Singing Truth to Power: The Songs of Sydney Carter
There are hymns we sing because they are familiar, hymns we sing because they are beautiful, and hymns we sing because they tell the truth. Sydney Carter’s songs often do all three, though not always in ways the church finds comfortable. They have a habit of slipping past our defences. They sound simple, even playful, yet they carry a fierce clarity about what it means to follow Christ in the real world. They remind us that faith is not something we think but something we live, something we embody, something we move with.
This may be why they are sung so little in churches. They are a challenge to a more rigid orthodoxy, and especially the more evangelical wing of the church.
Take “When I Needed a Neighbour”. On the surface it feels like a children’s song, gentle and repetitive. But the question at its heart is anything but gentle. “Were you there?” It is the question Christ asks in Matthew 25, the question that cuts through every creed and every liturgy. Were you there when someone was hungry, or lonely, or frightened. Were you there when compassion was needed?
Carter refuses to let us hide behind doctrine or identity. He reminds us that the Christian life is measured not by what we say but by how we show up for one another. And in a community like ours, where neighbourliness is not an abstract idea but a daily practice, the song becomes a mirror. It asks us to look honestly at the ways we respond to need, and at the ways we sometimes turn away.
The repeated question “Were you there?” is a moral interrogation disguised as a lullaby. There’s no doctrinal scaffolding, no Christological explanation, no ecclesial identity. Just the raw demand of compassion. The line “and the creed and the colour and the name won’t matter” is beautiful, and for some, too boundary‑breaking. It implies that belonging is ethical, not confessional. Some churches fear that this flattens Christian distinctiveness. And yet is essentially just the same message found in Matthew 25 sung as a children’s round, which is brilliant, but also quietly confrontational.
For churches that want discipleship framed in doctrine, creed, or sacrament, Carter’s stark humanism feels too bare.
But we must listen in context. When the song says “the creed won’t matter,” evangelicals hear something like: “belief doesn’t matter”, “doctrine is optional”, “all faiths are interchangeable”. That’s not what Carter meant. He was talking about compassion, not relativism, but the phrasing brushes against evangelical instincts. But for me, this goes to the heart of the gospel.
"To love another person is to see the face of God" is a famous quote from the musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, and Carter’s song points us to that – against the painted, all too often white depictions of Jesus, it asks us to see the face of Jesus in the downtrodden, the disabled, the poor, those at the bottom of the heap. Whenever I am asked what God looks like, the image – scarred, fragmentary, broken – is the neighbour of Carter’s song. If we cannot see that but only the curated centuries old images, we have lost sight of God. That is why the crucifix, with Christ impaled on cross is there to show us, and it is not supposed to be pretty and ornamental.
Then there is “The Bells of Norwich”, Carter’s great hymn of resilience. Julian of Norwich’s words, “All shall be well,” is often treated as a whisper, a private reassurance for the contemplative soul. But Carter sets them ringing through the streets like a procession after a long night. His version is not quiet or cautious. It is defiant. It is the sound of a community stepping out of the rubble with banners raised, choosing hope even when hope seems unreasonable.
For a place like Jersey, with its own memories of hardship and renewal, this song feels strangely close to home. It speaks to the kind of hope that is not naïve but hard‑won, the kind that rises after storms, after losses, after seasons when the world feels fragile. It is the hope that says: we have been through darkness before, and God has not abandoned us. All shall be well, not because life is easy, but because God is faithful.
It is winter as I write, but the yellow daffodils of Carter’s song show that renewal is coming, that hope is important. In a world beset by cruelty and suffering, of wars and countless deaths, of so much that seems lost, of so many that seem lost, that hope is important.
And then we come to “Lord of the Dance”, perhaps Carter’s most famous and most controversial hymn. Some churches shy away from it because it feels too earthy, too joyful, too un‑churchlike. But that is precisely the point. Carter gives us a Christ who moves. A Christ who dances creation into being, who dances through suffering, who dances out of the tomb. A Christ who refuses to be pinned down by solemnity or fear.
Resurrection, in this hymn, is not an idea but an energy. It is something that pulls us forward, something that invites us to join the steps. And perhaps that is what unsettles people most: the sense that faith is not a static possession but a rhythm we must learn, a movement we must enter, a life that will not let us stay where we are.
“I danced for the scribe and the pharisee” is not a historical comment on ancient times. Carter consistently portrays Christ as earthy, joyful, subversive, close to ordinary people and uninterested in religious gate keeping. That portrayal implicitly critiques any church that polices boundaries, fears joy except on its own terms, and prefers order to compassion. So when Carter sings about the scribe and Pharisee refusing the dance, he is warning against certainty that cannot move.
Every religious movement is tempted to become what it critiques, something Joy Davidman saw very clearly in “Smoke on the Mountain”. Carter’s Christ is hard to domesticate. He dances away from our categories. He is like Aslan, “not a tame lion”. That challenges any movement that believes it has captured the “right” way to follow Jesus. Carter’s lyric suggests that Jesus may be dancing with people who don’t fit your discipleship model at all. That’s uncomfortable. Carter’s lyric asks: Can you still follow Christ when he dances off the map?
There are hymns we sing because they are familiar, hymns we sing because they are beautiful, and hymns we sing because they tell the truth. Sydney Carter’s songs often do all three, though not always in ways the church finds comfortable. They have a habit of slipping past our defences. They sound simple, even playful, yet they carry a fierce clarity about what it means to follow Christ in the real world. They remind us that faith is not something we think but something we live, something we embody, something we move with.
This may be why they are sung so little in churches. They are a challenge to a more rigid orthodoxy, and especially the more evangelical wing of the church.
Take “When I Needed a Neighbour”. On the surface it feels like a children’s song, gentle and repetitive. But the question at its heart is anything but gentle. “Were you there?” It is the question Christ asks in Matthew 25, the question that cuts through every creed and every liturgy. Were you there when someone was hungry, or lonely, or frightened. Were you there when compassion was needed?
Carter refuses to let us hide behind doctrine or identity. He reminds us that the Christian life is measured not by what we say but by how we show up for one another. And in a community like ours, where neighbourliness is not an abstract idea but a daily practice, the song becomes a mirror. It asks us to look honestly at the ways we respond to need, and at the ways we sometimes turn away.
The repeated question “Were you there?” is a moral interrogation disguised as a lullaby. There’s no doctrinal scaffolding, no Christological explanation, no ecclesial identity. Just the raw demand of compassion. The line “and the creed and the colour and the name won’t matter” is beautiful, and for some, too boundary‑breaking. It implies that belonging is ethical, not confessional. Some churches fear that this flattens Christian distinctiveness. And yet is essentially just the same message found in Matthew 25 sung as a children’s round, which is brilliant, but also quietly confrontational.
For churches that want discipleship framed in doctrine, creed, or sacrament, Carter’s stark humanism feels too bare.
But we must listen in context. When the song says “the creed won’t matter,” evangelicals hear something like: “belief doesn’t matter”, “doctrine is optional”, “all faiths are interchangeable”. That’s not what Carter meant. He was talking about compassion, not relativism, but the phrasing brushes against evangelical instincts. But for me, this goes to the heart of the gospel.
"To love another person is to see the face of God" is a famous quote from the musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, and Carter’s song points us to that – against the painted, all too often white depictions of Jesus, it asks us to see the face of Jesus in the downtrodden, the disabled, the poor, those at the bottom of the heap. Whenever I am asked what God looks like, the image – scarred, fragmentary, broken – is the neighbour of Carter’s song. If we cannot see that but only the curated centuries old images, we have lost sight of God. That is why the crucifix, with Christ impaled on cross is there to show us, and it is not supposed to be pretty and ornamental.
Then there is “The Bells of Norwich”, Carter’s great hymn of resilience. Julian of Norwich’s words, “All shall be well,” is often treated as a whisper, a private reassurance for the contemplative soul. But Carter sets them ringing through the streets like a procession after a long night. His version is not quiet or cautious. It is defiant. It is the sound of a community stepping out of the rubble with banners raised, choosing hope even when hope seems unreasonable.
For a place like Jersey, with its own memories of hardship and renewal, this song feels strangely close to home. It speaks to the kind of hope that is not naïve but hard‑won, the kind that rises after storms, after losses, after seasons when the world feels fragile. It is the hope that says: we have been through darkness before, and God has not abandoned us. All shall be well, not because life is easy, but because God is faithful.
It is winter as I write, but the yellow daffodils of Carter’s song show that renewal is coming, that hope is important. In a world beset by cruelty and suffering, of wars and countless deaths, of so much that seems lost, of so many that seem lost, that hope is important.
And then we come to “Lord of the Dance”, perhaps Carter’s most famous and most controversial hymn. Some churches shy away from it because it feels too earthy, too joyful, too un‑churchlike. But that is precisely the point. Carter gives us a Christ who moves. A Christ who dances creation into being, who dances through suffering, who dances out of the tomb. A Christ who refuses to be pinned down by solemnity or fear.
Resurrection, in this hymn, is not an idea but an energy. It is something that pulls us forward, something that invites us to join the steps. And perhaps that is what unsettles people most: the sense that faith is not a static possession but a rhythm we must learn, a movement we must enter, a life that will not let us stay where we are.
“I danced for the scribe and the pharisee” is not a historical comment on ancient times. Carter consistently portrays Christ as earthy, joyful, subversive, close to ordinary people and uninterested in religious gate keeping. That portrayal implicitly critiques any church that polices boundaries, fears joy except on its own terms, and prefers order to compassion. So when Carter sings about the scribe and Pharisee refusing the dance, he is warning against certainty that cannot move.
Every religious movement is tempted to become what it critiques, something Joy Davidman saw very clearly in “Smoke on the Mountain”. Carter’s Christ is hard to domesticate. He dances away from our categories. He is like Aslan, “not a tame lion”. That challenges any movement that believes it has captured the “right” way to follow Jesus. Carter’s lyric suggests that Jesus may be dancing with people who don’t fit your discipleship model at all. That’s uncomfortable. Carter’s lyric asks: Can you still follow Christ when he dances off the map?
When we place these three songs side by side, a pattern emerges. Carter is reminding us that the gospel is not a theory. It is a way of being in the world. It calls us to compassion, to resilience, to joy. It asks us to be neighbours who show up, people who choose hope after hardship, disciples who are willing to move with Christ into places we did not expect to go. These are not small things. They are the shape of a life transformed.
And perhaps this is why some churches hesitate with Carter. His songs do not let us hide. They do not let us retreat into safe abstractions or hide behind creeds. They ask us to live the faith we sing. They ask us to recognise Christ in the person in front of us. They ask us to trust that all shall be well even when the evidence is thin. They ask us to dance, which is to say, to risk joy, to risk movement, to risk being changed.
But in a parish like ours, where community matters, where resilience has been learned through experience, where hope is not a luxury but a necessity, Carter’s songs feel like gifts. They speak to who we are and who we are becoming. They remind us that the gospel is not only something we proclaim but something we practise. Something we embody. Something we move with.
So perhaps the invitation today is simple. Be a neighbour. Choose hope. Join the dance. For Christ is already moving ahead of us, calling us into a life that is deeper, braver, and more joyful than we imagined. And if we dare to follow, we may find that all shall indeed be well — not because we are strong, but because God is good.
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