While the expression "thank-you-ma'am" (= a bump or depression in the road) has not entered the language of public prayer and worship, the shorter expression, "thank you" did so, and at least from the beginning of the 20th century.
In fact the use of "thank you" addressed to God in some prayers, choruses and children's hymns existed alongside the strict rule [in place until the 1960s] of, "We say, 'Thou, Thee' to God and 'you' to man" (originally framed by John Wesley as a grammatical rule for schoolchildren).
Why is this?
"Thank you" is a shortened form of "I thank you" and it has been around as such in English usage for a very long time, since the middle ages. So by 1900 it was an expression that had lost its original verbal structure and functioned as an appreciative way of giving thanks to someone. The "you" had no particular stress and was not thought of as singular, plural or distinctive.
Thus singing or praying, "Thank you God for everything," or "Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul" was a simple, idiomatic modification of the Wesleyan principle and was, clearly, natural and authentic.
The move to saying, "I thank you, God, for everything," was not simple or natural or authentic. It was revolutionary when it occurred in the 1960s in the public prayer and liturgies of the major Churches, from Roman Catholic to Southern Baptist. Never before had the "You-God" been addressed in public worship.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
Minister of Christ Church, Biddulph Moor,
England & Vice-President and Emissary-at-Large
of The Prayer Book Society of America
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