As tends to be the case with revisionist changes, this one does violence to the spiritual context and diminishes the wonder of God's saving love. Liberal Anglicans want their merely exemplary view of the atonement to be sung but the line following the sixth - 'For every sin on Him was laid' - flatly contradicts their attempt to airbrush our culpable and hell-deserving sin out of the death of the Lord Jesus.

In response to an enquiry as to whether the authors had authorised the change, a spokeswoman for Mr Townend told Cranmer's Curate that:

Although all copyright/permission enquiries are handled by Stuart's publishers, you are right in thinking that permission would not be granted to change the words to any of Stuart's songs. However, I'm also aware that an unofficial, edited lyric of the hymn has been circling for some time, and some are unaware that it is unapproved. So it may well be that (one Anglican diocese where the liberal version has been used at official services) are not aware that they're breaking copyright by using it.
If some Anglican worshippers are struggling with the wording of the authorised version of 'In Christ Alone', then they should be told that the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer is absolutely clear that God's wrath on sin was propitiated by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the BCP order for Holy Communion, the Lord Jesus is presented in the Comfortable Words' rendition of 1 John 2v1 as 'the propitiation for our sins'. That is the context for the Prayer of Consecration's description of Jesus' death as the full, perfect and sufficient 'satisfaction' for the sins of the whole world. The Church of England thus believes that our Lord's substitutionary death was sufficient to satisfy the righteous justice of God against us 'miserable offenders', to use another Prayer Book term.

So, Mr. Townend and our biblically faithful Prayer Book are at one on the atoning love of God in Christ.

END