Carl P. Daw, Jr.

The Reverend Dr. Carl P. Daw, Jr., is a hymn writer and is the former Executive Director of The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. He has served successively as Secretary and Chair of the Standing Commission on Church Music of the Episcopal Church and was a consultant member of the Text Committee for The Hymnal 1982, to which he contributed an number of translations, metrical paraphrases, and original hymns. His hymns have subsequently appeared in numerous hymnals in the U.S. and England, including Songs of Rejoicing, and New Songs of Rejoicing, as well as in a number of smaller collections and over two dozen anthem settings. A collected edition of his texts, A Year of Grace: Hymns for the Church Year, was published by Hope Publishing Company in 1990; a collection of metrical canticles, To Sing God's Praise, in 1992, and New Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs in 1996. A member of the Advisory Committee for The Hymnal 1982 Companion, he wrote the book's essay on "The Spirituality of Anglican Hymnody" as well as numerous text commentaries. The Church Hymnal Corporation has published a volume he edited called Breaking the Word: Essays on the Liturgical Dimensions of Preaching. He has written numerous articles and reviews for The St. Luke's Journal of Theology, The Anglican Theological Review, and The Hymn, and has spoken at many conferences and seminaries across the country.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1944, Daw grew up in a succession of towns in Tennessee where his father was a Baptist pastor. He received his undergraduate education at Rice University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He taught for eight years in the English Department of the College of William and Mary before entering seminary at the School of Theology of the University of the South, from which he received his M.Div. After three years as assistant rector of a parish in Petersburg, Virginia, he served for nine years as Vicar-Chaplain of St. Mark's Episcopal Chapel at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. He is married to the former May Joan Bates, and they are parents of a daughter, Elizabeth Marion, who is a teacher in the Atlanta area.
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