Frederick William Faber was one of the most remarkable converts of the Oxford Movement, a close associate of John Henry Newman who followed him into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845 and became one of the most prolific and influential Catholic hymn writers of the nineteenth century. 'Faith of Our Fathers,' written in 1849, carries the particular weight of a man writing from within a tradition that had endured systematic persecution for over three centuries in his own country - the English Catholic martyrs who had been executed for their faith from the reign of Henry VIII onward.
The hymn's theological foundation is Hebrews 11, the great 'faith chapter' that catalogs the heroes of biblical faith - Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the unnamed many who 'were put in prison, were flogged, and were put to death by the sword' (Hebrews 11:36-37). Faber was particularly mindful of the later verses of the chapter, which speak of those who 'did not receive the things promised' but 'only saw them and welcomed them from a distance' (Hebrews 11:13). The faith of the martyred Catholics who had died before England's Catholic emancipation (achieved only in 1829) was exactly this kind of faith: held at great cost without the satisfaction of seeing its full vindication.
The refrain - 'Faith of our fathers, holy faith! We will be true to thee till death' - draws from Revelation 2:10, the letter to the church at Smyrna: 'Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor's crown.' Smyrna was a persecuted church, and its call to faithfulness unto death speaks directly to any community experiencing persecution for its beliefs. Faber's refrain makes the martyr's commitment the standard for all Christian witness.
The second stanza is the most specific to English Catholic experience: 'Our fathers, chained in prisons dark, were still in heart and conscience free; how sweet would be their children's fate, if we, like them, could die for thee.' The 'prisons dark' refer literally to the imprisonment of Catholic priests and laypeople under Elizabethan and Jacobean penal laws. The image of martyrs 'chained' but 'still in heart and conscience free' draws on Acts 12's account of Peter in prison and on Hebrews 11:37's 'they went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated.'
Faber's third stanza takes a striking turn toward active witness rather than passive martyrdom: 'Faith of our fathers! We will love both friend and foe in all our strife: and preach thee, too, as love knows how, by kindly words and virtuous life.' This non-violent, love-centered witness draws on Romans 12:20's instruction to 'love your enemies' and on Matthew 5:44's command to love and pray for persecutors. The faith worth dying for is also the faith expressed in love - a refusal to answer persecution with counter-violence.
The hymn was rapidly adopted by Protestant congregations, who stripped the specifically Catholic historical references and applied the text to their own traditions of Reformation martyrdom - the Huguenots, the Waldensians, the Puritans. This ecumenical migration of a text written for one tradition's martyrs into the use of another tradition's is itself a parable of the hymn's theme: the faith that endures persecution transcends denominational boundaries.
In the twentieth century, 'Faith of Our Fathers' became a standard at patriotic and religious gatherings across the English-speaking world. Sung at papal visits, at national religious occasions, and at ordinations, it continues to ask each generation whether it will hold the faith at the same cost as those who held it before. The question is always contemporary.