Hymn Pirates

But the problem is that these “rediscovered” hymns aren’t really hymns at all. They are contemporary songs with old words. That’s it. The reworking (“freshening up,” “repackaging,” whatever you’d like to call it) takes words and tunes written for congregational singing and makes them into a commercially marketable product.

Jonathan Aigner, writing at Patheost, strikes me as the kind of guy who thinks anything good for you should taste like medicine. He goes on to equate commercially marketable product with saccharine worship.

The worst offender is the poster boy for saccharine worship, Chris Tomlin. To be fair, many others have committed the same crime, but he has been the most commercially successful hymn-pirate. He has been so successful, in fact, that if you were to ask a contemporary worship native to sing “Amazing Grace” or “O Worship the King,” you would probably hear Tomlin’s commercial version.

Tomlin’s signature is to take a few stanzas of a well-known hymn, and add his own refrain. This is not unheard of in traditional hymnody (think “Come, We that Love the Lord” turned into “We’re Marching to Zion”), but the way Tomlin et al. uses this form, it’s problematic, to say the least. Here are a few reasons why.

This is a practice that has been bothering Mr. Aigner for some time now. The straw that broke the camels back was when Babylon Bee brought up the issue. Like a copyright lawyer who believes his clients work is being infringed upon and no interest in art going forward, Mr. Aigner argues that, “It Subverts, It Sentimentalizes, It Steals, and It’s Shady” to essentially remix hymns.

Let’s take a step back a moment and remind ourselves what the artists’ job is. Art is, by definition, looking at something in a novel way. It’s very easy to contrast the preacher’s job of “telling the old old story” (a turn of phrase that isn’t actually in scripture), with the musician’s job of “singing a new song” a notion fundamentally rooted in finding a fresh perspective, recasting the old old story in a new context, and doing so with intent to elicit an emotional response.

Mr. Aigner seems to believe the hymns are complete, or at the very least this new phenomenon of christian singer-songwriter isn’t worthy to modify them. The problem with this of course is a reverse “slippery slope” argument that ultimately keeps us from moving even one inch forward, and allows purists and gatekeepers to make sure that some fabled canonical version of the song is the only approved one. I really thought Glad put this issue to rest in the 80’s with That Hymn Thing, but apparently not.

Mr. Aigner’s saves his most disingenuous critique for the end, calling the practice of remixing hymns “shady”.

I have no doubt that Tomlin is a well-meaning individual, but it’s really shady. According to the CCLI database, “The Wonderful Cross” was written by Chris Tomlin, Isaac Watts, J.D. Walt, Jesse Reeves, and Lowell Mason. By doing so, Tomlin, Walt, and Reeves have hijacked Watts’ poetry (Mason composed the tune, HAMBURG), added a very minimal contribution of their own, copyrighted it, and have proceeded to financially benefit from it.

Further, as they’re listed, it’s almost as if Tomlin is claiming Newton, Grant, and Watts were consenting partners in these new versions. This is problematic for two reasons.

First, Tomlin is no Isaac Watts. He’s not even a Fanny Crosby. He writes poor, theologically shaky, biblically nebulous texts. There is nothing he can say that will improve or enhance the work of any lasting hymn.

Secondly, it’s intellectually dishonest. Seriously. Altering hymn texts isn’t anything new. Stanzas have long been added and removed, and edited for clarity or content, while preserving the integrity of what the author was trying to say. Altering the trajectory, and using it to say something different is nothing short of plagiarism. It is taking the work of another, and misrepresenting it for ones own benefit.

First Tomlin is accused of crediting the original authors along with himself, and in the next breathe is accused plagiarism instead of footnoting. It’s almost like we have different definitions of the term “misrepresenting”. Mr. Aigner is left as the judge of wether or not the “trajectory” of the song has been altered to an acceptable or unacceptable degree, although arguments could easily be made for why either is better.

When I look back at the other articles Mr. Aigner has written, I’m highly sympathetic to his take on Gary Moore’s new song that trades the Kingdom with Empire, but this strikes me as crotchety old man screams “stay off my lawn” and making moral judgements about creativity, what objects are taboo, and who is worthy to make art.

There will undoubtedly be people who view remixing hymns as a practice which diminishes hymns. I love hymns and grew up with them, and this isn’t at all my personal experience with the remixes, but I get how it could be for some. But if you’re going to argue beyond personal preference to grand morality, the side Mr. Aigner doesn’t acknowledge, is that remixing also introduces hymns, in whatever small measure, to a new generation of churchgoers. This is the kind of thing that keeps hymns and the arts alive.

Good artists copy; great artists steal.

Everything we do as artists is based on something that came before us. Crediting others while making something new strikes me as operating with complete integrity, particularly if done with respect and understanding of the original material. We can argue the finer points of that, but if we’re not doing so out of a spirit of generosity and a respect for today’s newfangled artists, we need to find better ways to spend our time or simply come to terms with the fact that the “stay off my lawn” sign out front is who we’ve really are. Remixing is only going to get more pervasive as digital technologies become more ubiquitous.

Tomlin currently has 6% of the songwriting credits in the CCLI top 100, with 14 out of 232 total credits. Not that this is a contest or test of spirituality, but Matt Redman and Reuben Morgan are next in line with half that many, and Jason Ingram with 6. Only time will tell if Tomlin belong alongside other greats in other times, but asserting otherwise right now is