

When the Church of Jesus/ Shuts its outer door. Fred Pratt Green* (1903-2000). Apart from a school hymn written for Humanby Hall School, Yorkshire, when Pratt Green was chaplain there from 1928 to 1931, this was his first hymn: it can be seen as the beginning of his later career as a hymn writer. It is No 1 in The Hymns and Ballads of Fred Pratt Green, edited by Bernard Braley (1982). He first two lines, as above, are an indication of the three-stanza hymn that follows. It dates from 1968, when Pratt Green was a minister at Sutton, Surrey, at a time when, in Braley’s words, ‘the Church was being criticised for its over-concern with its own life and its failure to be involved in the world’s...