At least, it sounds like holy writ.
Julia Ward Howe writ it thus:
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
His truth is marching on. Glory! Glory hallelujah!
Glory! Glory Hallelujah! Glory! Glory Hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.
Samuel F. Smith, borrowing from another nation’s exaltation of monarchy, writ it thus in 1832:
Our fathers’ God, to thee,
Author of liberty,
To thee we sing:
Long may our land be bright
With freedom’s holy light;
Protect us by thy might,
Great God, our king.
Irving Berlin – and Kate Smith – made holy writ a fervent prayer:
God Bless America, Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her,
Through the night with a light from above.
From the mountains to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam,
God bless America,
My home sweet home.
And let us not forget the writ of Francis Scott Key that we never get around to singing:
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Our hearts swell with pride. Can there possibly be a more religious holiday than the Fourth of July?
Of course, there is another piece of writ we need to set aside if we are to pursue the holiness of national pride: the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Despite this legal impediment, it seems this year as we observe the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863, holiness hangs in the air like the summer humidity. Who can blame church goers if our eyes stray from the brass cross of Jesus and linger with pride on Old Glory as it stands erect and dusty in our chancels?
These patriotically idolatrous feelings are as American as cherry pie, and have been for years. There is a Methodist church in Pottstown, Pennsylvania that was built in 1865. On the front wall of the church, more than two stories high behind the pulpit, there is a magnificent painting of what was clearly regarded as a holy event: the Union victory at Gettysburg. Nearly twice life-size, men in blue carry the colors across a pastel panorama of death and destruction.
Granted, Gettysburg is like all battles when you break it down into its bloody statistics. There were 3,155 union soldiers killed, 14,531 wounded, 5,369 missing or captured. On the Confederate side, 4,708 were killed, 12,693 wounded, 5,830 missing or captured.
What an unholy blood bath.
God knows what was in the minds of the Methodists who designed the furious fresco.
And only God knows how many generations of Methodists meditated on this mural of destruction without detecting the irony as their pastor recited the Beatitudes or quoted Jesus’ commandments to turn the other cheek and love our enemies.
The scriptures suggested for this Sunday by the Revised Common Lectionary also remind us that our forebears have always assumed God’s exclusive blessing on their homes and country. Psalm 66 sings praises for God’s favor:
Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth; sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise. Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds! Because of your great power, your enemies cringe before you. All the earth worships you; they sing praises to you, sing praises to your name.” Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds among mortals. (1-5)
Isaiah 66:12-14 proclaims God’s fealty for Jerusalem and expresses confidence that God will reward the city with power and prosperity.
For thus says the LORD: I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm, and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice; your bodies shall flourish like the grass; and it shall be known that the hand of the LORD is with his servants, and his indignation is against his enemies.
Mark Twain expressed the ironies of praying against one’s enemies in his War Prayer.
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.
It is human nature to assume God blesses one’s own country while condemning our nation’s enemies. During the American Civil War, Confederate President Jefferson Davis probably attended church more frequently than President Lincoln. Davis, who lived a quarter century after the war, never stopped believing God sanctioned the revel cause. He died bitterly and, perhaps, theologically perplexed that God had not prevailed.
One of history’s oddest ironies is that the most insightful theologian of the Civil War period was an uneducated backwoods lawyer with no religious training. Abraham Lincoln – who was not a traditional Christian – was not so sanguine in claiming God’s support. His secretary discovered a small piece of paper on the president’s desk on which he had written:
The will of God prevails. In great contests, each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time ... I am almost ready to say this is probably true – that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet – By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest – Yet the contest began – And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day – Yet the contest proceeds.
This is a remarkable theological insight on the part of a commander-in-chief. President Lincoln developed the thought for his second inaugural address days before his assassination in 1865:
Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration which it has already attained ... Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other ... The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.
Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, ... as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
As we celebrate another year of United States independence, it is entirely appropriate for our hearts to swell with pride in the land we love, and sing hymns in its honor.
But it is even more appropriate to remember the words of the political leader so many of his contemporaries called Father Abraham.
Lincoln never insisted God was on the side of the United States, or even certain that the United States was always right in the course it chose. Recognizing that great evils – including slavery – were an integral portion of American heritage, Lincoln’s view was that the American experience was altogether imperfect, an experiment that was being tested in the caldron of civil war: testing whether “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
As we celebrate another year of independence, let our prayers seek God’s blessings and God’s forgiveness for all our national weaknesses: racism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, and all the collective sins of human community.
This year, let us be aware of strengths as well as weaknesses. And let us be mindful that some of the accomplishments we celebrate with great enthusiasm are actually insignias of human failure.
Shelby Foote, the great historian of the Civil War, said this a few years before his death on a three-hour CSpan interview (September 2, 2001):
“We think of ourselves as are a superior people with a superior form of government. If we were really that superior we would not have fought that war, we would have done what we have a genius for, which is avoiding confrontations, we can find some way to get along. That time it failed. It led to a loss of 1,095,00 men because we failed to reconcile our differences.”
May God (as President Lincoln preached) enable us to conduct our national affairs “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.”
God, in all that we do, give us to see the right.
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