Carl Harold Lowden

Carl Harold Lowden (1883–1963) was an American hymn writer, composer, organist, music editor, teacher, and church musician. Born in Burlington, New Jersey, he began composing while still young; biographical sources report that he sold a song to the Hall-Mack Publishing Company at about twelve years of age. His career developed at the intersection of church music, publishing, and education, and Hymnary indexes dozens of texts under his name as well as numerous tunes.

Lowden worked in sacred-music publishing and served as a musical editor for church-related organizations, including the Evangelical and Reformed Church board. He also taught music at the Bible Institute of Pennsylvania. For twenty-eight years he was minister of music at Linden Baptist Church in Camden, New Jersey, retiring in 1961. These varied appointments connected him with several Protestant settings, but the sources consulted do not establish a single personal denominational identity clearly enough to assign one here.

His best-known musical contribution is the tune commonly called LIVING FOR JESUS or LOWDEN. Lowden first wrote the melody for a children’s song and later asked Thomas O. Chisholm to supply a more substantial sacred text, producing the hymn “Living for Jesus.” His catalog also includes hymns for children, evangelistic songs, devotional texts, and choral music. In 1930 he wrote both the words and music of “The Youth of the World,” whose first line is “We have heard Thy call, Lord Jesus.”

Lowden’s career illustrates the work of the twentieth-century American church musician who was simultaneously composer, editor, teacher, and local congregational leader. His music circulated through denominational hymnals, gospel-song collections, youth songbooks, and later translations, giving his work a reach beyond the churches and institutions in which he personally served.