Memorial Day

Today in the US we memorialize those who have been claimed by war. It's usually celebrated as a great patriotic event, with martial songs and chest-thumping nationalism, all about the glory of dying for your country. What egregious nonsense! As any battle-scarred veteran can tell you, war isn't glorious; it's a gory, bloody, loud hell of a meat-grinder, and the meat being ground is the young of the nation, fed into it by old men who hold grudges or who see a profit to be made, win or lose. I've always said that if the fat old men who declared wars actually had to fight in them, we'd have world peace overnight.

Here are some potent quotes about the reality of war:

"And I can't help but wonder, now Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you 'The Cause'?
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain.
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again."
– Eric Bogle, "No Man's Land" 

"Either war is finished, or we are."
– Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance 

"War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children."
– Jimmy Carter, Nobel Lecture, December 10, 2002 

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity."
– Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, January 10, 1946 

"If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of these two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both."
– Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Probably the greatest antiwar poem ever written is "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen, an Oxford scholar and poet who enlisted at the beginning of WWI, and who was killed just one week before the armistice which ended it. During the war he wrote his poems in the letters he sent home, and as the conflict continued he used these poems to vent his anger and cynicism at the futility, the barbarity, and the stupidity of it all. "Dulce et Decorum Est" could just as well have been titled "The Lie", the lie in question being the quote from the Roman poet Horace that is fed to soldiers in time of war: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"; the English translation is "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country". Obviously Owen disagreed, and I'm with him.

Dulce et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen 

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And toward our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. 

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. 

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. 

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obsceneas cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori.

Today we lament the deaths of young people killed by adherence to an anachronism, and pledge to end the scourge that killed them. Here are two songs that lament the deaths of soldiers - Eric Bogle's "No Man's Land" and Mark Knopfler's "Brothers In Arms".

Photo © 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Revisiting "A Christian Nation? The Founding Fathers Didn't Think So"

[Note: I wrote this post in 2011, but I decided to repost it along with an updated addendum because for me this is an important issue, especially important in these times when the US Constitution is under attack. The claim that this country is a "Christian nation" and the founding fathers were devout Christians is false. Below I include the history of the famous "establishment clause" of the first amendment, including transcripts from the discussions at the original constitutional convention, with quotes from James Madison and others involved in the discussions. Also included is the wording of the nation's first diplomatic treaty in 1797 which declares that the United States is not a Christian nation and is not founded on the Christian religion. In the addendum I include further quotes from the founding fathers, most especially from Thomas Jefferson, the man whose philosophy created the Constitution. It all very firmly establishes the idea of the "Christian nation" as a myth concocted by those who would return us to the very kind of autocracy this nation was created to oppose.]

There's a claim by the Christian Right and some members of the Tea Party movement that the United States was consciously and deliberately created as a Christian nation to spread the Gospel to the new world and create a beacon of light and salvation to the rest of the world. They haven't much evidence to back up this claim; just some scattered quotes from people like George Washington, made in their private capacity and not as spokespersons for the government or the nation.

Granted, we had plenty of people settle here in the early days in a quest to believe and practice those beliefs away from the oppression of the established churches of Europe, but they weren't the only people to leave Europe and settle here. There were plenty of people who were only nominal members of any church, or followers of the Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire who emphasized reason as the primary source of authority and knowledge. Or they were just farmers and trappers and whatnot who had no real use for religion in their life and were happy to go about their daily lives and work without need for religion. There was a lot of philosophical diversity in the early colonies which became the United States.

And in fact the the lawyers and merchants who formed the intellectual class from whom the founding fathers of this nation emerged were mostly followers of the Enlightenment, men such as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Hancock, the Adamses of Boston, and Benjamin Franklin, self-declared Deists who believed in a higher power but denied the legitimacy of any formal religion. Even that ultimate gentleman farmer cum soldier, George Washington, considered himself a Deist. And it was these people who wrote our founding documents and created a purely secular, not religious, government.

The U.S. Constitution is the rock-solid foundation of the government of the United States; it establishes and guides our whole form of governance, from the legislative to the judicial to the administrative. It is, to use a Judeo-Christian reference, the Ten Commandments of the nation. It was written by men dedicated to reason and the Age of Enlightenment (principally James Madison, who himself was a protegé of Thomas Jefferson, probably the prime advocate of Enlightenment thinking, along with Benjamin Franklin, among the founding fathers), and it never mentions God, Jesus Christ, the Church, or the Bible. Never. Not even once. It only actually mentions matters pertaining to religion once, in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." [2020 note: Actually, there is one reference to religion in the main text of the Constitution, in Article VI: "but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."]

The key phrase in that amendment is known in U.S. jurisprudence as the Establishment Clause - "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." - which at the very beginning of our national existence says that the government cannot sponsor or enforce a religious belief and practice on the American people. There are people who argue that it does no such thing, that the amendment only says that the government can't favor one religion over the other. But the evidence, from the very records of the Constitutional Convention itself, along with the writings of the men who wrote the document, says otherwise.

The Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service (CRS) has released an annotated Constitution, and the Columbia University Law School has put a hyperlinked version online, which you can find here. The annotations quote the debates and discussions entered into at the convention, as well as the documents which express the ideas of those attending. The annotation page for the First Amendment can be found here, but I want to include passages from the "overview" section along with the footnotes for that section (included in brackets after the passage) that speak directly to the matter.

Madison’s original proposal for a bill of rights provision concerning religion read: “The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretence, infringed." [1 Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).]

The language was altered in the House to read: “Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience." [The committee appointed to consider Madison’s proposals, and on which Madison served, with Vining as chairman, had rewritten the religion section to read: “No religion shall be established by law, nor shall the equal rights of conscience be infringed.” After some debate during which Madison suggested that the word “national” might be inserted before the word “religion” as “point[ing] the amendment directly to the object it was intended to prevent,” the House adopted a substitute reading: “Congress shall make no laws touching religion, or infringing the rights of conscience.” 1 Annals of Congress 729–31 (August 15, 1789). On August 20, on motion of Fisher Ames, the language of the clause as quoted in the text was adopted. Id. at 766. According to Madison’s biographer, “[t]here can be little doubt that this was written by Madison.” I. Brant, James Madison—Father of the Constitution 1787–1800 at 271 (1950).]

In the Senate, the section adopted read: “Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith, or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion, . . ." [This text, taken from the Senate Journal of September 9, 1789, appears in 2 B. Schwartz (ed.), The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History 1153 (1971). It was at this point that the religion clauses were joined with the freedom of expression clauses.]

It was in the conference committee of the two bodies, chaired by Madison, that the present language was written with its some[p.970]what more indefinite “respecting” phraseology. [1 Annals of Congress 913 (September 24, 1789). The Senate concurred the same day. See I. Brant, James Madison—Father of the Constitution 1787–1800, 271–72 (1950).]

Debate in Congress lends little assistance in interpreting the religion clauses; Madison’s position, as well as that of Jefferson who influenced him, is fairly clear... [During House debate, Madison told his fellow Members that “he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience.” 1 Annals of Congress 730 (August 15, 1789). That his conception of “establishment” was quite broad is revealed in his veto as President in 1811 of a bill which in granting land reserved a parcel for a Baptist Church in Salem, Mississippi; the action, explained President Madison, “comprises a principle and precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.”’ 8 The Writings of James Madison (G. Hunt. ed.) 132–33 (1904). Madison’s views were no doubt influenced by the fight in the Virginia legislature in 1784–1785 in which he successfully led the opposition to a tax to support teachers of religion in Virginia and in the course of which he drafted his “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” setting forth his thoughts. Id. at 183–91; I. Brant, James Madison—The Nationalist 1780–1787, 343–55 (1948). Acting on the momentum of this effort, Madison secured passage of Jefferson’s “Bill for Religious Liberty”. Id. at 354; D. Malone, Jefferson the Virginian 274–280 (1948). The theme of the writings of both was that it was wrong to offer public support of any religion in particular or of religion in general.]

Obviously Madison and the others were intent on keeping the U.S. government out of the business of religion. Note especially this quote from Madison in the Annals of Congress:

During House debate, Madison told his fellow Members that “he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience.” 1 Annals of Congress 730 (August 15, 1789).

This is a clear declaration of a hands-off policy toward religion by the government, expressed by the architects of the document which is the foundation of that government.

There have been many acts by the government which have highlighted the thinking of these founding fathers, a philosophy that has come to be known as the "separation of Church and State", but perhaps one of the clearest actions on that philosophy came early in the history of the U.S. government with the 1797 treaty with Tripoli in the Barbary States of north Africa.

Joel Barlow was the consul-general to the Barbary states of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis; he was assigned by Commissioner Plenipotentiary of the U.S. David Humphries to broker a treaty with Tripoli in 1796. Most of the treaty concerns trade agreements, tariffs, rights-of-way for shipping, etc.; mundane stuff. But Article 11 of the treaty makes a bold statement regarding the attitude of the U.S. toward the religion of Tripoli and the other Barbary States:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

There it is, right out in the open in black and white on an official document of the U.S. government: "...the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." In 1796, only seven years after the ratification of the Constitution. You can't get any clearer than that.

There's been an argument advanced that Article 11 says no such thing in the original Arabic document, and that it was a late insertion by the Dey of Algiers to allay the fears of the Pasha of Tripoli. But that's irrelevant, a straw man put up by opponents of church-state separation. No matter what the Arabic document says, Joel Barlow's English translation - including that eleventh article - is what was presented to President John Adams, who then presented it to the Senate, in printed copy and read aloud on the floor of the Senate. These were men who were in at the beginning of the nation, many of them former members of the Continental Congress, signers of the Declaration of Independence, and members of the Congress which wrote the Constitution. They ratified the treaty by unanimous vote on June 7, 1797, and President Adams signed it. They had all heard and read that phrase - "...the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." - and no one objected; in fact no one said anything at all about it. Why? Because this is what they believed.

So those who would want to rewrite our history to conform to their particular, sectarian ideology, led most notably by David Barton (who interestingly has no degree in history but rather a bachelor's degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University) and his Wallbuilders organization, haven't a leg to stand on. By their own private writings and in the national documents they inspired and helped create, the "Founding Fathers" of the United States were not intent on creating a "Christian nation", but rather a fully secular government with a clear hands-off policy toward religion. There's really no question of that at all.

© 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger. Images owned by the United States and are public domain.

2020 Addendum:

Of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson had the most to say about the separation of church and state, starting with inventing that very phrase in his famous letter to the Danbury (CT) Baptist Association in 1802:

To messers Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.
Gentlemen
The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State (emphasis mine). Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I have refrained from prescribing even those occasional performances of devotion, practiced indeed by the Executive of another nation as the legal head of its church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association assurances of my high respect & esteem.
(signed) Thomas Jefferson
 Jan.1.1802.

This isn't the only incident when Jefferson addressed the issue. Here are some more of his thoughts on that "wall of separation":

“Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson

“But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

“Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person’s life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the “wall of separation between church and state,” therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.
We have solved … the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.”
~Thomas Jefferson: in a speech to the Virginia Baptists (1808)

“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
~Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814

“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

James Madison was Jefferson's protegé, and in a way he further distilled Jefferson's thinking:

“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
[Letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803] ― James Madison

“Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."
[Letter to Edward Livingston, 10 July 1822 - Writings 9:100--103] ― James Madison: Writings

“Besides the danger of a direct mixture of religion and civil government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations. The establishment of the chaplainship in Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights as well as of Constitutional principles. The danger of silent accumulations and encroachments by ecclesiastical bodies has not sufficiently engaged attention in the U.S.”
― James Madison

In many ways Thomas Paine was one of the inspirations of the American Revolution, publishing and distributing pamphlets that had him constantly under a warrant for sedition from the British colonial government. Paine was no friend of religion!

“One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason 

George Mason was another Virginian with strong beliefs about church and state:

“It is contrary to the principles of reason and justice that any should be compelled to contribute to the maintenance of a church with which their consciences will not permit them to join, and from which they can derive no benefit; for remedy whereof, and that equal liberty as well religious as civil, may be universally extended to all the good people of this commonwealth.”
~George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1776

Of course, the prime disciple of Voltaire and the French Enlightenment in the colonies was Benjamin Franklin, and he had a few things to say about the subject as well:

“When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obligated to call for help of the civil power, it’s a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”
— Benjamin Franklin, letter to Richard Price, October 9, 1780

“If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here [in England] and in New England.”
—Benjamin Franklin

John Adams, the curmudgeonly Founding Father from Boston, also commented on the subject:

“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.”
— John Adams, “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” 1787-1788

“Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”
— John Adams, “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” (1787-88)

And finally, Declaration of Independence signer Elbridge Gerry, James Madison's vice-president, sums it all up:

“No religious doctrine shall be established by law.”
~Elbridge Gerry, Annals of Congress 1:729-731

The point of all this is that contrary to the claims of the evangelical culture warriors, the United States wasn't intended to be a "Christian nation" and the Founding Fathers were not devout believers but critical thinkers who valued reason over religion. And the principles of that Enlightenment thinking were hard-wired into the Constitution they wrote, intent on keeping government and religion as far apart as possible.

It's really not all that hard to understand. If your church opposes abortion, let it deal with it among its members. If your church opposes same-sex marriage and considers homosexuality to be a sin, let them enforce that within their own congregations. But to try and force that on people who are not members is a violation of the Constitution. To force any version of Christianity, or Islam or Judaism or Buddhism or even Scientology for that matter, on all Americans is a violation of the Constitution. It is, in effect, un-American.

© 2011 and 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Memorial Day 2019

[Note: I wrote this piece last year for Memorial Day, and I like it so much I decided to reprint it this year.]

Today in the US we memorialize those who have been claimed by war. It's usually celebrated as a great patriotic event, with martial songs and chest-thumping nationalism, all about the glory of dying for your country. What egregious nonsense! As any battle-scarred veteran can tell you, war isn't glorious; it's a gory, bloody, loud hell of a meat-grinder, and the meat being ground is the young of the nation, fed into it by old men who hold grudges or who see a profit to be made, win or lose. I've always said that if the fat old men who declared wars actually had to fight in them, we'd have world peace overnight.

Here are some potent quotes about the reality of war:

"And I can't help but wonder, now Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you 'The Cause'?
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain.
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again."
– Eric Bogle, "No Man's Land" 

"Either war is finished, or we are."
– Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance 

"War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children."
– Jimmy Carter, Nobel Lecture, December 10, 2002 

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity."
– Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, January 10, 1946 

"If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of these two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both."
– Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Probably the greatest antiwar poem ever written is "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen, an Oxford scholar and poet who enlisted at the beginning of WWI, and who was killed just one week before the armistice which ended it. During the war he wrote his poems in the letters he sent home, and as the conflict continued he used these poems to vent his anger and cynicism at the futility, the barbarity, and the stupidity of it all. "Dulce et Decorum Est" could just as well have been titled "The Lie", the lie in question being the quote from the Roman poet Horace that is fed to soldiers in time of war: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"; the English translation is "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country". Obviously Owen disagreed, and I'm with him.

Dulce et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen 

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And toward our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. 

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. 

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. 

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obsceneas cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori.

Today we lament the deaths of young people killed by adherence to an anachronism, and pledge to end the scourge that killed them. Here are two songs that lament the deaths of soldiers - Eric Bogle's "No Man's Land" and Mark Knopfler's "Brothers In Arms".

Photo © 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Getting Sentimental

I took part in an interesting conversation on Facebook the other day. A friend was complaining that her significant other was objecting to doing something special for Valentine's Day, saying that the holiday was invented by commercial concerns looking to make money, and my friend was asking everyone else's opinions on the holiday. My own contribution was that considering that the celebration of the saint's day as a holiday dedicated to love was a fairly recent development, one has to wonder, and repeated the widespread opinion that it's a "Hallmark holiday". After considering that for a while and reading others' responses to her query, I decided to take a closer look at all this.

It appears that I was partially right. One of the two Valentines celebrated on February 14 was an early bishop who performed Christian weddings at a time when the powers that be in the Roman Empire objected to such a thing, and he was executed for it, thus making him a "hero for love". But the holiday was never really celebrated as such until medieval times, and then really only among the aristocracy as part of the cult of chivalry. Among the peasantry and the developing middle class it was pretty much ignored. Until the Victorian era in the 19th century. And therein lies a tale.

In 1861 Victoria's consort Prince Albert died, leaving the queen heartbroken. And in 1860 in the US the Civil War broke out, ending up decimating a large part of a whole generation of young men in the bloodiest conflict ever fought on American soil. The reaction to these events was the rise of a cult of sentimentality on both sides of the Atlantic.

I've written about this before on this blog, in reference to the change in cemeteries that took place at this time. In the US especially, graveyards were crowded, unpleasant places where the dead were basically dumped; they weren't called boneyards for nothing! But after the Civil War cemeteries became park-like, with shade trees and monumental sculpture, and benches for the mourners to rest on. They became restful places for the living to come and spend time with the beloved departed, and families even began having picnics there.

But this sentimentality wasn't restricted to cemeteries. Christmas benefitted from this; Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and Clement C. Moore's poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" were reflections of this mood as well, creating a sentimental, nostalgic, family-oriented holiday. Christmas wasn't the only holiday; holidays like Valentine's Day and Mothers' Day, holidays built on sentiment, also popped up. And the rise of spiritualism, the belief in communicating with the dead, also started during this time. If the Victorian era had a watchword, it was "sentiment".

I have a theory about why this happened, one that is based on an already widespread theory about the modern celebration of Christmas in cultural history studies. In Great Britain and consequently its colonies in North America, radical Calvinist Protestantism came to dominance, toppling the Catholic royalty and enforcing their own rather dour version of Christianity on the land, even going so far as banning Christmas and Halloween, calling it "papist heresy" and "pagan frivolity". Catholicism and the Church of England, which retained much of the Catholic liturgy and church calendar, were seen as the realm of the royalty and aristocracy, while the dour Calvinism of the Puritans and their heirs was considered the realm of the working classes.

Then in the mid 19th century the middle class became tired of the joyless attitudes of the Calvinist dominance, and the Oxford Movement arose, a "nostalgic" movement to reintroduce more liturgy and celebration to the Church of England. This movement inspired many, including those involved in the Arts and Crafts movement, the Pre-Raphaelites, and poets like Christina Rossetti and Gerard Manley Hopkins. And while the working class remained in their chapels and didn't accept the theology of the Oxford Movement, they did pick up the sentiment of the movement, and thus Christmas and Valentine's Day came back into fashion. And of course Americans, especially those on the East Coat, Anglophiles that we are, picked up on this and exported it to the US in the wake of the Civil War. People were done with trudging through a joyless life; it was time to love and celebrate!

Of course, it's not all as simple as that. There are a lot of other factors involved. But the main thing was that by the 19th century life had become a dull drudgery to a majority of the population, and the natural movement of the pendulum started to swing back to a more joyful, lighter approach to life. Nowadays those celebrations have been taken over by mercantile interests and have made the holidays more commercialized than a lot of people are comfortable with, but the original sentiment still hangs in there. We still need love, and family, and cozy fires, and roses, and chocolate, and we still look for ways to celebrate them. Maybe we'll get so tired of the commercialism that the people will once again take control and celebrate in the "good old-fashioned way"!

© 2019 by A. Roy Hilbinger  

Memorial Day 2018

Today in the US we memorialize those who have been claimed by war. It's usually celebrated as a great patriotic event, with martial songs and chest-thumping nationalism, all about the glory of dying for your country. What egregious nonsense! As any battle-scarred veteran can tell you, war isn't glorious; it's a gory, bloody, loud hell of a meat-grinder, and the meat being ground is the young of the nation, fed into it by old men who hold grudges or who see a profit to be made, win or lose. I've always said that if the fat old men who declared wars actually had to fight in them, we'd have world peace overnight.

Here are some potent quotes about the reality of war:

"And I can't help but wonder, now Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you 'The Cause'?
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain.
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again."
– Eric Bogle, "No Man's Land" 

"Either war is finished, or we are."
– Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance 

"War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children."
– Jimmy Carter, Nobel Lecture, December 10, 2002 

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity."
– Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, January 10, 1946 

"If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of these two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both."
– Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Probably the greatest antiwar poem ever written is "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen, an Oxford scholar and poet who enlisted at the beginning of WWI, and who was killed just one week before the armistice which ended it. During the war he wrote his poems in the letters he sent home, and as the conflict continued he used these poems to vent his anger and cynicism at the futility, the barbarity, and the stupidity of it all. "Dulce et Decorum Est" could just as well have been titled "The Lie", the lie in question being the quote from the Roman poet Horace that is fed to soldiers in time of war: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"; the English translation is "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country". Obviously Owen disagreed, and I'm with him.

Dulce et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen 

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And toward our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. 

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. 

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. 

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obsceneas cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.

Today we lament the deaths of young people killed by adherence to an anachronism, and pledge to end the scourge that killed them. Here are two songs that lament the deaths of soldiers - Eric Bogle's "No Man's Land" and Mark Knopfler's "Brothers In Arms".

Memorial Day 2018 - "Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me!"

Photo © 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

A Lively Experiment (Re-post)

[Note: On this day in 1663 the British King Charles II granted a royal charter to the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. A unique issue presented in this charter was the granting of full freedom of religion in the colony, a principle that paved the way for Rhode Island's insistence on the implementation of additional amendments specifying the basic rights of citizens, especially the first amendment, to the US Constitution before it would ratify that document in 1789.   

This article was first published in 2008 and published again in December of 2009. I no longer live in Rhode Island, but to me it represents the true spirit of freedom of religion and should be relevant wherever we live in the US. The article got much positive response on this blog, but when originally published on the old Gather.com it stirred up a bit of controversy. It seems that many in the fundamentalist and evangelical camp see religious toleration as spiritual slackness and sin, and consider it a slap in their faces for some reason. In the face of such opposition to such a basic principle, I find it apropos to post this again on the anniversary of the granting of the original charter.]

Rhode Island has a history of religious tolerance and freedom of conscience. It was originally a sanctuary for those fleeing the despotism of the Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony; Roger Williams, founding father of the American Baptist movement, settled on the mainland at the head of Narragansett Bay, while Anne Hutchinson and her followers settled on Aquidneck Island (officially known as Rhode Island). In 1663 the two entities united as a single colony and were granted a charter by Charles II, the charter itself being written by Dr. John Clarke of Newport.

The key phrase in that charter declared: "... that it is much on their hearts (if they may be permitted), to hold forth a lively experiment, that a most flourishing civil state may stand and best be maintained... with a full liberty in religious concerns." The charter further declared: "... that our royal will and pleasure is, that no person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any differences of opinion in matters of religion, and do not actually disturb the civil peace of our said colony; but that all and every person and persons may, from time to time and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences in matters of religious concerns..."

The freedom of conscience guaranteed in the charter created in Rhode Island, and especially in Newport, a truly amazing religious diversity that added to the cultural wealth of its society. The Society of Friends (Quakers) became a major presence in Newport (which was the capital city of the colony, and later the state, until well into the 19th Century), and their Great Meeting House (built in 1699) eventually became the host of the New England Yearly Meeting of the Society (the New England Yearly Meeting was one of the sources of the Abolition movement).

In 1658 fifteen Jewish families moved to Newport after hearing of the colony's "lively experiment" and founded the Congregation Jeshuat Israel. In 1759 the congregation purchased land and hired famed colonial architect Peter Harrison to design Touro Synagogue (named after Isaac Touro, the congregation's first spiritual leader). The synagogue was finished and dedicated in 1763, and is still standing today. Touro Synagogue also played a major role in establishing religious freedom in the newly established United States when a member of the congregation wrote to George Washington, who replied with his famous "To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport" , which stated that the government of the United States "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance..."

The Quaker and Jewish presences in Newport aren't the only result of that colonial charter, just the most famous. Newport is dotted with old buildings that, at the start of their history, served as houses of worship for small gatherings of believers: the Union Congregational Church on Division St., the first free African-American church in America; the Sabbatarian Meeting House on Touro St., now the home of the Newport Historical Society; The John Clarke Memorial Church on Spring St., one of the first churches of the American Baptist movement (and now pastored by a good friend of mine, Paul Hanson, a very genial, easy-going guy with a dry, wicked sense of humor); St. Paul's Methodist on Marlborough St., the first Methodist church to sport a steeple; and a score of other former churches which, like the Union Congregational church, have since been converted to residences.

Because of the vision of the founders of the colony, and because of the guarantee of freedom of conscience written into their colonial charter at their request, Newport has a rich spiritual heritage and holds a major place in the development of the concept of religious freedom in the history of the United States. It's something we take pride in here, and something we celebrate.

But look back at that original charter, that guarantee that within the colony no one would be pressured, harassed, punished, or otherwise disturbed because they enjoyed freedom of religious belief. How refreshing that is! And how far from the current state of affairs in the contemporary US, where we have a major effort being launched by religious despots, direct descendants of the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to impose their beliefs and their methods of governance on the people and the government of the United States. People who consider freedom of conscience to be "slack", "lax", "lazy", and most important of all, a sin. People who think that those who believe differently than they must either be converted or punished and removed from "their" society. People who would re-write our history to accommodate their own vision of what that history should have been. People who view any kind of diversity as evil.

The colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations gained great benefit from their practice of freedom of conscience. Given the present situation, I think it's time that our entire country revived that "lively experiment." What say you?

Photos & text © 2008 & 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger

America. A Poem for July 4

That's what Katharine Lee Bates called the poem she wrote in 1895 after a trip to Pike's Peak in Colorado. When she got home to Wellesley College outside Boston, MA, where she taught English, she wrote the poem inspired by the sights she saw on the train trip out and back, and which was duly published in the Fourth of July edition of the church periodical The Congregationalist. In 1910 she adapted the words a little to be set to the hymn tune "Materna" by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward of Newark, NJ, and this became known as "America the Beautiful". It has been proposed as our national anthem throughout the 20th Century, especially during the administration of John F. Kennedy (and you know Jackie had to be the force behind that effort!), but entrenched habits don't give up easily, and "The Star Spangled Banner" remains the national anthem.

If you're a long-time reader of this blog you know I'm a fierce advocate for replacing "The Star Spangled Banner" with "America the Beautiful". I really don't like "The Star Spangled Banner"; the tune is horrible, an old London drinking song called "To Anacreon in Heaven" composed for a drinking society whose whole purpose was to get drunk and sexually assault the "serving wenches". That high note toward the end - "the land of the free..." - was where they lifted up their tankards to clash together and consequently slopped their beer over each other. The character Belize in Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" said of that passage, "The cracker who wrote that knew what he was doing; he set the note for the word 'free' so high that nobody can hit it!" It's really not a tune fit for a national anthem. Add to that the fact that the song is about a single battle in the War of 1812, and not a particularly significant battle at that.

Now look at "America the Beautiful". Lyrics by a teacher and music by a church organist and choirmaster; seriously, how hometown America can you get? The tune is is both simple and memorable, and the harmonization lends itself well to instrumental orchestration and SATB choral arrangement. And most important, the song is about America, the land, the people, and the ideals it was founded upon, everything a piece of music representing a nation should be. Plain and simple, it's a beautiful and meaningful piece of music and it's a travesty that it's not our national anthem.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

And here's a beautiful rendition of the song from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of the late Eugene Ormandy:

So there's my argument in favor of "America the Beautiful" as the US national anthem. What say you?

© 2017 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Memorial Day 2017

My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity ...
All a poet can do today is warn.
– Wilfred Owen

British composer Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, first performed on 30 May 1962, was commissioned to mark the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. The reconsecration was an occasion for an arts festival, for which Michael Tippett also wrote his opera King Priam.

Britten, a pacifist, was inspired by the commission, which gave him complete freedom in deciding what to compose. He chose to set the traditional Latin Mass for the Dead interwoven with nine poems about war by the English poet Wilfred Owen. Owen, who was born in 1893, was serving as the commander of a rifle company when he was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre-Oise Canal in France, just one week before the Armistice. Although he was virtually unknown at the time of his death, he has subsequently come to be revered as one of the great war poets.

In time this piece has become the world's most powerful anti-war statement, played by orchestras all over the US for Memorial Day, and on Armistice Day, also known as Remembrance Day, in other countries in the British Commonwealth and Europe.

Wilfred Owen's poetry is an integral part of Britten's piece; it is poetry written by a front line soldier during the action of war, and accurately reflects the feelings, thoughts, and reactions of people directly involved in the fighting. As such it is a powerful, and personal, argument against the waging of war, and especially the deceptive attitude of "we must fight this war in order to end all war." History has shown that war only begets more war, a point emphatically made in Eric Bogle's song "No Man's Land":

Did they really believe that this war would end wars

Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain

The killing and dying was all done in vain

For young Willie McBride it all happened again

And again, and again, and again, and again.

Before I post the video of a performance of the War Requiem, conducted by Britten himself, I'd like to post this Wilfred Owen poem called "Strange Meeting" one of the last poems he wrote before his death and the final poem used by Britten in the requiem.

It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—

By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.

“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.”

“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,

The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,

Was my life also; I went hunting wild

After the wildest beauty in the world,

Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,

But mocks the steady running of the hour,

And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,

And of my weeping something had been left,

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,

The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled.

Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.

None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery;

Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:

To miss the march of this retreating world

Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,

I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,

Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.

I would have poured my spirit without stint

But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

"I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now. . . ."

And now, Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. May all those killed in war rest in peace, and may we end this madness so that no more need to die!

Photo © 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Happy Birthday Papa Johann!

Today is the most important day of the year for me, at least as far as my musical life goes. It's Johann Sebastian Bach's birthday, and every year I do a special post featuring his music. I share the late Douglas Adams' attitude toward Bach: "When I hear Mozart, I understand what it is to be a human being; when I hear Beethoven, I understand what it is to be Beethoven; but when I listen to Bach, I understand what it is to be the universe." He's considered to be one of, if not THE, most important composers of western music.

Bach was best known in his own time as a virtuoso keyboard player, on organ as well as the harpsichord. His compositions for keyboard set the rules for writing keyboard music for centuries. Perhaps his best known collection is his Well-Tempered Clavier, a collection of paired preludes and fugues demonstrating the "flavors" of the different key signatures. Here's the Prelude and Fugue #1 in C Major:

Bach also composed suites for solo instruments, my favorites being the cello suites. Here's the great Yo-Yo Ma playing the Cello Suite #1 in G Major:

Some of my favorite Bach compositions are his chamber works, especially the Brandenburg Concertos. And my favorite of the Brandenburgs is #3 in G Major:

And finally, my favorite Bach works are his cantatas, both secular and liturgical. The combination of the human voice and orchestra create the finest of Bach's compositions; it's in these works that he truly earns the title of maestro. One of the best of these is his cantata for the Feast of the Reformation, the celebration of the beginning of the Lutheran Church, which includes the hymn by Martin Luther which gives the cantata it's name: Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God), BWV 80. Here's a magnificent version with Philippe Herreweghe directing the Collegium Vocale Gent and La Chapelle Royale:

And that's my Bach birthday tribute for this year. I hope you've enjoyed it!

© 2017 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

The Feast of Lights

Kindle the taper like the steadfast star

Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth,

And add each night a lustre till afar

An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth.

Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,

Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn;

Chant psalms of victory till the heart takes fire,

The Maccabean spirit leap new born.

– Emma Lazarus, The Feast of Lights 

Chanukah starts this evening at sunset, and to all my Jewish friends (and new additions to the family) I send a hearty chad sameach! Here's some music to celebrate with - Peter Yarrow's "Light One Candle"; the late, great Theo Bikel singing "Chanukah, Oh Chanukah", and a much beloved classic by the poet Bialik, "Lich'vod Hachanukkah". Enjoy!

Prose text © 2016 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Advent Begins - "Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland"

Martin Luther (left) and Johann Sebastian Bach (right)

As my friends on Facebook know, I post a Bach liturgical cantata on my timeline every Sunday morning, following the Lutheran liturgical calendar (the calendar with its associated cantatas can be found here). Well, today is the first Sunday in Advent, and Papa Johann composed three cantatas for that Sunday in the course of his career: BWV 61, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (1714); BWV 62, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (1724); and BWV 36, Schwingt freudig euch empor (1731). And all three share a common element - Martin Luther's Advent hymn Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (gee, how did you guess?). BWV 36 uses the hymn in the second movement, as a soprano/alto duet. But BWV 61 and 62 are chorale cantatas and the hymn is the major element in both.

So what is it about this hymn of Luther's that made it so important? Luther wrote the words, based on St. Ambrose's Veni redemptor gentium, in 1524 and set it to an old Gregorian tune. Because the first Sunday in Advent is the "New Year's Day" of the liturgical calendar, and because Luther created this hymn specifically for that event, it became the preeminent musical piece marking the beginning of the church year in Protestant churches for centuries. Here, take a listen to the hymn in its pre-Bach form.

This kind of hymn is called a chorale. A chorale is a melody to which a hymn is sung by a congregation in a German Protestant Church service. The typical four-part setting of a chorale, in which the sopranos (and the congregation) sing the melody along with three lower voices, is known as a chorale harmonization. The performance above by the Jena Boy's Choir follows that structure, although there's no congregation to sing the melody with the sopranos.

Bach used the chorale harmonization structure of this hymn as the basis from which he built his chorale cantata setting. Interestingly enough, in BWV 61 he plays with this, setting what would normally be the opening chorus as a chorale fantasia in the style of a French overture, which follows the sequence slow – fast (fugue) – slow. If the congregation was starting to nod off, that opening chorus was going to wake them right up! Here's the complete BWV 61, starting with that chorale fantasia. This is the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists (on authentic period instruments) directed by the great Sir John Eliot Gardiner; I'm a sucker for Gardiner's work, so naturally this is my favorite performance of this piece.

In BWV 62 Bach stuck with the familiar chorale cantata structure, so the congregation would have understood what they were listening to. This is the grand chorale cantata that he was working his way up to after the experimentation of 10 years before, and grand it is! The opening chorus charges right off in typical Bach style and sets the tone for the rest of the cantata. It's quite a ride! Here's one of my favorite performances, from the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir under the direction of Ton Koopman, considered one of the premier interpreters of Bach's orchestral music.

So there you have it, a look at the hymn that starts off the Lutheran liturgical year and its evolution through the centuries, especially in the masterful hands of the great Johann Sebastian Bach. All songs should have such a stellar history!

Text © 2016 by A. Roy Hilbinger

A Christian Nation? The Founding Fathers Didn't Think So! (Re-post)

[This is part 2 of my reposts on the issue of religion in the US. This is from 2011 and answers the argument by a large religious bloc on the right that we were founded as a Christian nation on Christian principles, and that the Bible is the real foundation of our government. As this article will show, the facts prove otherwise.]

There's a claim by the Christian Right and some members of the Tea Party movement that the United States was consciously and deliberately created as a Christian nation to spread the Gospel to the new world and create a beacon of light and salvation to the rest of the world. They haven't much evidence to back up this claim; just some scattered quotes from people like George Washington, made in their private capacity and not as spokespersons for the government or the nation.

Granted, we had plenty of people settle here in the early days in a quest to believe and practice those beliefs away from the oppression of the established churches of Europe, but they weren't the only people to leave Europe and settle here. There were plenty of people who were only nominal members of any church, or followers of the Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire who emphasized reason as the primary source of authority and knowledge. Or they were just farmers and trappers and whatnot who had no real use for religion in their life and were happy to go about their daily lives and work without need for religion. There was a lot of philosophical diversity in the early colonies which became the United States.

And in fact the the lawyers and merchants who formed the intellectual class from whom the founding fathers of this nation emerged were mostly followers of the Enlightenment, men such as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Hancock, the Adamses of Boston, and Benjamin Franklin, self-declared Deists who believed in a higher power but denied the legitimacy of any formal religion. Even that ultimate gentleman farmer cum soldier, George Washington, considered himself a Deist. And it was these people who wrote our founding documents and created a purely secular, not religious, government.

The U.S. Constitution is the rock-solid foundation of the government of the United States; it establishes and guides our whole form of governance, from the legislative to the judicial to the administrative. It is, to use a Judeo-Christian reference, the Ten Commandments of the nation. It was written by men dedicated to reason and the Age of Enlightenment (principally James Madison, who himself was a protegé of Thomas Jefferson, probably the prime advocate of Enlightenment thinking, along with Benjamin Franklin, among the founding fathers), and it never mentions God, Jesus Christ, the Church, or the Bible. Never. Not even once. It only actually mentions matters pertaining to religion once, in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The key phrase in that amendment is known in U.S. jurisprudence as the Establishment Clause - "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." - which at the very beginning of our national existence says that the government cannot sponsor or enforce a religious belief and practice on the American people. There are people who argue that it does no such thing, that the amendment only says that the government can't favor one religion over the other. But the evidence, from the very records of the Constitutional Convention itself, along with the writings of the men who wrote the document, says otherwise.

The Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service (CRS) has released an annotated Constitution, and the Columbia University Law School has put a hyperlinked version online, which you can find here. The annotations quote the debates and discussions entered into at the convention, as well as the documents which express the ideas of those attending. The annotation page for the First Amendment can be found here, but I want to include passages from the "overview" section along with the footnotes for that section (included in brackets after the passage) that speak directly to the matter.

Madison’s original proposal for a bill of rights provision concerning religion read: “The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretence, infringed." [1 Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).]

The language was altered in the House to read: “Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience." [The committee appointed to consider Madison’s proposals, and on which Madison served, with Vining as chairman, had rewritten the religion section to read: “No religion shall be established by law, nor shall the equal rights of conscience be infringed.” After some debate during which Madison suggested that the word “national” might be inserted before the word “religion” as “point[ing] the amendment directly to the object it was intended to prevent,” the House adopted a substitute reading: “Congress shall make no laws touching religion, or infringing the rights of conscience.” 1 Annals of Congress 729–31 (August 15, 1789). On August 20, on motion of Fisher Ames, the language of the clause as quoted in the text was adopted. Id. at 766. According to Madison’s biographer, “[t]here can be little doubt that this was written by Madison.” I. Brant, James Madison—Father of the Constitution 1787–1800 at 271 (1950).]

In the Senate, the section adopted read: “Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith, or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion, . . ." [This text, taken from the Senate Journal of September 9, 1789, appears in 2 B. Schwartz (ed.), The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History 1153 (1971). It was at this point that the religion clauses were joined with the freedom of expression clauses.]

It was in the conference committee of the two bodies, chaired by Madison, that the present language was written with its some[p.970]what more indefinite “respecting” phraseology. [1 Annals of Congress 913 (September 24, 1789). The Senate concurred the same day. See I. Brant, James Madison—Father of the Constitution 1787–1800, 271–72 (1950).]

Debate in Congress lends little assistance in interpreting the religion clauses; Madison’s position, as well as that of Jefferson who influenced him, is fairly clear... [During House debate, Madison told his fellow Members that “he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience.” 1 Annals of Congress 730 (August 15, 1789). That his conception of “establishment” was quite broad is revealed in his veto as President in 1811 of a bill which in granting land reserved a parcel for a Baptist Church in Salem, Mississippi; the action, explained President Madison, “comprises a principle and precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.”’ 8 The Writings of James Madison (G. Hunt. ed.) 132–33 (1904). Madison’s views were no doubt influenced by the fight in the Virginia legislature in 1784–1785 in which he successfully led the opposition to a tax to support teachers of religion in Virginia and in the course of which he drafted his “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” setting forth his thoughts. Id. at 183–91; I. Brant, James Madison—The Nationalist 1780–1787, 343–55 (1948). Acting on the momentum of this effort, Madison secured passage of Jefferson’s “Bill for Religious Liberty”. Id. at 354; D. Malone, Jefferson the Virginian 274–280 (1948). The theme of the writings of both was that it was wrong to offer public support of any religion in particular or of religion in general.]

Obviously Madison and the others were intent on keeping the U.S. government out of the business of religion. Note especially this quote from Madison in the Annals of Congress:

During House debate, Madison told his fellow Members that “he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience.” 1 Annals of Congress 730 (August 15, 1789).

This is a clear declaration of a hands-off policy toward religion by the government, expressed by the architects of the document which is the foundation of that government.

There have been many acts by the government which have highlighted the thinking of these founding fathers, a philosophy that has come to be known as the "separation of Church and State", but perhaps one of the clearest actions on that philosophy came early in the history of the U.S. government with the 1797 treaty with Tripoli in the Barbary States of north Africa.

Joel Barlow was the consul-general to the Barbary states of Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis; he was assigned by Commissioner Plenipotentiary of the U.S. David Humphries to broker a treaty with Tripoli in 1796. Most of the treaty concerns trade agreements, tariffs, rights-of-way for shipping, etc.; mundane stuff. But Article 11 of the treaty makes a bold statement regarding the attitude of the U.S. toward the religion of Tripoli and the other Barbary States:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

There it is, right out in the open in black and white on an official document of the U.S. government: "...the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." In 1796, only seven years after the ratification of the Constitution. You can't get any clearer than that.

There's been an argument advanced that Article 11 says no such thing in the original Arabic document, and that it was a late insertion by the Dey of Algiers to allay the fears of the Pasha of Tripoli. But that's irrelevant, a straw man put up by opponents of church-state separation. No matter what the Arabic document says, Joel Barlow's English translation - including that eleventh article - is what was presented to President John Adams, who then presented it to the Senate, in printed copy and read aloud on the floor of the Senate. These were men who were in at the beginning of the nation, many of them former members of the Continental Congress, signers of the Declaration of Independence, and members of the Congress which wrote the Constitution. They ratified the treaty by unanimous vote on June 7, 1797, and President Adams signed it. They had all heard and read that phrase - "...the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." - and no one objected; in fact no one said anything at all about it. Why? Because this is what they believed.

So those who would want to rewrite our history to conform to their particular, sectarian ideology, led most notably by David Barton (who interestingly has no degree in history but rather a bachelor's degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University) and his Wallbuilders organization, haven't a leg to stand on. By their own private writings and in the national documents they inspired and helped create, the "Founding Fathers" of the United States were not intent on creating a "Christian nation", but rather a fully secular government with a clear hands-off policy toward religion. There's really no question of that at all.

© 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger. Images owned by the United States and are public domain.