Memorial Day Reflection
Rev. Lee Ann Bryce
Community Christian Church
May 29, 2011
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is an important song in the history of our country. I’ll share more about that in a few minutes. It is beloved hymn to many, rich in Biblical imagery. And our choir performed it beautifully today and last week at the Westside Ecumenical Benefit Concert, as a part of the combined choirs.
It is also understood by many as an difficult song with no place in our hymnals, no place in Christian worship. I know of at least one Southerner who does not care for it. Some say that if its imperialistic call to violence – “he hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword” - were to be voiced by Islam, we would plainly call it a Jihad and denounce and condemn it as uncivilized and un-Christian.
There’s some interesting history behind this song. In 1862, Julia Ward Howe and her husband were invited to Washington by President Lincoln. While there, they visited a Union Army Camp in Virginia across the Potomac . There, they heard the soldiers singing a song, quite popular with soldiers of the North, as well as the South. They sang “John Brown’s body lies a’mouldering in his grave, but his soul goes marching on.” One side sang this song in admiration of John Brown, the other in celebration of his death. (John Brown, of course, was the abolitionist who advocated armed insurrection as a means of ending slavery. Eventually he was tried, convicted, and executed in Virginia for treason.)
Julia Ward Howe, a poet, heard this song in tribute to John Brown and was urged to write new lyrics for the war effort that could be set to this catchy tune. And that’s what she did. She awoke before dawn the next morning to find the words “arranging themselves” in her brain, as she put it. She says, “I lay quite still until the last verse had completed itself in my thoughts, then hastily arose, saying to myself, I shall lose this if I don’t write it down immediately.”
The result was an untitled poem, published for the first time in 1862 in the Atlantic Monthly magazine. Her name was not included as the poet, she was paid a whopping $5 for her work. Her poem was given a title by the publisher, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” One can only imagine how Julia Ward Howe must have felt about this title, given that she was a dedicated peace and social reform activist, later serving as President of the American Woman Suffrage Association and the American Branch of the Women’s International Peace Association.
(It’s interesting that Howe, who was repulsed by the bloodshed she saw in the Civil War hoped that honoring motherhood would encourage women to protest the wars that killed their sons. And so she was the first to propose the observation of “Mother’s Day.” She died before the federal government proclaimed such a day. Anna Jarvis is the one who finally succeeded in establishing Mother’s Day.)
A bit of Civil War history to help us understand the context of Howe’s poem: Christian abolitionist sentiment is widely regarded as the leading factor in bringing about the election of Lincoln. But though almost all of the Northern (and some Southern) Christians demanded an end to slavery, many felt that because Jesus was a pacifist, it would be wrong to attain freedom for the slaves via war. When the early battles of 1861 were bloody and horrible rather than quick and neat, Union Christians of many denominations began to say that the fighting should stop and the North should wait the Confederacy out.
And so, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” served to inspire Christian desire to fight in order to free the slaves. And inspire it did. Congregations began singing it, (though I’m sure there some were disgruntled by singing “contemporary” music!) Soon it was widely sung at public rallies. Northern Christians began to feel the desire to lift “the terrible swift sword” and the willingness to die to make slaves free. Enlistment rose. Howe visited the White House. Lincoln
Though this song has in recent years been dropped from many hymnals (it does not appear in ours), it has retained its popularity. It was frequently sung, for example, in memorial services in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center
“He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword.” “Let us die to make people free.” These words prompt us to consider some very important questions. Are there things that are worth fighting for? Are there things that are worth dying for? Are there things worth killing others for?
These are difficult questions. As Christians, we are enjoined to be compassionate. And at the same time, we are called upon to do justice. The ends of compassion require us to be gentle. Do the ends of justice require us to be severe? It seems to me that “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” preserves the tensions inherent in our faith.
I respect those who consider war, in some situations, to be a justifiable, last resort. I respect them and honor that their faith leads them to that position, however, I do not agree with them.
I am a Christian pacifist. I am a pacifist because I believe nonviolence is a necessary condition for a politics not based on death or determined by the fear of death.
I am a pacifist not because nonviolence is my strategy to rid the world of war, but because even in a world filled with war, as a follower of Christ, I cannot imagine being anything else.
I am a pacifist because to me at the heart of the Christian faith is the conviction that Christ chose to die on the cross rather than turning to violence. He did not resort to violence and he did not allow his followers to commit violent acts.
In just a moment, we’ll sing another song that was written by John Lennon to express his belief, Imagine. (And today probably marks that first Sunday in which “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “Imagine” were sung at the same worship service!) Imagine puts forth the idea of a world in which all people live by a principle of love.
Now if you’re a religious person (and chances are, you are, at least to some extent), the line to “imagine there’s no religion, too,” might be difficult. However, it’s really important for religious people to recognize and take responsibility for the ways that religion in all its various expressions, has been the basis for violence, war, racism, homophobia, and general divisiveness. So it has been in the past, and so it continues to be today. Imagine invites us to consider: If more and more people were to live lives of love and reciprocal respect and care, then the human community would gradually be transformed into an active web of love connecting us with each other and with God. In that kind of world certain things would become less and less attractive - distrust, suspicion, intolerance, self-righteousness, fear, hatred, and cynicism.
The more we allow love to fill our lives, the more fully we feel and think and know and speak in and through love, the less we are apt to consider ourselves the sole possessors of the “truth;” the less likely we are to judge and condemn others, to fear the strange and different, to envy the successful, to wish divine retribution upon those who have harmed us, to counter violence with violence.
Is such a world possible? I’m not sure. I know one thing, as a Christian, I am called to imagine it and to do all that is in my power to bring it into being.
Amen.
