On America and Patriotism and If/Where They Fit at Church

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.

Any greatness that we claim as Americans comes as we adhere to, work towards, and accept the responsibilities born from ideals such as these. And, by all rights, I find that America can be a pretty great place.

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.

Christmas and Things as They Really Are

I love Christmas. A lot. And by looking at the world around me I can see that I am clearly not alone in my love of Christmas. There are as many different reasons for loving Christmas as there are people that love Christmas, and I've endeavored many times here on my blog to enumerate some of the reasons that I love Christmas. It seems like this time of year never comes around but that I feel the exquisite joy that accompanies the season, and I feel the urge to write something to somehow capture or otherwise describe that feeling.

Today I've been reading (both in print and audiobook) one of my top 10 (maybe edging into top 7 or even 5) favorite books. Not top 10 favorite Christmas books, top 10 favorite books: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. I read this book every year at Christmas time, and often several other times throughout the year, because I feel like it brings the Christmas spirit to the fore in ways that little else can.

Here's a picture of me and Shar reading A Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve last year.
(Even when she's fast asleeping she's still just devastatingly gorgeous.)

(Certain Christmas carols do this for me as well, but we're not here to talk about them. Not right now at least.) As I've been rereading this book I've been marveling and wondering at its ability to stay fresh and moving despite my having read it literally dozens of times and having seen dozens of adaptations in film and on stage. This is yet another iteration of my perennial question about literatures ability to maintain relevance across space and time, but for me there's something especially poignant about A Christmas Carol. But why?

I've been taking some time to ponder on this question for a couple hours now, and I think I have at least some kernel of an answer. At least, it feels like a kernel of an answer for me. And I think the crux of the answer lies in what David Bednar has called, "the simple and clear definition of truth set forth in the Book of Mormon." In the Book of Jacob, chapter three and verse four, the prophet Jacob writes, "the Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not. Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls." I think that in exploring the redemption of Ebeneezer Scrooge, Dickens was plainly inspired by the Spirit to write about Scrooge's journey in discovering things as they really are and of things as they really will be.

To explain what I mean, allow me to briefly summarize a scene that takes place early on in the book. Scrooge is in his place of business when he is confronted by two men hoping to elicit some donation which they intend to then relay to the poor and destitute. As Scrooge inquires after the various government services set up to help the poor, the men reply, "Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.” Whereupon the following exchange takes place:

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides—excuse me—I don’t know that.” 

“But you might know it,” observed the gentleman. 

“It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!” 

The line about how the poor had better hurry up and die to decrease the surplus population gets a lot of play, and is even refuted with great flair later on by the second ghost when Scrooge is made to realize that Tiny Tim is among that "surplus population." However, what really struck me today is the line, "Besides—excuse me—I don't know that."

How many of us go about our lives happy and content, not realizing that our happiness and contentment is only possible because we, in the words of the assuredly dead Marley, "walk through crowds of fellow-beings with [our] eyes turned down?" How often do we consciously or unconsciously choose to avoid knowing about and being involved in the lives—both sorrows and joys—of our fellow passengers to the grave?

It seems to me that much of this novella is devoted to helping Scrooge better know "things as they really are and things as they are to come" with specific regard to the reality of the lives of those around him. The spirits (much like the Spirit, capital "S," more generally) exist to help him see the truth of his own life. That includes the truth about how he came to be the scrooge that he is; the truth of the effects, direct and indirect, of his own life and choices on the many people within the sphere of his influence; and the potential truth of what will happen unless he continues on his current path. And, as Jacob says, this truth is stated and shown plainly to Scrooge by the spirits for the salvation of his soul.

The great blessing in Scrooge's life, and the great message of this novella, is that, no matter how we are currently living our lives, we can work harder to make "Mankind [our] business. The common welfare [can be our] business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, [can be], all, [our] business. The dealings of [our] trade [are] but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of [our] business!"

Part of the beauty and wonder of the Christmas season, to me, is that it invites us to "raise [our eyes] to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode!" Those poor abodes don't necessarily have to be financially poor abodes. Rather we can recognize that everyone that we know and interact with has lives riddled with "poor" moments. The nature of this life is that we all have difficulties and struggles that make all of us "poor" at some time or another. But the lesson of A Christmas Carol that I've been learning today, and perhaps one of the most important lessons of of Christmas as a whole, is that we can and ought to make the business of our lives the working and helping and generally living together with all the other poor folks that live all around us. In other words, we ought to strive to live our lives after the pattern and example set by Him whose birth we celebrate.

That is the truth that Scrooge seems to learn that is taught him by the spirits. And as I have reread that truth today, the Spirit is teaching me the same truth. As my favorite adaptation of A Christmas Carol puts it, "It is the season of the Spirit. The lesson, if we hear it, is make it last all year." I especially love the feeling of the Christmas season because this spirit of kindness and charity and concern for the Other seems to pervade every aspect of the holiday, but we can and should make a concerted effort to make that spirit last all the year through.

On Lips and Miracles and Cookies and Gratitude

Today in Primary (little kid Sunday School) the kids were asked to discuss temporal (as opposed to spiritual) blessings that they were grateful for, and one little fella piped up that he was grateful for teeth. He was probably trying to think of the most ridiculous thing he could think for and then say that thing -- at least that's what I would've been doing when I was his age -- but all the same I really liked that perspective. I often acknowledge that I’m grateful for my body generally and all the miraculous things it does, but it isn’t all that often that I sit down and consider the individual bits and just how amazing and remarkable those individual bits are. In fact, it’s really only after I’ve done something to damage my body in some way and it is temporarily unable to do certain things quite so easily that I consciously recognize and am grateful for its abilities specifically rather than generally. So all day since Primary I’ve been thinking about what specific body parts and processes I can be more consciously grateful for.  And this afternoon while Shar and I were making her famous, award-winning (literally) peanut butter cookies, I had one of these lesser-acknowledged parts play a key role in saving a potentially unfortunate happening from happening.

At one point during the baking of the cookies I was in charge of taking a particular batch out of the oven while Shar was otherwise engaged. But, see, after putting the cookies in the oven I had forgotten to set a timer. And as I am wont to do, I got distracted (I was probably definitely watching highlight videos of BYU football), and, well, I let the cookies bake a bit too long and they got a bit over-baked. While this was a relatively unfortunate happening, it wasn't too bad because the cookies weren't too badly over-baked, at least they didn't seem to be. So the fact that I remembered, albeit a bit late, and took them out while still edible made me realize that the ability to remember things is a pretty cool thing our bodies do, even when it happens a bit too late, and I was grateful for it. But the ability to remember, while cool and a thing worth grateful being, it wasn't the thing I came here to tell you about.

Since the cookies were a bit overdone, I felt it incumbent upon me to taste test them. So I did. But also in this moment, while I was taking cookies out of the oven, I was also washing the dishes from dinner. (Which had likely also contributed to my forgetting the cookies. See, I had my computer up above the sink playing BYU football clips while washing dishes, so clearly my mind was at cognitive capacity and there was no RAM leftover to remember to take out cookies.) So in deciding to taste test cookies, it didn't feel appropriate to stop my dishwashing altogether just to eat a cookie. What would that look like if someone (Shar) came into the kitchen where I was supposed to be washing dishes, and instead I was standing there eating cookies. No. I had to eat the cookie while washing the dishes. It was the only logical thing to do.

Allow me to describe my process for doing both at once. Understanding my process here is important in order for you to understand the potentially unfortunate happening that was about to nearly happen. What I would do is take a bite of cookie, set it down, grab a plate to rinse in the sink, rinse the plate, put the plate in the dishwasher, wipe one hand on my pants, pick up the cookie, take a bite, set the cookie down, and grab a bowl, rinse the bowl and so on. I continued the process over the course of several bites (they're large cookies), and as I did so I was marveling at the way that my body could smoothly bend and flex and shift and grab and do all manner of things in order to just simply wash the dishes (and eat a cookie). It was remarkable.

Finally I got to the last two bites of cookie and I decided to try and just eat the whole two bites at one go. So I tossed the last, overlarge bit of cookie into my mouth, and as I bit down I continued in my smooth movements of dishwashing which at this moment meant that I was inclining my back and neck to lean over a big mixing bowl that was full of murky dishwater in the bottom of the sink. And now you may begin to see the unfortunate happenings about to happen. See, the cookie hadn’t quite made it all the way into my mouth before I bit down, so the act of biting, coupled with the movement of leaning over, sent the cookie ever so slightly in motion towards the bowl of murky water and certain inedibility. As the cookie lost contact with my teeth, for a fraction of a moment I was wildly disappointed as images flooded my mind of my now-soggy cookie floating in a bowl of tepid, soapy water together with bits of wilted lettuce, leftover rice grains, and other less-easily-identifiable food bits.

But before these visions of a mildly disappointing future could fully become reality, something miraculous happened.

My lips clamped down and caught the cookie bit out of the air, preventing its fall from grace my mouth.

I stood motionless at the sink, unsure if what had just happened had really just happened. Had I -- a man whose life has been defined almost exclusively with moments (read that years) of clumsy, awkward attempts to use my body gracefully really just snatched a bit of cookie out of the air with just my lips? It didn't seem possible. Yet not only was it possible, I was standing there with the cookie clenched between my lips as evidence of the actuality of the event.

Now, had I lost the cookie I’m sure that, in the grand scheme of things, my life would have continued on its course relatively unperturbed past this momentary and minor tragedy. I would likely have chided myself mildly for thinking it wise to eat so much cookie at once, finished washing the dishes, and then eaten another cookie afterwards, as much to prove to myself that I could successfully eat an entire cookie as to enjoy its sweet peanut buttery sweetness. So while the tragedy-aversion felt miraculous, it was certainly a miracle with the lowest of lower case “m”s. But see, that tragedy was averted, and it was all thank you to the miracle of my lips.

Outside of romantic settings, lips never seem to get much attention or credit for their vital, cookie-saving abilities. So I would like to take a moment to express my unequivocal gratitude for lips. And for cookies.

The Plight of the Coyote

This morning as I was driving to campus I saw a coyote. In the middle of Sacramento. He was just kind of slinking along the road pretending real hard to act like he belonged there, but clearly uncomfortable with having been caught out in the open and in a city, no less. Luckily for me traffic was slow and I was able to watch him for probably half a mile as he trotted along, occasionally looking over at the line of cars next to him on the highway with the head-ducked shame of someone who knows he doesn't belong.

(Remember, I was driving while taking these pictures. Please forgive their blurriness and lack of focus.)

For a moment I felt a hint of sympathy for him because he was very clearly aware that most people, when they think of coyotes, imagine them prowling around in the wild, hunting and scavenging and generally living the idyllic life that Mark Twain spelled out:

"The cayote lives chiefly in the most desolate and forbidding desert, along with the lizard, the jackass-rabbit and the raven, and gets an uncertain and precarious living, and earns it."

My friend here probably wakes up every morning with dreams of returning to the wildlands of his ancestors. Everyday he thinks he'll actually do it. He'll leave this urban wasteland and get back to his roots. Sure, his grandparents had made to the move to the city because they were sick and tired of being the "living, breathing allegory of Want," but was life really any better in the city? Even with the lights and glamour of city life, he was still "a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it." He still had that "tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth." If life was just going to continue on in this vein, he might as well live it somewhere a little less populated and a little less noisy.

This urban coyote probably got a late start this morning after a late night of carousing with his friends, and, after briefly giving in to these hopes and dreams of his life as it could be in the wild, went off in search of breakfast scavenged from last night's restaurant refuse. As he set off with a headache and a loathing for the sun that was beating much too intensely for an October morning, he happened to turn down a road that was unexpectedly full of commuters, and now he was being forced to acknowledge openly and to the world that his life was little better than that of a common raccoon, but without the added glamour of opposable thumbs or a bandit mask.

Maybe today will be the day he actually does it. Maybe today he'll finally leave his mangy little den in the park and light out for the open skies and dead grasses of the desert. But first he'll half to stop off at his most reliable breakfast spot (the StarbucksChipotle dumpster) so he can think clearly enough to actually make some plans.