Pt. 1 – “Hymns are too slow.”

Pt. 2 – “Hymns started out as worldly tunes.”

Pt. 3 – “Old Hymns are too deep.”

Pt. 4 – “Old Hymns are stale.”

Pt. 5 – Our Hymns Did Not Come From Bars

Addendum: It might be important for me to point out on this page that not every hymn in a hymn book is good.  Of course, in modern hymn books we have repeatedly pointed out how CCM songs like “People Need the Lord” and entertainment Southern Gospel hymns like any of the songs the Gaithers wrote are wrong and should be avoided by Spirit-filled believers.

But the believer should also be aware that some hymns that have found their way into our hymn books are not even from those who believe in the important fundamentals of the faith.  The well-known “Faith of our Fathers”, for instance, is a Catholic hymn, written in 1849 by Frederick William Faber who switched sides from being Anglican to Catholic.  Faber wrote the hymn in memory of the Catholic Martyrs from the time of the establishment of the Church of England by Henry VIII. Many aren’t aware of this because one verse is usually omitted: “Faith of our Fathers! Mary’s prayers Shall win our country back to thee: And through the truth that comes from God England shall then indeed be free.”  The removal of this obvious verse causes all who sing the hymn to be deceived thinking that they are singing of believers who were martyred for truth.

Some hymns include unbiblical teachings and even heathen practices.  The popular “Just A Little Talk With Jesus” includes the phrase “when you feel a little prayer wheel turning”. The “prayer wheel” is not Christian nor biblical in origin. The prayer wheel is from Tibetan Buddhism. These are the large revolving cylinders that people turn as they pass one by one. According to Tibetan Buddhism, the more mantras are chanted, the more devotion to the Buddha is expressed, and the suffering of reincarnation can be freed. Therefore, in addition to orally reciting the prayers, Tibetan people put the mantras into the prayer wheels. They believe that every turn of the wheel will have the same meritorious effect as reading the sutra once, and rotating constantly represents that they are repeatedly chanting the mantras hundreds and thousands of times. “A little prayer wheel turning” as the song says is the smaller variations that most modern Tibetan Buddhists carry with them. In Tibetan areas, you can see believers, regardless of gender, old and young, holding a prayer wheel in their hands, turning non-stop. Most Tibetans, especially the elderly, cannot recite sutras fluently, so they turn the prayer wheels instead of chanting. There are also prayer wheels turned by wind or water. Certain Pentacostals and charismatics as well as some African American churches absorbed the heathen practice of prayer wheels used by the Buddhists in their churches. Cleavant Derricks, the author of the hymn, would have seen them in the churches he associated with when he wrote the song in 1937.