Reverend Charles Albert Tindley took his pastoral role seriously. He took to the streets to meet and teach people his religious message. In this process, he ascertained their needs and set about securing connections with city officials and agencies to advocate for his people.

He also helped his parishioners gain the money to buy houses by starting a building and loan society for his church.

Never attending school, Tindley became highly educated. He was a voracious reader, accumulating 8,000 books in his library. Early on, he mastered English and then learned Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.

Through the years, those who remembered Tindley remembered the great crowds who came to the church constantly to hear him preach. “People from everywhere — black and white — before integration was supposedly popular, were there to hear Tindley preach.” His skill as a preacher, blending profundity with simplicity, was so great that seminary students of all races came to his services to study his method. Over his pre-stated objections, after his death, the congregation named the church Tindley Temple.

Tindley saw his songwriting as secondary and supportive of his sermonizing. His hymns stressed the necessity of struggle but included the “good news” of God’s support.

New African American arrivals, primarily poor and illiterate, poured into the north, Philadelphia, and Tindley’s church. Primarily poor and illiterate, they highly valued the simple, direct, and emotional style of life of which Tindley spoke in his sermons and hymns. He used their language, taking a biblical passage and restating it in ordinary, everyday words:

According to Tindley Temple legend, a mother with several young children and a deceased husband came to Reverend Tindley to report her predicament and ask for his help in general and his help in understanding her desperate situation as a Christian. Her plight and many others like her weighed on the pastor, who went into his study after dinner and meditated over these issues. Tindley wrote one of his classic songs in this private session, “We’ll Understand it Better By and By.”

That is one of Tindley’s hymns which appear in numerous hymnals. Perhaps Tindley’s most famous hymn is “Stand By Me.” Written and copyrighted in 1905, it is the second most well-known hymn in African American Christendom.

“Stand by Me” is a typical Tindley gospel hymn. It references trials and tribulations” and beseeches God for continued support. Here is the first stanza:

When the storms of life are raging,

Stand by me. Stand by me.

When the world is tossing me,

like a ship upon the sea,

Thou who rulest wind and water,

Stand by me. Stand by me.

Tindley had a significant influence on the development of gospel music. A remarkable strand of that influence occurs with “Stand By Me.” Over the years, many prominent gospel singers have recorded versions of that song. But Tindley’s influence went beyond that. Inspired by the hymn, Ben E. King sought to derive a secular version. His recording in 1960 became one of the most enduring pop songs ever. King had a big hit that significantly influenced popular music, as it has been recorded over 400 times by many different artists. The result was that it was once named the fourth most performed song of the 20^th century.

But the story continues. Some musicologists argue that Tindley’s “Stand by Me” is not just echoed in cover versions. Country queen Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man,” recorded in 1968, was thought to have been influenced at least subliminally by Tindley’s hymn.

All this from a guy who grew up effectively an enslaved person and learned to read and write when he was a teenager.