The discussion gets into how you define folk music, and that gets very arbitrary very quickly. Most hymns have a known author, so that fails one of the more common folkie litmus tests.

Many hymns are sung at social gatherings, not only religious services; and many are handed down from one to the next and undergo the "folk process," so they pass three other folkielitmustests.

I guess that means hymns are 75 percent folk.

-Joe Offer-