Careless hymns

There can be no doubt that the charismatic movement was responsible for a great proliferation of new Christian music. However, some of the new hymns were doctrinally doubtful. Take this one, for instance, written in 1976:

Father, we love You
We worship and adore You
Glorify Your name in all the earth
Glorify Your name
Glorify Your name
Glorify Your name in all the earth

Jesus, we love You
We worship and adore You
Glorify Your name in all the earth
Glorify Your name
Glorify Your name
Glorify Your name in all the earth

Spirit, we love You
We worship and adore You
Glorify Your name in all the earth
Glorify Your name
Glorify Your name
Glorify Your name in all the earth

Obviously, the Holy Spirit had been very neglected in Christian teaching prior to this time and this is an attempt to restore the Spirit to His full trinitarian position. I think the author fails in this, it sounds too much as if we are worshipping three separate Gods; just what the Muslims accuse us of. Worse than this in singing to the Spirit to glorify his name we do our utmost to embarrass him. The Spirit's role is glorify the name of Jesus; he is there to draw attention to Jesus, to make him known throughout the earth, not to glorify himself. In any case he is the Spirit of Jesus as well as the Spirit of the Father and as Jesus says, 'I and my Father are one'.

I remember that when we sang this in the seventies we changed the words of the third verse to Glorify his name in all the earth.