What Would Woody Sing
a sermon preached by Tony Lorenzen
at First Parish Church in Weston, MA
Sunday, July 2, 2006
Francis Scott Key wrote the poem that would become the Star Spangled Banner on board the British Ship Minden to work for the release of a prisoner of war. Key watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry on the night of September 7, 1814, during the battle of Chesapeake Bay near the end of the War of 1812. His young country was little more than a generation old and its grip on independence from the British Empire was tenuous. A defeat that night, might lead to the loss of Baltimore and then Washington D.C. or worse, the war itself.
I can only imagine the relief and pride Key felt as he saw the young version of the stars and stripes – this one with 15 stars and 15 stripes, rise above Fort McHenry on the morning of September 8th as he penned the words to what he called The Defense of Fort McHenry. The fort had stood, his new, young nation would stand.
The Defense of Fort McHenry was published as a broadside on September 17, 1814. Three days later Baltimore newspapers published the poem with a note to sing it to the tune of a popular English drinking song, To Anacreon in Heaven. The Carr Music Store in Baltimore published the words and music together, all four verses, under the title The Star Spangled Banner.
The song grew in popularity through the nineteenth century and there is record of the song being played at baseball games as early as 1887. ÒOn 27 July 1889, Secretary of the Navy Benjamin F. Tracy signed General Order #374, making The Star-Spangled Banner the official tune to be played at the raising of the flagÓ. [1] On March 3, 1931, President Herbert Hoover signed a law making the Star Spangled Banner our countryÕs national anthem.
When Key wrote the song our young nation was not perfect. It was largely a nation run by rich estate owners and businessmen, and others of noble English descent. Women had no official say in the government, slavery was legal, and just about everyone thought of the native inhabitants of this country, as the constitution put it, as Òbloodthirsty savagesÓ. And yet, there was something vastly different about KeyÕs young nation. It was a country with nobility yes, but without a king. It was a place where free men voted to democratically elect their leaders. It was a bold new experiment in government and nationhood. Key had every right to be filled with joy that it would survive the early threats that bombarded it from foes both internal and external.
Francis
Scott KeyÕs song was no longer just about a triumphant battle, but about a triumphant
nation. And his song came to be
played anywhere people of this nation gathered: at parades, memorials, even
sporting events. It celebrated our
triumph, our glory, our power. We
were somebody among the nations. A
somebody made up of somebodies gathered from other nations and yet
Following in the footsteps of Francis Scott Key, others began to write songs about this great country. Some put new words to the national song of our former imperial mother country God Save the Queen and school children learned My Country Tis of Thee. Others wrote new songs about how beautiful this country is, while others asked God to bless this country.
Irving Berlin wrote the first draft of what would become God Bless America at Camp Upton on Long Island in 1918 for Zeigfield style review. The original lyric contained the line "Make her victorious on land and foam, God Bless America..." and seemed to reference U.S. involvement in World War I. Berlin thought it too heavy for the whimsical mood of the review and shelved it.
ÒIn the fall of 1938, as war was again threatening Europe, Berlin decided to write a "peace" song. He recalled his "God Bless America" from twenty years earlier and made some alterations to reflect the different state of the world. Singer Kate Smith introduced the revised "God Bless America" during her radio broadcast on Armistice Day, 1938. The song was an immediate sensation; the sheet music was in great demand. Berlin soon established the God Bless America Fund, dedicating the royalties to the Boy and Girl Scouts of America.Ó[2] America was forging through a depression and about to enter a war and it needed reassurance. It needed to be told God was standing beside us and guiding us: We were strong, mighty, we would be okay. Americans loved this song. It told them what they wanted to hear.
Well, most Americans loved it. One American didnÕt love the song. He thought that what the song said was what people wanted to hear, not what they needed to hear. It didnÕt ring true to the America he knew up close and personal. The America that lost its farms in the dust bowl; the America that picked fruit in the migrant camps of California; the America that road the rails and slept under bridges out of work; the America that stood hungry in the soup lines. Irving BerlinÕs song God Bless America made this man angry and he wasnÕt gonna stand for it. He was gonna shout back. He was gonna shout back the only way he knew. He was gonna write his own song. His name was Woody Guthrie and thatÕs what he did – wrote songs. Maybe the difference between Woody Guthrie and Irving Berlin was their audience, maybe it was their perspective, maybe it was their personality, in any case we got two great songs.
Woody GuthrieÕs first version of an answer song to God Bless America, the song that would eventually become This Land is Your Land, was called God Blessed America for Me. ÒWoody Guthrie lifted the melody of This Land Is Your Land essentially note-for-note from When the World's on Fire, a song recorded by country/bluegrass legends, The Carter Family, ten years before Guthrie wrote his classic songÓ (www.wikipedia.org).
Guthrie first recorded the song in 1944, and first published it in 1945, in a mimeographed booklet of ten songs that contains typed lyrics and hand drawings. Most people only know what became the refrain and the first two verses, but the song in its initial form was very long and in its final version has six verses. Many songbooks leave out the verses about class and poverty. In the original version of "This Land is Your Land" Guthrie spoke about depression poverty with the verse,
In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me.
Guthrie protested the institution of private ownership of land with the verse,
As I went walking, I saw a sign there;
And on the sign there, It said, 'NO TRESPASSING.'
But on the other side, It didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.
In another version, the sign reads "Private Property."
IÕm taking you down the hit parade road this Fourth of July weekend because the anniversary of this nationÕs birth is one of those occasions when our national songs are pulled out, like sacred seasonal music or Christmas Carols, at their appropriate time every year, for robust rousing choruses and solemn meditations.
Our national songs make me think of the images we have of our country and ourselves, how those images were created, what those images looked like and meant to those who created them and what they look like and mean now. And what these might mean to a person of faith.
When Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner, a new nation was breaking away from the old model of nationhood in European Christendom. The American Revolutionaries were leaving behind King and Country to begin a new experiment rooted in the idea of democracy and equality.
When Jesus speaks of the kingdom of God he is speaking of a radical idea of community. A community where the first shall be last and the last first. A community where sinners are welcomed home and feasts are thrown in their honor. A community where, as St. Paul would comment, there is no distinction between male and female, slave or free, Jew or gentile. The Christian community is so radical that some think the word kingdom shouldnÕt be used to describe it. Instead we should use the word commonwealth.
The word common wealth dates from
the fifteenth century when the phrase common wealth or common weal, both terms
using two words, meant common well-being. Jesus spoke of this directly in LukeÕs gospel. ÒWhoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none;
and whoever has food must do likewise.Ó In todayÕs reading from Acts we see the Apostles
practicing the common weal in their community living, renouncing private ownership,
holding everything in common; those with great resources selling what they
could to provide for those in need.
ThatÕs a radical community, committed to the common weal, practicing
what Jesus taught in todayÕs gospel reading, selling all they have and giving
the money to the poor.
Our
nation, in its struggle to be born fought to incorporate the idea of common
weal. America declared in its
right to exist, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, that human beings have
inalienable rights and chief among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. An idea that was
incorporated almost verbatim into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in
1948. Our
nation, with whatever faults it had and has, began as a radical community: no
kings, democracy, and pledges in its constitution to provide for the common
defense and promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty -
Liberty, which according to the abolitionist Rev. Henry Ward Beecher is Òthe
soulÕs right to breathe.Ó
And yet,
our nation has had a long and difficult history of realizing the beloved
community and of actualizing the common weal. WeÕve struggled with giving life, liberty and a
genuine pursuit of happiness to all Americans. WeÕve struggled with giving every American soul the right to
breathe free. ItÕs because of this
that I hear our national songs with a critical ear. And I wonder, What Would Woody Sing?
When
Francis Scott Key wrote the Defense of Fort McHenry he was emboldened by a new
nation, and its stirring, elegant and aspiring rhetoric to be the home of the
free and the land of the brave.
When the flag rose over Chesapeake Bay, it carried the hope that America
could be America; that the new nation could live to fulfill its destiny.
Now,
when I hear The Star Spangled Banner, I hear it at sporting events, accompanied
by a fly over of military jets and its words describing bombs bursting in air
remind me of Iraq and threats made about Iran and the cost of war not only in
dollars but in human lives.
I see stadiums full of flag waving, saluting patriots, not wanting to
feel that they are not supporting men and women in the armed service, cheering
wildlyÉ and I see jack booted
goose stepping soldiers marching through Berlin and Red Square and wonder how
uncritical our society has become of military imagery in sporting events,
television, and in our national image - and I wonder if Francis Scott Key
envisioned this for his song?
Then I
think, What Woody Would Sing? I
imagine someone with a guitar at the microphone at Fenway Park or Gillette
Stadium singing about how in the middle of the city, in the shadow of the
steeple, by the relief office, I saw my people, and as they stood there hungry,
I stood there wondering, If this land was still made for you and me?
And I
imagine a line of homeless people marching across the field instead of jets
flying over it. And I wonder what
difference it would make if WoodyÕs song was our national song? Would we be any better at common
wealth? Would God bless
America any less or any more? Would people think it was a song of weakness
because it lacked military and war imagery? Or would people begin to think of our country and themselves
differently?
These
are the things I think about at Fenway Park and Gillette Stadium with my hat
off, paying my respects to my country and those who gave their lives to
preserve it and its best qualities.
I think, What Would Woody Sing?