John Brownlow Geyer

John Brownlow Geyer was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, on May 9, 1932. He studied at Queens' College, Cambridge, and Mansfield College, Oxford, and pursued Old Testament study under Gerhard von Rad at Heidelberg. Ordained by the Congregational Union of Scotland in 1959, he served as chaplain at the University of St Andrews, minister of Drumchapel Congregational Church in Glasgow, and tutor at Cheshunt College in Cambridge.

Geyer's later appointments included ministry at Little Baddow and at Weoley Hill in Birmingham, together with chaplaincy at the University of Birmingham. He wrote articles and biblical studies, including a commentary on the Wisdom of Solomon, and contributed hymns to British supplements and later denominational collections. His work combined scriptural scholarship with interest in language suitable for contemporary congregational worship. He died at Tayport, Fife, on July 26, 2020.

Geyer wrote We Know That Christ Is Raised in 1967 while teaching at Cheshunt. In his own account, Cambridge discussions about the laboratory production of living cells prompted him to relate baptismal new life to contemporary scientific language. He intended the text for Stanford's ENGELBERG. The hymn was later revised, reducing its dependence on cellular imagery while retaining its Pauline theology of baptism, resurrection, the church, and new creation.