A Comm for Historymemes

Over half my life ago when I was a religious fundamentalist in the church of Christ, I led this song for the congregation on a Wednesday night service since it was in our hymnnal. I liked the history that came with it: it was a song about the faithful triumphing over oppression.

A few weeks later, it was fully censored in all of the books. In my naïvete I hadn't realized that there was still a whole bunch of Confederate sentiment in Texas. It had never occurred to me that the song might be controversial.

I find it incredibly ironic that Trump had "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" sung at his inauguration this year. It's a downright violently abolitionist, anti-oppression song. The whole thing is about the approaching and inexorable wrath of God against his "contemners" (people who show contempt for God by trafficking humans). You can imagine an unbelievably massive army, led by God holding a literal sword made of lightning, encamped in siege around the slavers and waiting to attack at morning's light; with the promise that whatever they do to those who oppress others, God will do the opposite to them.

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.

[...]

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.

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I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal"; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel, Since God is marching on.

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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.

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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.

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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.

"I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: 'As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal'" is hardcore. Among the most hardcore and fantastic sentences ever written. It feels like it should be in a high fantasy novel. Right along with "As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free." Julia Ward Howe was angry with a cold, poetic anger.

Explanation: In the US Civil War, fought over the secessionist South's insistence on maintaining chattel slavery for Black folk, one of the major anti-slavery strains was explicitly religious, based on the idea that we were all children of the Christian God and thus inherently equals - making slavery, and especially racially-based slavery, an abomination.

They made some good tunes with that in mind.

🤘