I was recently asked to be the organist at church, and because the chorister was out of town camping the week of July 4th, I got to pick the hymns for that Sunday. Traditionally (at least according to the 33 years’ worth of Independence Days I’ve experienced) we sing the patriotic hymns in the back of the hymnbook on the Sunday closest to Independence Day. This makes sense according to the calendar, but in recent years it has made me somewhat uncomfortable. To be clear, I consider myself a patriotic sort, but with the Church being global, I've wondered about how appropriate it is to sing region-based songs during worship service. So as I set about deciding what hymns to sing, I did a lot of "studying it out in my mind," pondering about the relationship between America and patriotism and God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, some of which I have now written out and present to you.
*Quick note: This is kinda long. My thinking and writing here strayed at times away from the direct question of “what is appropriate to sing at church?” into larger questions of patriotism and American greatness. So if you don’t want to read the whole thing, I get it. That said, if you’re not going to read the whole thing I would encourage you to skip down and read the last dew paragraphs, starting with the one that begins “While these hymns rhapsodize about American greatness…”*
Before I explain what I decided regarding the hymns, I want to show you a picture of some fireworks to get us in the mood and then outline some of my ponderings on the subject.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a worldwide church that makes a special effort to emphasize that everyone in this world belongs to a universal family regardless of nationality. In a similar vein, Joseph Smith once claimed that, “We ought to have the building up of Zion as our greatest object” (160) with “Zion” being defined elsewhere in the scriptures as a group of people that are “of heart and one mind, and [dwell] in righteousness; and there [are] no poor among them.” Similarly, Christ himself taught (as interpreted by King James’ translators), “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
Unity, community, and love. And not just for those we like, or get along with, or who happen to live within our same a relatively arbitrary set of lines drawn in the dirt. Love that extends across the entire family of humankind.
So, if part of our purpose in congregating on Sunday to worship is to increase in unity, community, and love, where do patriotic hymns fit in?
This isn’t an easy question for me to answer. I love patriotic songs, and I love this country. But there’s no denying that these songs are often used to prop up ideas of American exceptionalism with which I heartily disagree. And because of these exceptionalist undertones, I’ve seen where some have compared singing such hymns in Sacrament Meeting to that part of the Book of Mormon where the wicked and apostate Zoramites build a big tower upon which they stand and thank God for making them better than everyone else.
We, meaning Americans, are not necessarily better than everyone else. But by saying that Americans are not better than anyone else, I’m not also saying that we are worse than anyone else. Comparisons of this sort are unhelpful.
From my point of view, when we frame life as a competition with winners and losers, better and worse, we are moving in the opposite direct of the ultimate goals of unity, community, and love.
If we are exclusively focused on being better than others, then those others automatically become, if not enemies, then at least threats. Life, so-conceived, is a zero-sum game where there is a winner and the rest are losers. It’s like the old joke: when outrunning a bear you don’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster than whoever you’re with. While this is perhaps true in situations where you’re hanging out with hungry bears, and with people you don’t like, and also you’ve lost all capacity for human compassion, this is not true of life or “greatness” more generally.
I do believe that America is great, though certainly far from perfect. But just as my own self-worth does not depend on my neighbor’s self-worth, American greatness does not necessarily exist at the expense of or in relation to the greatness of other countries. The greatness that we find within this country is a greatness that is common and available to all nations, kindreds, tongues, and peoples across the world. Such greatness is achieved through a combination of hard work and divine support.
I recognize that talking about the Divine isn’t politic or cool when discussing international relations and geopolitical concerns, but I believe that any greatness we attain to in this life, in any sphere, is a shadow of an eternal Greatness (capital G), and that American greatness itself is such a shadow. To that end, I believe that divine inspiration accompanied the founding of this nation and the enumeration of its ideals.
While there are many “American” ideals that I might identify that lead to American and general greatness, allow me to mention just three:
- Individuals ought to be allowed the freedom to choose how they will spend their time and energy, though they are not immune from the consequences of those choices.
- All people have an inherent dignity. (This ideal was rather myopically applied in the early days of the nation, but we have made progress in broadening its application even if it seems we are still working towards full and true acceptance.)
- All people have the right and even duty to take active part in governing their own affairs. Such active engagement can take many forms, including voting, interpersonal discourse, personal improvement and growth, and, if necessary, perhaps a little bit of revolution.
But any greatness comes with a warning from history. As Kenneth Burke explained in 1967:
“We know of many empires that rose and fell. We know of none that rose and didn't fall. Hitler, at the height of his arrogance, promised his followers, who obeyed him as automatically as conditioned cattle, that his dismal outfit would last a thousand years. That dream was soon over. I don't have the least idea how permanent our setup is likely to be, though it is a fact known to us all that a considerable number of our most characteristic contrivances have to be junked strikingly soon after we buy them.” (“Responsibilities of National Greatness,” The Nation, vol. 205, 17 July 1967)
We may think we’re pretty great and have things pretty well figured out for now, but that’s also what the Egyptians thought. And the Greeks. And the Assyrians. And the Romans. And the Huns. And the British. And so on. America is another empire, so to speak, in a long line that will eventually follow the others to a similar end, only to be replaced by another. In fact, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we actively look forward to the establishment of a new government that will override all others.
Why, then, in our worship services should we celebrate momentary and ephemeral political power (divinely inspired though it may be) in the same space in which we teach what we claim to be eternal truths?
Additionally, why should we celebrate this provincial political power when we claim worldwide familial relationships, including brothers, sisters, and siblings in our very midst who do not identify as “American?”
These concerns and misgivings were the starting point for me as I went about deciding if/which patriotic hymns to include in Sunday's worship service. And with that as my starting point, it might seem that I’m building up to the conclusion that patriotic hymns are inappropriate for Sacrament Meeting. But I’m not. In fact, I eventually concluded that they are entirely appropriate and I ended up selecting two. Allow me to explain how I got there.
I decided that to come to a sound decision I needed to carefully read through the words of the four patriotic hymns in the LDS hymnbook that I was considering to see specifically what kinds of messages were being communicated. I recognize that others far more inspired and qualified than me have already done the work of reading carefully and determining propriety, but I wanted to come to my own conclusions. These were the four hymns in question:
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
America the Beautiful
My Country, ‘Tis of Thee
The Star-Spangled Banner
(“God of Our Fathers, Whose Almighty Hand” would also have normally been under consideration but we had just sung it 3 weeks earlier.)
Upon reading the words of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” I decided right off that it was a go. While it has distinct roots in American history and is a stirring patriotic anthem, nothing in it is overtly nationalistic or even mentions geo-politics at all. The Union army may have marched to its refrains during the Civil War, and they may have interpreted themselves to be representative of the truth that is marching on, but the words of the song itself (at least those included in the hymnbook which admittedly do leave out some of the more militaristic stanzas) can be read and sung as a rallying cry to the cause of Christ -- a battle with the worst impulses within each of us.
But the other three were a little bit trickier for me. At least at first blush.
I say they were trickier because these three, and perhaps most especially “The Star-Spangled Banner,” are much more overtly nationalistic and often used popularly as a kind of signboard for American exceptionalism. But upon reading through the words of the hymns themselves, a different picture began to emerge.
While these hymns rhapsodize about American greatness, the takeaway message in all three is that while America is great, its greatness is owed directly to God. Rather than self-aggrandizing assertions of our individual greatness in comparison to other non-Americans, there is a call to humility. There’s a recognition that our greatness has nothing to do with our own merits; instead it invites us to recognize with Ammon that we are, in fact, nothing. As to our own, individual (or even national) strength, we are weak. Therefore, we ought not to boast of ourselves, but rather we ought to boast of our God. For in his strength we can do all things.
Unfortunately, humility is not often seen as a precursor to greatness. And humility as a national ideal does not sit easily on the shelf next to the full-throated assertions of America’s superiority over all comers.
But that kind of militaristic, hierarchical, zero-sum greatness is, in my view, a counterfeit, rather than a shadow of divine Greatness.
The kind of national greatness described in these hymns, a greatness that owes its very existence to divine allowance, is a greatness available to all. It is a greatness that is found as we align our ideals with divine mandate. It is a greatness that, perhaps, America might do well to search out more diligently to, yes, make itself more great. But what does it mean and what would it look like to find and make America greater?
I've decided that finding and augmenting greatness is not about rooting out the unclean from our midst, as many on all sides of the political spectrum seem to keen on doing. Such attitudes and actions are not greatness, but rather mere vanity. It is the puffing up of our own selves with empty air and is soon and easily released and deflated.
Finding and augmenting greatness, rather, is a matter of rooting out the unclean from within ourselves.
It's about searching out our own hate, anger, disgust, and pride and laying it on the altar.
It's about rededicating ourselves to loving our neighbors, even to the extent of showing compassion and mercy for national rivals.
It's about rededicating ourselves to unity, community, and love.
And as we go about doing this kind of work, we will hopefully come to realize that we have and do and will continue to fall short.
We are imperfect.
We require a little extra help that goes beyond our own human frailty.
In short, if these are to aspire to greatness in any sphere, we need to recognize that to achieve greatness we may depend upon "God shedding his grace," his enabling and ennobling power, upon us.
The patriotic hymns, when read/sung while paying close attention to the words and message they relate, make this compelling claim that humility before God is a precursor to any and all greatness, even the national variety. And if these hymns celebrate and emphasize humility before God as a truly American ideal, what could be more appropriate in a worship setting?
Ultimately, I chose the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” to play and sing in church on Sunday. (My decision to go with “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” rather than the other two was made expressly as a commentary on my own comfort level playing it on the organ in front of 200+ people.)
As I played these hymns and heard my fellow congregants singing them, I felt that in doing so we were "[praising] the Pow’r that hath made and preserved us a nation" not thanking God for making us better than all other nations.
As we did so, my hope was that we were all, as Americans specifically and humans more generally, remembering and rededicating ourselves to the notion that to attain or maintain any greatness at all, we need to continually acknowledge the true source of that greatness.
