Iris DeMent / Lifeline / 2004
I've Got That Old Time Religion (In My Heart)
warm, devotional, quietly joyful
This is a short, plainspoken gospel hymn from DeMent's 2004 covers-and-originals album Lifeline, built on a simple profession of faith rather than narrative or argument. It leans on the structure and vocabulary of traditional revival-era hymns to express gratitude and private devotion, with almost no ornamentation beyond repetition.
faith and devotion gratitude salvation privacy of religious experience tradition
Who's speaking
A first-person believer addressing listeners directly, testifying to personal faith; the voice is sincere and unguarded, with no irony or distance from the tradition it draws on.
What happens
There isn't a plot so much as a cycle of testimony: the speaker names the source of her joy, describes what that relationship has done for her, and returns again and again to the same core declaration, as if circling a feeling rather than telling a story.
How it's built
The song works like a traditional hymn or spiritual, built on two verses and a near-identical refrain repeated after each. The repetition isn't filler so much as the point -- the form itself enacts the steadiness of the belief being described. The final line stretches the refrain slightly, extending the phrase as if trailing off in feeling rather than ending on a resolved cadence.
Section by section
Opening verse
The song opens with direct address of gratitude toward a religious figure, establishing tone and subject immediately without any narrative setup. The language is simple and devotional, drawing on familiar hymn phrasing rather than inventing new imagery.
First refrain
“old time religion in my heart”
The refrain fuses inherited religious tradition with intimate, interior feeling. Calling it both ancient and newly felt suggests the speaker experiences faith as both communal inheritance and private renewal.
Second verse
The second verse shifts from general praise to personal testimony about transformation, framing the relationship with the divine as having concretely changed her life, and extends that possibility outward to the listener.
Closing refrain
“nobody knows but my God and me”
This line insists on the incommunicability of religious experience -- it can be testified to but not fully explained or verified by others. The song ends by stretching its closing phrase, as if the feeling exceeds the words meant to hold it.
Craft
- refrain
- The repeated declaration of faith anchors the song and mimics call-and-response patterns from gospel and revival singing, reinforcing the idea of something constant and unchanging.
- anaphora
- Lines beginning with the same possessive claim stack up across the verses, giving the song a liturgical, incantatory rhythm.
- paradox
- Pairing something called 'old time' with something called 'new kind' suggests the speaker experiences inherited tradition as freshly, personally felt rather than secondhand.
Reading it
Read straightforwardly, the song is an earnest statement of personal faith in the gospel tradition, not meant to be parsed for subtext so much as felt and affirmed along with the singer. A secondary reading might note that by invoking 'old time' religion explicitly, DeMent is also commenting on continuity -- placing herself inside a specific American religious and musical lineage (camp-meeting hymns, old-time gospel) rather than writing a generic devotional song. Both readings coexist comfortably; there's no tension between personal sincerity and genre awareness here.
Context
Iris DeMent has long incorporated gospel and old-time religious music into her work, and Lifeline (2004) was explicitly conceived as a hymns and gospel album, reportedly inspired partly by songs her mother sang. I don't have reliable detail on whether this particular song is a cover of an existing old-time hymn or an original composition in that style; the title phrase itself echoes a well-known traditional gospel song ('Give Me That Old Time Religion'), so some relationship to that tradition seems likely, though I can't confirm specifics.
Listen for
- How the repeated refrain is phrased and whether it varies melodically across repetitions
- The contrast between the plainness of the lyric and the vocal delivery's emotional weight
- Whether the arrangement leans toward solo/sparse instrumentation typical of old-time gospel or fuller production
- The way the song's ending stretches out the final phrase rather than resolving cleanly
About Iris DeMent
Iris Luella DeMent is an American singer-songwriter and musician. DeMent's musical style includes elements of folk, country and gospel.
b. 1961 / United States
Full biography and catalogue