New Songs of the Old Faith features new compositions, “favorite hymns,” and gospel songs popular at its date of publication. Edited by Norwegian American composer Haldor Lillenas (1885–1959), the volume has ties to the Church of the Nazarene, an offshoot of the nineteenth-century Holiness movement. Lillenas resigned his pastorate of a Nazarene church in Indianapolis, Indiana, to devote himself full time to his eponymous publishing company. By the time this volume appeared in 1925, Lillenas and president Emory W. Petticord had relocated the company to Kansas City, Missouri, to be closer to the publishing unit of the Church of the Nazarene. There, Lillenas would participate in the 1931 publication of the first official Nazarene hymnal. Many of his compositions remain popular in Nazarene circles.

—Erin Fulton