Trouble in the Amen Corner


"Trouble in the Amen Corner" is a late 19th or early 20th century poem by Thomas Chalmers Harbaugh. In 1960, Archie Campbell turned a slightly modified version of the poem into a country gospel song, with spoken words. The song quotes from the hymn "Rock of Ages", which is mentioned in the original poem. Campbell's version reached #24 in the Billboard country music Top 25.

Description

The elderly Brother Eyer habitually occupied the "amen corner", where the most vocally devout worshipers congregated, in a "fashionable church" with a "stylish congregation". But:
His voice was cracked and broken; age had touched his vocal cords.
And nearly every Sunday he would mispronounce the words
Of the hymns, and 'twas no wonder; he was old and nearly blind,
And the choir rattling onward always left him far behind.
The chorus stormed and blustered, Brother Eyer sang too slow,
And then he used the tunes in vogue a hundred years ago;
At last the storm cloud burst and the church was told, in fine,
That the brother must stop singing, or the choir would resign.
The pastor authorizes a deputation to tell him to desist. This breaks the old man's heart. The other churchgoers soon forget him, but he is now singing sweetly in another place.

Recordings

Recordings of the song by people with Wikipedia articles include: