Frederick B. Morley

Frederick B. Morley (1884–1969) was a Canadian-born Methodist minister, poet, and hymn writer whose career was centered in the United States. He earned a B.A. from Syracuse University and an S.T.B. from Boston University, and he was ordained to the Methodist ministry in 1915. Hymnary’s biographical record notes that he served congregations in New Jersey and the New York metropolitan area, including First Methodist Church in Oceanside, New York.

Morley wrote poetry alongside his pastoral work. A biographical note published with Eleven Ecumenical Hymns in 1954 states that he wrote a weekly newspaper feature titled “Rhyme and Reason” and that many of his poems and hymns began as material for use in his own church services before reaching a wider audience in print.

His best-known hymn is “O Church of God, United,” written in 1953 for a Hymn Society of America search connected with the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Evanston, Illinois, in 1954. The hymn reflects Morley’s Methodist ministry and the mid-twentieth-century ecumenical concern for visible Christian unity, common confession, mission, and public witness. Although the hymn did not win the search, it was published by The Hymn Society in 1954 and later entered several denominational hymnals.