Fr. Robert Sokolowski on “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”
A beautiful hymn may fill us with religious reverence; this is appropriate if the beauty of the song is in the service of our worship of God and if our reverence is directed toward the creator and redeemer. But it may be the melodic experience that really moves us, the aesthetic perception of a necessity of form, something analogous to our intellectual understanding of a natural necessity. Sometimes, indeed, the aesthetic attraction may be so great that the inappropriateness of the music or of the words of the song is not noticed, and the incongruity of singing it in a Christian church may not be perceived. The Battle Hymn of the Republic, that song to a modern version of Ares, is a good example of this; its bloodthirsty wrath, sword, and trumpet in the service of a particular army are quite out of place in a Christian setting, but its melody is so stirring and its phonemic patterns so attractive that the people who sing it most probably do not appreciate the meaning of the words they pronounce.
Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology (Washington, D.C.: CUA Press), 140.
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excellent
I am more of a “Dixie” man. :)
Michael, do you know Mark Twain’s lyrics to the song ? :
Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger’s wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightnings, and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.
I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps;
I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps—
His night is marching on.
I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal;
Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel;
Lo, Greed is marching on!”
We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat;*
Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat;
O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!
Our god is marching on!
In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom—and for others’ goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich—
Our god is marching on.
(maybe you can add this footnote by Twain and delete this post)
* NOTE: In Manila the Government has placed a certain industry under the protection of our flag. (M.T.) )
Thanks for this post!
Well I love the Battle Hymm of the Republic and it is not just the melody that gets people
It is the word which is so why I disagree with Fr. Robert Sokolowski thought.
The words are what is stirring and goes to our deepest best self
“As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, ”
It is of exreme irony that this song is a favorite in the SOuth though it was sung by Union Servicemen. But SOutherners adopted because of the truth and ultimate self sacrifice that they recognized
It is a song not based on conquest but has the most religious orgins. Those of the religous American abolitionist .
There was an unfortunate movement to cahnge the lyrics to “let us live to make men free”. Thankfully that seems to have have stopped.
The Hymm is very much related to scripture especially the Book of Revelation
SO if there is any American Hymm that people understand the words it is this one. Because they realize those senitments were payed at great price and perhaps the most worthy cause this nation embarked on
Spenlger remarked in one of his best columns
“A cloud of myth protects Americans from the truth about bloody Abe Lincoln. His statue sits in a mock-Greek temple like the statue of Zeus at Olympus. Chiseled into the marble are Lincoln’s words to the nation weeks before the war’s end, an abiding source of horror for European tourists: “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, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
It sounds like a sort of religious fanaticism that would make the mild Methodist George W Bush hide under the bed-covers. Yet that is how the Northerners sang as off to war they marched: “He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat/He is sifting out the souls of men before his judgment seat/O be swift my soul to answer Him, be jubilant my feet!”
There was a price to be paid for our deal with a evil. An evil that even the founding fathers thought would pass away.
But men died not only to make Free free but to make sure a future Slave empire did not take over more land and peoples and expand that evil
It was the most rightous war this COuntry ever fought
That war is much like the possible purgatory we might face. Debts must be paid and there is no free ride.
Full Spengler article here that I think give the necessay historical background to that song
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FB10Aa03.html
jh – Right. We get it. The Myth of Redemptive Violence. The logical of sacrifice. It’s all perfectly expressed in your beloved “hymn.” Think again about Fr. Sokolowski’s critique.
cool song, but hard to dance to.
“jh – Right. We get it. The Myth of Redemptive Violence. The logical of sacrifice. It’s all perfectly expressed in your beloved “hymn.” Think again about Fr. Sokolowski’s critique.”
I have thought about Fr. Sokolowsju crituque and find it very lacking
As I said I think people very much appreciate the words and understanding this meaning. You cannot go across great parts of this country and not see living monuments to the horror that war produced
But at some point the price I suppose had to be paid for the deal we made. We saw the former Free lands of Mexico become slave in the state of Texas. It was just going to expand and expand. It truly was the most dangerous and this case a true imperalist United States Ambition.
What is “inappropriate” about this song? I doubt the slaves thought it was inappropriate as they heard it on the hills as they approached them
As a Southerner I must say had History been different I coud have recited in the High School of my youth two things in High School
This
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.
Or this from the Great State of Mississippi
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun”
THe fact is men died to make free and that is nothing to hide from and I think it is very appropriate to recall. In fact it made white SOutherners free from quite a evil
SO I disagree with the good Father. I can hear people when they sing song pay quite attention to the word in how they sing and accent the portions of this song.
I do not see it as partisan to recall that Men laid down their lives for a great moral cause and for the service of the fellow man. Even those enslaved
“cool song, but hard to dance to.”
LOL
I must say I never thought of that.
Here is Psalm 109. This make the Bttle Hymm look like nurshey School. Is this problematic?
Be not silent, O God of my praise!
2 For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me,
speaking against me with lying tongues.
3 They encircle me with words of hate,
and attack me without cause.
4 In return for my love they accuse me,
but I give myself to prayer. [1]
5 So they reward me evil for good,
and hatred for my love.
6 Appoint a wicked man against him;
let an accuser stand at his right hand.
7 When he is tried, let him come forth guilty;
let his prayer be counted as sin!
8 May his days be few;
may another take his office!
9 May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow!
10 May his children wander about and beg,
seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit!
11 May the creditor seize all that he has;
may strangers plunder the fruits of his toil!
12 Let there be none to extend kindness to him,
nor any to pity his fatherless children!
13 May his posterity be cut off;
may his name be blotted out in the second generation!
14 May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord,
and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out!
15 Let them be before the Lord continually,
that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth!
16 For he did not remember to show kindness,
but pursued the poor and needy
and the brokenhearted, to put them to death.
17 He loved to curse; let curses come [2] upon him!
He did not delight in blessing; may it be far [3] from him!
18 He clothed himself with cursing as his coat;
may it soak [4] into his body like water,
like oil into his bones!
19 May it be like a garment that he wraps around him,
like a belt that he puts on every day!
20 May this be the reward of my accusers from the Lord,
of those who speak evil against my life!
21 But you, O God my Lord,
deal on my behalf for your name’s sake;
because your steadfast love is good, deliver me!
22 For I am poor and needy,
and my heart is stricken within me.
23 I am gone like a shadow at evening;
I am shaken off like a locust.
24 My knees are weak through fasting;
my body has become gaunt, with no fat.
25 I am an object of scorn to my accusers;
when they see me, they wag their heads.
26 Help me, O Lord my God!
Save me according to your steadfast love!
27 Let them know that this is your hand;
you, O Lord, have done it!
28 Let them curse, but you will bless!
They arise and are put to shame, but your servant will be glad!
29 May my accusers be clothed with dishonor;
may they be wrapped in their own shame as in a cloak!
30 With my mouth I will give great thanks to the Lord;
I will praise him in the midst of the throng.
31 For he stands at the right hand of the needy one,
to save him from those who condemn his soul to death.
JH, you have just plainly demonstrated why orthodox Christianity is a vast improvement on orthodox Judaism.
Ending slavery was not the sole purpose of that war, that ‘recent unpleasantness.’ That purpose would never have sufficed. Power and money interests, without that a just cause is rather lonely. 100 years of segregation, de facto unpersonhood followed – which was ended by very different means. Slavery Civil War strikes me as a false dichotomy. Accepting carnage of staggering proportions as righteous, a debt to be paid…
I think I understand what war porn means.
Not to mention the omission of “let us kill to make men free”. The talk about sacrifice never mentions those our “heroes” sacrifice. The belief in the immaculate war, the inevitability of war, the “last full measure of devotion”, that all enables murder. War is accepted as standard m.o. For the USA, the paradigm hasnt shifted. Shock and Awe. While whistling Our god is an awesome god, presumably. If Iraq had had WMDs, war would have been fine. At the same time the same people don’t bat an eyelash over the absurd weapons arsenal of the USA. Your wars are just, after all.
The rhetoric of the righteous war, the sentiment exhibited seem quite akin to sexual arousal.
“Ending slavery was not the sole purpose of that war, that ‘recent unpleasantness.’ That purpose would never have sufficed. Power and money interests, without that a just cause is rather lonely. 100 years of segregation, de facto unpersonhood followed – which was ended by very different means. Slavery Civil War strikes me as a false dichotomy. Accepting carnage of staggering proportions as righteous, a debt to be paid…”
Slavery was the cause of the war. No one wanted war. People were to accept no war for no expansion.
Stephen DOuglas to was ready to concede a lot at the Charleston Democratic convention but the South demanded a nationwide Fderal Slave Code. At That Douglas said no and the lecton of Lincoln was a foregone conclsuion with the Dems slit in two.
Slavery was the issue
jh is not only right on the mark here, I have to say I was deeply moved by his first post.
If one wants, here in present day, the words can be easily understood figurativly as might be done with the Psalms and the OT. But I have no reservations that this was a just cause and a just war. The Confederacy was a rebellion against the legitimate authority of the federal government, done to preserve a reactionary and unjust system. The President, a flawed person as we all are, was a heroic figure, deeply concerned with the human suffering caused by the war and the human suffering that would be caused by ending the war without victory.
Slavery was most definitely the cause of the war. Granted there were many economic and political forces bearing down that made war more likely, but the fact is, if there was no slavery, there would have been no war.
In the American tradition of recalling our war dead I don’t think the focus is on the “Myth of Redemptive Violence” but on redemptive suffering. I don’t know too many Memorial Day retrospectives, for instance, that focus on the glorious gory damage inflicted on the enemy (although the Marines sometimes do this). Rather, people talk about the physical or emotional sacrifices of military personnel. And there was plenty of suffering to be endured to expurgate our national original sin of racism.
I’m neither a historian or theologian, so I offer these observations tentatively:
1) As far as I know, the Confederacy’s causes for secession were slavery as an economic institution and states’ rights as the principle upholding it. At the time, one could offer a Constitutional — albeit unpersuasive to us today — defense of both. The US government’s reason for war was preservation of the Union; i.e – once a state joins, there’s no getting out. My reading has yet to identify an explicit Constitutional defense of this. Not that the Constitution is Scripture, mind you. In any case, opposing sides may enter a war for discordant reasons.
2) I am grateful that slavery is banned in the US (though the Spanish, English and Russians, among many others, were first). The first two-thirds of the nineteenth century demonstrated the abject failure of American democracy to eliminate the institution, unless one considers the violent death of half a million as the normal working out of American democracy. The Civil War amendments (13-15), however, were practically inconceivable before 1860 and unlikely outcomes of the conflict even as late as mid-1862. The Emancipation Proclamation was initially a tool to keep Britain (and perhaps France) from recognizing the Confederacy. (Lincoln was a brilliant, principled and endlessly fascinating man, but he was ultimately a highly pragmatic politician and not, contra Allen Guelzo, a “redeemer.”) Nevertheless, the Emancipation Proclamation created a momentum which, fed by the carnage of the next three years, led to a somewhat enlarged vision of American equality.
3) Christian institutions at the time failed almost as badly as American democracy. Abolition was largely a Christian movement, but not exclusively so. People read the same Bible and arrived at different conclusions. One wonders, though, if Christians in the post-war era failed even more so. Had they taken the Letter to Philemon to heart, welcoming former slaves as brothers in Christ, the era of American democracy known as Jim Crow might never have happened.
4) I have it on some authority that dying for one’s country is never the goal of war. George Patton reminded his men that the point was to make the other sob die for his country.
5) As a reluctant pacifist, I consider adherents of rigorous just war theory (such as jh, perhaps) allies, not adversaries. We agree, I think, that war is never, in itself, a good, and there are certain things we shall not do. That many of the goods in my American life are there because, not in spite of, organized state violence, convicts me as a dismal follower of Christ. When I speak of such things at all, I attempt (poorly, I admit) to do so with some humility, knowing what my convictions will likely cost if I’m required to live them out.
“The Confederacy was a rebellion against the legitimate authority of the federal government, done to preserve a reactionary and unjust system.”
…And the Union, too fought to preserve a reactionary and unjust system, just somewhat less so. A 19th century industrial worker and a slave aren’t categorically different, only gradually. And of course the small matter of the “Indians”, who Lincoln continued to murder. The way the war was waged, let’s just mention Sherman, should really make deification of Lincoln and gooey sentimentalism impossible.
Alas, with self-congratulation and bloodshed being national pastimes, it’s no surprise. My oldest American friend told me a long time ago that Americans were a war-like people. But, at least women aren’t allowed to go topless.
A (very tongue-in-cheek) paraphrase:
Mine ears have heard the glory of this very catchy song
But the sentiment it carries is unfortunately wrong
And because you folks are stupid, you can’t help but sing along
So let me set you straight
We do not sing to Ares, nor to any god of war
Enough of “Christus Vincit”, martial themes we now abhor
We are the Church Pacific now, and Militant no more
Such things are out of date
Gerald, you are the same careful and incisive thinker now as you were in your Closed Cafeteria incarnation.
I was just going to say the same thing… once a fundamentalist, always a fundamentalist… it’s a well-established psychological profile.
My thoughts exactly regarding dear Gerald’s latest ‘conversion’.
RM
I wasn’t just called a fundamentalist by a bunch of fundamentalist Catholics, was I ? I’ll take the pot, you can have the kettle drum.
Not by me.
I am not a fundamentalist I would hope. I am capable of seeing shades of moral gray. However now that I have reflected I regret getting so personal, I am sorry :( People with fundamentalist personalities are born with them, it is not their fault and it is not a character flaw since they can not usually control it.
On topic, Brian, good point with your #4, although I don’t know if Patton really said that or just Movie Patton. I also agree with you that Lincoln in particular has been deified to an extent that does not match reality.
Well, more accurately I think you were described as being a mirror image of your previous incarnation, (sort of like the bearded Spock) and no, not by a fundamentalist Catholic (or fundamentalist anything, really, at least not in my case).
RM
Criticizing the glossy image of the civil war – and America in general – isn’t exactly ‘fundamentalism’. If anything, it’s contrarian. Not that people subscribing to the many tenets of a well-regulated religion should scoff at fundamentalism. It’s this lethal consensus many Americans share that is slammed. Many Americans do not share it at all. As I’ve said before, it’s a mindset, not an inevitability of geography. It just tends to coincide. Being full of crap is the human condition, it’s just that some crap causes more suffering than other.
Berkeley is lovely, yet surrounded by the hell that is Oakland. It’s a Democrat-run place. Do the Obama stickers in Berkeley translate into sharing money with Oakland schools ? There is liberal hypocrisy, idiocy, you name it. In the end, however, the commonly termed liberal mindset is far less dangerous. It’s not so much that I want Democrats in charge, it’s that Republicans have to be kept away from power. But far beyond that, the American system is rotten. Not that the European isn’t, it’s just that the average person does better there and is far less likely to start wars.
And finally, it is a mistake to assume that slamming one position means embracing its opposite. It’s not like everything I disliked about Europe now has turned to gold. It’s a re-evaluation. It is also a rather silly and archaic thing to feel attacked as an American when American policy is criticized. In general, identification with a group is problematic. I deduce nothing from my having been born in Austria, it’s a coincidence and nothing essential, immutable results from it.
One can be beyond false alternatives. One cannot add an endless disclaimer to every comment (“…but the others also suck”). Questioning everything, in particular quaint foundational myths and self-congratulation, even more so if war is involved.
To quote Leonard Cohen, whom I’ll see next week,
I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
that time cannot decay,
I’m junk but I’m still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Gerald, it is possible to be a fundamentalist contrarian or fundamentalist moderate just like it is possible to be a fundamentalist Christian, atheist, Republican, Democrat, enviromentalist, or capitalist. The key is not whether one’s views are moderate, but whether one is able to acknowledge varying levels of good and evil in views contrary to one’s own. It’s simplicity vs. complexity in evaluating the morality of other people’s ideas.
Only an idiot would try to do psychology online, and I think the internet itself encourages rigidity in developing personal opinions and encountering other people’s. But I’m not surprised I’m not the only one to detect a certain pattern. And I’m willing to guess that this not your first “cycle” of conversions? But I could be totally wrong. Anyway I really do appreciate your viewpoint with regard to avoiding false alternatives and I even agree with it! :) I don’t feel attacked at all when people attack America, there is plenty to object to. If people aren’t free to critique her, how is she ever going to improve?
There IS a certain gloss with the American civil war, at least with regard to the conduct of the Union, but while some of it is silly some of it is justified.
“JH, you have just plainly demonstrated why orthodox Christianity is a vast improvement on orthodox Judaism.”
When is that horrible Pope going to remove them horrible Judaistic Psalms from the horrible liturgy of the horrible Roman Catholic church and replace them with beautiful lesbian poetry?
Well Pauli that’s not quite what digby meant.
JH:
Your love of historical revisionism reminds me of the following from the Simpson’s when Apu takes his citizenship exam:
“Proctor: ‘All right, here’s your last question. What was the cause of the Civil War?’
Apu: ‘Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists,there were economic factors, both domestic and inter–’
Proctor: ‘Wait, wait… just say slavery.’
Apu: ‘Slavery it is, sir.’”
– “Much Apu About Nothing”
The Simpsons
I like the quote from Father Robert.
Is he the same man who wrote the Phenomenology of the Human Person?
Gerald
No one wanted blodshed. Heck the north went to great iaims to prevent it.
But still men were set free. THis nation thought this particular evil of chattel slavery would die out when founded. Sadly technolgy that was supposed to liberate us from it kept it going
I hate to get sentimental but that song is important in other ways. When Elivis Presly sang that song in his great American Triolgy which included Dixie and a negro spiritual it showed a bonding after a great war that still had wounds
THis song is sung what maybe twice in a year in some Catholic Churches. Whats the big deal.
I try things on for size…and in due time shed them. Now I’m just happy ‘naked’, with a touch of Zen.
I’ve actually ‘reverted’, some would call it return to rolling in the mud ;), with some modifications. The right-wing phase was an atypical interruption. What’s different is that I’m not in the other ‘camp’ either now. At a gathering in a liberal echo chamber, there is no need to point out that Bush was a homicidal maniac, that’s a given, just like the ubiquity of the Obama sticker in San Francisco.
Above the head, not a shingle, below the foot, not a tile, as a Buddhist saying goes. Buddhist thought isn’t new to me either, it’s a return, with a focus on Zen/Tao now. To question everything, to not accept anything simply because of someone’s alleged authority is part of that.
FWIW, I actually like Jesus the man, as much/little we can know, a lot better now. As an imperial Catholic, I found him rather inconvenient ;-) Apart from most sex-stuff, I also agree a lot more with Catholic Social Teaching.
Zach – Yes.
I have to say that while I usually like Sokolowski, his reading of the Battle Hymn is simply nonsensical. The Battle Hymn deliberately subverts human violence at every turn. This is not obvious if you only look at the first stanza, but it is a steady pattern throughout the song. For instance, in the third stanza we get to the “fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel”. That’s a ringing and warlike phrase. And what is the fiery gospel writ in steel?
“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal.”
That is, if you forgive, you will be forgiven, and if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven. And throughout the song, the “bloodthirsty wrath, sword, and trumpet” are all Biblical images of divine justice used to describe the inevitability and overwhelming power of divine justice, not human armies; if there is anything that might be questioned about the poem it is that it puts these images in the service of a providential progressivism — i.e., it is God who is marching on, His truth that is marching on, and inevitably so, whether we march with him or not (as the fourth stanza puts it, “He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,” and as the last stanza, added later by Howe, characterizes it, “He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,” which, if you’ve ever stood on the shore at sunrise, is a perfect image for inevitable and unstoppable glory). As a battle hymn it’s rather remarkable in that the army is almost entirely passive in it; the only action actually performed by the army is building an altar, and the rest is merely exhortation to rejoice in God’s justice and die for one’s fellow man: “Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!” and “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” It is God who does all the work, the work is the progressive freeing of the human race, and the work is inevitable: those who work with it are transfigured and those who oppose it are destroyed. In that sense it’s actually fairly common for a Unitarian hymn of the time, which is what it originally was, of course; before Unitarianism became wishy-washy goo, the militant march of freedom, truth, justice, and yes, even, peace, with Christ at its head as Faithful and True, was a standard sort of theme in Unitarian music, and the use of military metaphors to describe the power of truth, etc., was a pretty common trope.
Magdalena:
The best I can do is find the alleged Patton quotation attributed to him, though never sourced except to the 1970 movie. Perhaps, like the Chief Seattle speech, it’s an attractive fiction.
Whatever it’s provenance, I take the statement itself at face value. Horace thought it sweet and fitting to die for one’s country, but Wilfred Owen knew enough of war to see through that “old lie.” Grant’s 1864 campaign was disastrous in every sense but the one that counted: the Confederacy had fewer men to lose, and Grant made sure they lost them.
Brian
Pauli,
You wrote:
“When is that horrible Pope going to remove them horrible Judaistic Psalms from the horrible liturgy of the horrible Roman Catholic church…”
Well, the Church *did* redact some of the imprecatory psalms, while omitting others (58, 83, 109) altogether from the psalter. Does that count?
I thought it was quite interesting that, when the Holy Father visited last year, and the Marine Chorus sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Pope Benedict XVI was very visibly *singing along*. Not just responding reverently as Bush did, but tapping his feet and singing along!
I also find it *very* interesting that we still sing a song thats first version, “John Brown’s Body,” was a hymn in honor of a man who was somewhere between Randall Terry and John Salvi.
If the “incrementalist” Whigs of the 1840s and 1850s had their way, slavery would still be legal today, just “reduced”.
Craig, while certain verses are deleted from the Psalter, if you check the Index of the Four Volume Liturgy of the Hours, all 150 are there.
And it is very important to realize that, in Catholic thought, the “enemies” referred to in the imprecatory psalms are traditionally taken to be Demons, just as “the man” or “I” is usually taken to be Jesus.
So really, when we do *not* pray the imprecatory Psalms, we are *not* praying for protection from the real enemies of our souls.