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The popular song “Do As I’m Doing” helps joyful children all over the world work out their wiggles before many Sunday classes in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Some of the youngest kids in the church’s global Primary organization know the words, but it turns out that nobody actually knows who wrote them.
That’s a catch to including some hymns and songs in the new hymnbook the church is releasing in chunks.
Securing the legal permission to use a piece of music can be tricky, and it will affect what hymns wind up in the new “Hymns — For Home and Church," said David Channer, deputy general counsel in the church’s Office of General Counsel.
“A decision was made that if we’re going to include a hymn in the hymnbook, we are going to have every possible right to that hymn,” Channer said Tuesday during a presentation at BYU’s annual Education Week.
“That’s so we can print it, we can modify it, we can perform it by the Tabernacle Choir, we can perform it at (For Strength of Youth events), we can record it, we can do whatever we need to do with this hymn.
“If we cannot get that kind of bundle of rights, we’re not going to put it in the hymnbook, period.”
The bottom line is simple.
“There are going to be some hymns that will not be in the hymnbook because of the inability to get that kind of broad scope of rights,” he said.
Channer said he has a team meeting every two weeks to review the hymnbook project from a legal perspective.
“I always tell people it is the best meeting I have,” he said. “I love that I’m involved on the periphery. I’m not in the middle of this, but I’m involved enough to know and to deal with the legal issues arising out of it.”
Some of those legal issues are surprising to many, Channer said.
“First off, the new hymnbook includes selections from previous hymnbooks. So you may think, like I thought, ‘Well, it’s already in the hymnbook, so hasn’t somebody reviewed it?’ And the answer is yes, it was reviewed. ‘Well, can’t we just use it again?’ The answer is no.”
That’s because digital rights are separate from the print rights the church obtained when it last printed a hymnbook in 1985.
Then, the church obtained limited rights in the cases of some of the hymns, such as “How Great Thou Art,” which was published by Stuart K. Hine in 1949.
When the church began to publish the 1985 hymnbook online, it could not include “How Great Thou Art” and other hymns to which it had those limited rights. The Tabernacle Choir At Temple Square could not perform or record some of them without obtaining additional permission.
The church’s current Children’s Songbook lists the writer of “Do As I’m Doing” as anonymous, which can add another layer of complexity. If the church’s attorneys can’t determine who wrote a hymn, it can’t ask permission to use it.
On the other hand, some hymns have passed into the public domain and can be used without permission.
Under U.S. law, any songs or musical works published before 1930 are in the public domain. They can be sung, performed and recorded freely.
Songs published in 1930 will enter the public domain in the United States on Jan. 1, 2026, according to PDInfo.com.
The church received over 17,000 submissions for the new hymnbook, and creators who submitted their works agreed to provide the necessary rights as part of the process.
The issue is with the hymns that are older, more traditional ones that have not entered the public domain yet.
The problem gets thornier because countries protect copyrights for different lengths of time.
“These differing periods of copyright protection are problematic,” Channer said.
The church intends for the new hymnbook to be universal. The same hymns will be printed in the same order on the same page number in every language into which it is translated.
“So what happens,” Channer said, “when country A has a 70-year period, and country B has a 120-year period? Do we put it in the hymnbook today?”
The First Presidency began the hymnbook project in 2018. So far, the church has released 48 hymns digitally in four batches. The print version of the new hymnbook will have about 375 hymns.
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