Breaking News: Old Hymn gets new words

Pastor Matthew Best
2 min readJul 19, 2022

Breaking News…

Sources are telling us that the popular hymn “They will know we are Christians by our love” is set for an updated version.

Chris T. Mas, spokesperson for the popular hymn publisher Sin(g) Boldly!, made the following statement:

“The old hymn is really popular and we hate to make such a change, but we felt compelled to. The key line of the hymn is that people will know we are Christian by love. But that’s just not the case any more with so much of Christianity in America. So we made the executive decision to change up the words to better reflect who the church is — at least the segment of the church that is our target market.”

The key change in wording is the refrain which will change from “they will know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Yes, they will know we are Christians by our love.”

In its place the new version of the hymn’s refrain will be “they will know we are Christians by our cruelty, by our cruelty. Yes, they will know we are Christians by our cruelty.”

Mas acknowledged that the new refrain isn’t as catchy as the original, but better captures the reality for larger segments of Christianity in America.

Mas said, “Whether we are talking about finding ways to reject strangers who are coming here even to the point of separating families, or putting our faith in guns to keep us safe, or promoting policies and laws that make life harder for the LGBTQ+ community…

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Pastor Matthew Best

My name is Matthew Best. I’m an ELCA (Lutheran) pastor who attempts to translate church and churchy stuff into everyday language.