“Are You Washed in the Blood?” is a Christian hymn written in 1878 by Elisha Albright Hoffman (1839–1929), the Pennsylvania-born Presbyterian minister who became one of the most prolific gospel hymn writers of the late 19th century. Hoffman wrote both the lyrics and the melody and first published the hymn in Spiritual Songs for Gospel Meetings and the Sunday School. He was ordained as a minister in 1868 and pastored at churches in Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan; across his lifetime he wrote more than 2,000 gospel songs, including the related classic “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” (1894).
The hymn’s central image — “are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?” — draws directly from Revelation 7:14 (“They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”), giving the song the kind of explicit scriptural anchor characteristic of late-19th-century evangelical hymnody. The song became a standard in Salvation Army marching tradition and crossed firmly into the broader American Protestant hymn repertoire across the early 20th century.
“Are You Washed in the Blood?” entered the country and bluegrass canons through Ernest V. Stoneman and his Dixie Mountaineers, who recorded it at the 1927 Bristol sessions. It has since been recorded by Johnny Cash, Alan Jackson, Randy Travis, the Louvin Brothers, and many bluegrass-gospel acts, and remains one of the most reliably called sacred-set call-outs at any bluegrass jam session that includes a gospel block.
