Come Out the Wilderness Meaning, History, and Theology
"Tell me, how did you feel when you come out"
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Story
Come Out the Wilderness is an anonymous African American spiritual centered on testimony, trust, baptismal transformation, and new life after a wilderness experience. The song is documented in print by 1913; William Farley Smith later adapted and arranged the copyrighted TURNER setting for The United Methodist Hymnal.
Overview
Come Out the Wilderness is an African American spiritual built around testimony, trust, and the passage from a place of testing into renewed life. Its questioning form invites singers to remember what changed when they emerged from a wilderness experience, while its recurring confession directs attention away from self-sufficiency and toward dependence on Christ.
The wilderness image has several biblical resonances. It recalls places where God’s people are tested, called to repentance, sustained, and prepared for a new stage of life. Modern African American hymnals have especially connected the spiritual with John the Baptist’s wilderness ministry and baptism, giving the song a strong association with conversion, Christian initiation, and new life.
The spiritual also carries the communal character typical of orally transmitted sacred song. A leader can pose the testimony question and the gathered community can answer through the recurring response. That structure makes the hymn useful not only as an individual reflection on hardship but as a shared declaration that faith, joy, love, and trust are formed in relationship with God and the worshipping community.
Historical Background
Come Out the Wilderness belongs to the African American spiritual tradition, but no individual author, composer, or secure composition date has been established. That uncertainty is historically appropriate. Spirituals were transmitted primarily through live singing for generations, and the Library of Congress notes that many creators’ names were never documented or were later forgotten. The song therefore should not be assigned a precise slavery-era date without evidence, even though its genre is deeply rooted in the religious culture of African Americans under slavery and in the generations that followed.
The earliest located hymnal instance identified in current Hymnary records is “When You Come Out the Wilderness” in Plantation Melodies and Spiritual Songs, cataloged with a 1913 publication date. A more detailed early printing followed in National Jubilee Melodies in 1916. That collection credits K. D. Reddick as collector and Phil. V. S. Lindsley as arranger, preserving a five-stanza form and an irregular traditional melody. These publications demonstrate that the spiritual was in circulation by the early twentieth century, but they do not establish when it was first created or who originated it.
The song continued to circulate in differing forms, a normal feature of oral tradition. Songs of Zion, published in 1981, prints a three-stanza version under the title “Come Out de Wilderness” and identifies both text and tune as traditional. Other African American hymnals preserve somewhat different questions, responses, and musical settings. Such variation is evidence of a living repertory rather than of corruption from a single fixed authorial original.
For The United Methodist Hymnal, William Farley Smith prepared an adaptation and arrangement in 1986. Published as hymn 416 in the 1989 hymnal, that setting is named TURNER and is explicitly credited as an African American spiritual adapted and arranged by Smith. Smith was a United Methodist musician, educator, composer, and arranger who served as a consultant in African American music and worship for the hymnal revision and prepared arrangements for many of its spirituals. The United Methodist Publishing House claims copyright in that specific adaptation and arrangement, even though the underlying traditional spiritual is public domain.
Later hymnals demonstrate that Smith’s TURNER setting is not the only musical form in use. African American Heritage Hymnal, Lead Me, Guide Me, Total Praise, and One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism include the spiritual with other arrangements or transcriptions. Several of these collections link the song explicitly with baptism and the wilderness ministry of John the Baptist in Mark 1 or Luke 3. This history is best understood as a sequence of oral transmission, early collection, denominational preservation, and modern arrangement rather than as the work of a single known composer.
Biblical Foundations
Mark 1:4–5 is the strongest documented biblical association in modern hymnals. John appears in the wilderness proclaiming repentance and baptizing those who come to him. That setting makes the spiritual’s movement out of the wilderness especially meaningful as an image of conversion, confession, baptism, and a changed life. Related hymnals also connect the song with Luke 3, which places the same ministry around the Jordan.
Isaiah 43:19 broadens the wilderness image by portraying God as the one who makes a way where none seems available. The passage does not eliminate the hardship of the wilderness; it declares God’s creative action within it. That makes it a strong biblical companion for a song centered on emergence, deliverance, and renewed testimony.
Romans 5:3–5 gives theological depth to the spiritual’s concern with what has been formed through trial: suffering can produce perseverance, tested character, and hope. Hebrews 4:15 adds a christological dimension by confessing that Jesus knows testing and human weakness without sin. Finally, 1 Peter 2:24 connects the song’s trust in Christ with the saving significance of his death, grounding testimony not merely in survival but in the redemptive work of Christ.
Verse Explanation
The song begins by asking the singer to reflect on the experience of emerging from a wilderness condition. The question makes testimony the starting point rather than presenting a detached theological statement.
Successive traditional variants explore the signs of changed life that may follow such an experience. Depending on the hymnal or oral form, these can include renewed joy, love, praise, baptismal identity, humility, or other expressions of conversion and spiritual awakening. Because the spiritual has circulated orally, no single modern stanza sequence should be assumed to reproduce one original fixed text.
The recurring communal response shifts the emphasis from the singer’s feelings to reliance on Christ. This prevents the song from becoming merely a celebration of emotional relief: the theological center is trust in the Lord and in Christ’s saving work.
Taken as a whole, the spiritual moves from question to testimony and from testimony to confession. Its repeated pattern allows a congregation to inhabit that movement together, making personal experience part of communal worship.
Theological Reflection
The hymn’s first theological emphasis is dependence on God. Emerging from hardship is not portrayed as an achievement of isolated strength; the song directs the singer toward reliance on the Lord. That posture is closely related to biblical trust, in which faith is exercised precisely when circumstances expose human vulnerability.
A second theme is conversion and transformed life. Modern African American hymnals frequently place the spiritual alongside baptismal and Christian-initiation themes, and some textual traditions explicitly connect coming from the wilderness with baptism. The wilderness can therefore function as more than a symbol of generic difficulty: it can mark the transition from an old condition into repentance, discipleship, joy, and renewed relationship with others.
The hymn is also testimonial. Its questions invite believers to name the fruits of God’s work rather than merely recount the existence of suffering. Joy, love, praise, and trust become signs of transformation that the community can recognize and affirm together. In this sense, testimony is both personal and ecclesial.
Finally, the spiritual is christological. Its recurring response anchors confidence in the crucified Lord. The song’s hope therefore rests not in a romantic belief that every earthly hardship quickly disappears, but in Christ’s saving work and the conviction that God can sustain, transform, and lead people through places of testing.
Church Impact
Come Out the Wilderness has moved from orally transmitted spiritual tradition into a range of African American and denominational hymnals. Hymnary records the text in multiple collections, including Songs of Zion, The United Methodist Hymnal, African American Heritage Hymnal, Lead Me, Guide Me, Total Praise, Yes, Lord!, and One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. This breadth demonstrates substantial hymnal circulation, although hymnal inclusion alone cannot prove how frequently the song is sung in every congregation.
Its modern placement often emphasizes Christian initiation, baptism, deliverance, joy, trust, and new life. African American Heritage Hymnal associates it with Luke 3:3, while Lead Me, Guide Me and One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism connect it with Mark 1:4–5. Those editorial choices show how the spiritual has been received as more than a general song about hardship: churches have also heard it as a testimony of repentance, baptismal transformation, and reliance on Christ.
The song also illustrates an important feature of spiritual transmission. Different communities and editors have preserved different textual and musical forms rather than enforcing one uniform version. Its continuing hymnal presence therefore carries both theological meaning and cultural memory, connecting contemporary worship with an African American sacred-song tradition shaped through communal performance, collection, adaptation, and re-arrangement.
Musical Notes
The underlying melody is traditional and irregular in meter, and the surviving sources document more than one melodic and editorial form. National Jubilee Melodies in 1916 prints an arrangement by Phil. V. S. Lindsley in D major. Songs of Zion in 1981 also presents a traditional form in D major, while later hymnals preserve additional melodic variants and arrangements.
William Farley Smith’s 1986 adaptation and arrangement for The United Methodist Hymnal was published in 1989 under the tune name TURNER and is set in C major in that hymnal. Smith should be credited as adapter and arranger of this setting, not as the composer of the anonymous traditional tune. The arrangement is copyrighted by The United Methodist Publishing House.
The song’s repeated question-and-response design naturally supports responsorial performance. That feature accords with the broader African American spiritual tradition, in which repetition and call-and-response can allow a leader and congregation to shape a song communally. Because distinct hymnals transmit distinct settings, accompaniment, harmony, tempo, and performance details should be taken from the particular authorized score being used rather than assumed to belong to the spiritual in every form.
Application
- Use wilderness seasons as occasions for honest prayer, repentance, and renewed dependence on God rather than pretending that hardship is spiritually simple.
- Remember specific ways God has sustained you, and turn those memories into testimony that can strengthen the wider church.
- Connect baptism and Christian initiation with an ongoing life of changed relationships, joy, trust, and discipleship.
- Support people who are still in difficult circumstances without implying that faithful Christians always experience rapid deliverance.
- Distinguish the public-domain traditional spiritual from copyrighted modern adaptations and arrangements when planning worship, printing music, or sharing recordings.
Discussion Questions
- Why is Mark 1:4–5 a particularly strong biblical lens for understanding the spiritual’s wilderness imagery?
- How does the song distinguish reliance on God from simple confidence in personal resilience?
- What kinds of transformation should Christian testimony emphasize after seasons of testing or repentance?
- How does call-and-response singing change the meaning of a testimony song when it is sung by a community?
- Why is it important to distinguish an anonymous traditional spiritual from later copyrighted arrangements?
Teaching Tips
- Introduce the song as an anonymous African American spiritual and explain why oral transmission often leaves no identifiable individual author or composer.
- Use the 1913 and 1916 print witnesses to show students how researchers establish an earliest located publication without claiming that the song was composed in that year.
- Read Mark 1:4–5 before discussing how wilderness, repentance, baptism, and new life are connected in modern hymnal usage.
- Compare the documented existence of several later arrangements without reproducing copyrighted music, emphasizing the difference between a traditional tune and a modern arrangement.
- When leading discussion of suffering, avoid implying that every wilderness experience ends quickly; focus instead on trust, transformation, communal support, and hope.
Sources
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Library of Congress — African American Spirituals: Resources in the American Folklife Center
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Library of Congress — Spirituals in The Library of Congress Celebrates the Songs of America
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Hymnary.org — Come Out the Wilderness text authority
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Hymnary.org — Plantation Melodies and Spiritual Songs no. 48, 1913 instance
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Hymnary.org — National Jubilee Melodies no. 51, 1916 instance
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Hymnary.org — The United Methodist Hymnal no. 416, TURNER arrangement and copyright
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Dictionary of Hymnology — William Farley Smith
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Discipleship Ministries, The United Methodist Church — William Farley Smith’s role in arranging spirituals for The United Methodist Hymnal
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Bible Gateway — Mark 1:4-11, World English Bible
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Bible Gateway — Isaiah 43:19-21, World English Bible
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Bible Gateway — Romans 5:3-5, World English Bible
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Bible Gateway — Hebrews 4:15, World English Bible
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Bible Gateway — 1 Peter 2:24, World English Bible
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