A new trailer for Bioshock Infinite was shown during the 2011 Video Game Awards, featuring in-engine gameplay while a new cover of the religious classic "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" plays over the images. The song is sung by Courtnee Draper, the voice actress who plays Elizabeth, the lead in the game.

A few people online have already picked up on the fact that this version of the popular song does not use the word "Lord" in the chorus. This in turn is leading some to take offense to the religious aspect of the song being taken away, leading to strongly worded notes claiming that song lyrics to such classical and powerful hymns shouldn't be touched for pop culture. The truth is much simpler: the word "Lord" was never in the song to begin with.

First, let's take a look at the trailer that was shown during the Video Game Awards.

It's a beautiful song, but most of us are actually more familiar with a later, adapted version of the song. Let's take a look at one of those versions, and you'll notice the difference in lyrics.

Ken Levine actually answered this question on Twitter last night, and he claimed that the word "Lord" was not in the song's original lyrics. Maybe it's just because I grew up in Kentucky, but I knew the lyrics of this song for as long as I can remember. Levine can't be right... can he?

There are two versions of the song

The original lyrics were written by Ada R. Habershon in 1907, and the chorus to that version is as follows:

Will the circle be unbroken By and by, by and by? In a better home awaiting In the sky, in the sky?

You can also find images of old hymnals that have this original version of the song, such as this one dating back to 1908, with the original lyrics.

So when did the song change? "A.P. Carter, of the great Original Carter Family, pieced together the more familiar version a couple of days before it was first recorded, during a session on May 5, 1935," Kurt Gegenhubrer wrote on the Celestial Monochord site. "He completely rewrote the original song's verses—the storyline of the song—but left the chorus essentially unchanged." Unchanged except for one very important word, that is.

The Carter family released their version of the song, now titled "Can the Circle Be Unbroken (By and By)" in 1935. This is the version that inspired so many gospel, country, and bluegrass versions of the song, by artists as diverse as the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Bob Dylan, and Jeff Buckley. This is the version that was taught to most of the country as these artists toured and the lyrics were assumed to be, quite literally, gospel truth.

Nothing was removed from the song to get to the version used in the Bioshock Infinite trailer; the team simply went back to the original lyric of the songs from 1908. According to a Bioshock Wiki, the events of the game take place in an alternate version of 1912, years before anyone would change the lyrics of the song. This is the version that young Elizabeth would have learned, and thus it's the version she sings in the trailer.

The trailer isn't part of a secular, or even Christian, agenda. It's simply true to the time period of the game.