Mine Eyes Hath Seen the Glory
Living/Dying to Make All Free
Dear Reader,
Remember how I said last year was the worst Fourth of July ever after the Supreme Court overturned equality before the law?
Yeah, I’d say this one is worse.
How fast it’s gone from “They’re taking our jobs” to “We need them to do these jobs” to “We can force them to work these jobs for us for free.”
Independence Day in America feels a lot like the last family get-together before a marriage breaks down: full of tension and almost comical as an attempt at celebration.
Yet, we must celebrate what ought to be, rather than what is.
So, I ask you join me as I again crack open the hymnary for one of my all-time favorites: “Battle Hymn of the Republic” by Julia Ward Howe.
The Truth Marches On
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
An abolitionist hymn linking the Union’s cause in the Civil War to the judgment of God, some would argue this is a Christian nationalist hymn. Yet, it does not give me the same discomfort as “I Vow to Thee My Country.”
I agree with the commentators who call the co-incidence of the Union and God’s aims in the hymn as just that: coincidental. God working in human history, typically without notice or credit.
The Church Fathers suggested that commands to destroy whole tribes in the Hebrew Bible should be understood, spiritually, to mean destroying all the evil within ourselves. When praying the Magnificat, I sometimes pray for my own faults—and I myself—to be cast down as pleases God.
As such, “Battle Hymn,” for Christian Americans today, is aspirational: to bring national priorities in line with justice and mercy, a prayer for all that is foul within ourselves to be cast out.
The OG Christmas Carol
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
I Have Seen Him in the Protests
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
So how then, as Americans, do we reconcile the establishment of slave labor camps with our national ideals?
We can’t.
As Timothy Snyder reports:
Concentration camps are sites of tempting slave labor. Among many other aims, the Soviets used concentration camp labor to build canals and work mines. The Nazi German concentration camp system followed a capitalist version of the same logic: it drew in businesses with the prospect of inexpensive labor…
What happens next in the U.S.? Workers who are presented as "undocumented" will be taken to the camps. Perhaps they will work in the camps themselves, as slaves to government projects. But more likely they will be offered to American companies on special terms: a one-time payment to the government, for example, with no need for wages or benefits. In the simplest version, and perhaps the most likely, detained people will be offered back to the companies for which they were just working. Their stay in the concentration camp will be presented as a purge or a legalization for which companies should be grateful. Trump has already said that this is the idea, calling it "owner responsibility."
Since we cannot reconcile it, we must respond.
Three weeks ago, driving down the five-mile human chain that was Arlington’s No Kings protest, I saw God. The patriotic music I was blasting from my car speakers? “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Be Swift, My Soul, to Answer
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
How fast it’s gone from “They’re taking our jobs” to “We need them to do these jobs” to “We can force them to work these jobs for us for free.”
Things are going to get rough. Marines are being sent to Florida to assist ICE; they are still in L.A. All hearts are being sifted out—make sure yours is swift to exercise the fullness of our constitutional rights to dissent, speech, press, and assembly.
Snyder suggests the following as a good start:
The first action is simple. CEOs should now, this summer, this month, next week, sign a pledge not to use labor from concentration camps. It could be as simple as that: "On behalf of my firm I promise not to use labor from concentration camps nor to cooperate with any firm that does."
Living or Dying, Forward
The original fourth verse, usually sung as the final, goes like this:
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,
While God is marching on.
Today, many choirs switch the lyrics to “As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free.”
There is no contradiction in this to me, for:
If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. (Rom. 14:8)
Forward for justice, in peace, whatever comes.
The Most Important Lesson In Bravery I Learned Came from a Self-Help Quote on the Wall of a Greek Restaurant
"All men have fears, but the brave put down their fears and go forward, sometimes to death, but always to victory."
Forward—sometimes to death, always to victory.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave…
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on!