HOPE Together on Songs of Praise: Celebrating 500 Years of Tyndale’s New Testament

This year marks 500 years since William Tyndale’s English New Testament was first printed. To mark the anniversary, we were delighted to welcome the Songs of Praise team to spend a day with us, exploring how Tyndale’s vision is still inspiring us to put the Bible into people’s hands today.

The result will feature in Songs of Praise: The Bible for All, airing on BBC One on Sunday 13 September.

A vision that changed everything

In 1526, William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament was printed in Europe and smuggled into England.

Tyndale was passionate about ordinary people being able to read and understand the Bible for themselves. It was a conviction that would ultimately cost him his life – but 500 years later, his legacy continues.

That same desire for people to encounter God’s Word for themselves is at the heart of so much of what we do at HOPE Together.

Bringing Tyndale’s legacy into 2026

Earlier this year, we launched Ancient Wisdom for New Life, our new Tyndale-inspired New Testament, created to help people across the UK discover the Bible for themselves.

During filming, our designer Jack McCausland shared how Tyndale’s original printed pages helped inspire the look and feel of the new edition. We wanted to honour the history behind it while creating something fresh, engaging and designed to be picked up, read and shared today.

Our Executive Director, Rachel Jordan-Wolf, also spoke to Songs of Praise about the Great Gospel Giveaway and our vision to see half a million Gospels and New Testaments given away across the UK by 2030.

It’s a big vision, but at its heart is something incredibly simple: Christians and churches putting Scripture into the hands of the people around them and inviting them to discover Jesus for themselves.

From the page to the pavement

And we didn’t just want to talk about giving away the Bible – we wanted to go out and do it.

So, together with the Songs of Praise team, we headed onto the streets around Christ Church Spitalfields and joined the church’s evangelism team as they offered New Testaments to people passing by.

People stopped. Conversations began. Questions were asked. And people walked away with their own copy of the New Testament to read for themselves.

Five hundred years after Tyndale fought to put Scripture into the hands of ordinary people, it was wonderful to see that same simple vision happening on the streets of London.

Today, we have the freedom to read the Bible, carry it with us and give it away.

So, who could you put a Gospel or New Testament into the hands of?

Watch Songs of Praise: The Bible for All

Tune in to BBC One on Sunday 13 September at 2.15pm (or 2.45pm in Northern Ireland) as Aled Jones marks 500 years since William Tyndale’s revolutionary New Testament in English and shares some of the story of what we’re doing at HOPE Together today.