Almost everyone has sung The Old Rugged Cross at least once, whether at a funeral or a Good Friday vigil. Few know that the hymn was born not from calm theological study, but from a night of humiliation, when a young Methodist preacher was mocked for his message about the cross.
George Bennard was born on February 4, 1873, in Youngstown, Ohio, a mining and steel town, the son of a miner. His father’s sudden death forced him, still young, to support his mother and sisters, delaying his dream of becoming an evangelist.
In 1897 he joined the Salvation Army as an officer, alongside his wife Araminta, preaching across the United States and Canada. He was later ordained a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, living on the road as an itinerant evangelist.
In the fall of 1912, while staying in Albion, Michigan, Bennard faced mockery after preaching on the sufferings of Christ. He prayed, seeking to understand the place of the cross in the gospel, and, as he later recounted, saw the meaning of John 3:16 take shape before him.
There he wrote the first verse and refrain of The Old Rugged Cross. He completed the hymn months later, between December 1912 and January 1913, during evangelistic meetings in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. The final version premiered on June 7, 1913, in Pokagon, Michigan.
The hymn only gained national reach when Bennard sold the copyright to Homer Rodeheaver’s publishing house, around 1920, whose recordings carried it to churches across the country. Over his lifetime he composed more than 300 other hymns, but none came close to the impact of The Old Rugged Cross.
Bennard died in Reed City, Michigan, on October 10, 1958, decades after writing that verse on a night of humiliation. His story reminds us that the gospel often flourishes not despite weakness, but through it.
Today The Old Rugged Cross is sung in many languages around the world, keeping alive the message of the atonement in churches that may never know the name of the one who wrote it.