Give Me That Old Time Religion

"Old Time Religion"
("Give Me That Old Time Religion")
Page from The Jubilee Singers, 1873.
Song by Fisk Jubilee Singers (Earliest attested)
Form	Negro spiritual
Composer(s)	Traditional
Language	English

("Give Me That") "Old-Time Religion" (and similar spellings) is a traditional Gospel song dating from 1873, when it was included in a list of Jubilee songs—or earlier. It has become a standard in many Protestant hymnals, though it says nothing about Jesus or the gospel, and covered by many artists. Some scholars, such as Forrest Mason McCann, have asserted the possibility of an earlier stage of evolution of the song, in that "the tune may go back to English folk origins" (later dying out in the white repertoire but staying alive in the work songs of African Americans). In any event, it was by way of Charles Davis Tillman that the song had incalculable influence on the confluence of black spiritual and white gospel song traditions in forming the genre now known as southern gospel. Tillman was largely responsible for publishing the song into the repertoire of white audiences. It was first heard sung by African-Americans and written down by Tillman when he attended a camp meeting in Lexington, South Carolina in 1889.

Most common lyrics performed are a repetition of the chorus:

The lyrics, however, as sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers are:

Following Tillman's nuanced changes which accommodated the song more toward the tastes of white southern church congregations, Elmer Leon Jorgenson and other editors preferred the more-formalized first line "'Tis the old-time religion" (likewise the repeated first line of the refrain).