Washington Gladden

Washington Gladden was an American Congregational minister, editor, author, and social reformer born in Pottsgrove, Pennsylvania, in 1836. He graduated from Williams College in 1859 and entered Congregational ministry the following year. His early pastorates took him through New York and Massachusetts, and from 1871 he worked as religious editor of the influential New York newspaper “The Independent.” He later edited the magazine “Sunday Afternoon.”

Gladden wrote “O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee” while serving in Springfield, Massachusetts. It first appeared in the March 1879 issue of “Sunday Afternoon” as a three-stanza devotional poem titled “Walking with God.” Charles H. Richards subsequently removed the middle stanza, divided the remaining two eight-line stanzas into four quatrains, and published the hymn in “Songs of Christian Praise” in 1880.

In 1882 Gladden became minister of First Congregational Church in Columbus, Ohio, where he gained national prominence for applying Christian ethics to labor relations, economic life, racial justice, public corruption, and other social questions. He became an early leader of what came to be called the Social Gospel movement and also served as moderator of the National Council of Congregational Churches. His hymn is therefore significant both as personal devotional prayer and as the work of a pastor who insisted that fellowship with Christ should shape public and social life.