Unchurched child that I was, it was at summer camp that I was introduced to Christian hymns. I was captivated by them. The words were taken for granted, left unexamined, as they would be by any child of eight or nine. But what child could resist the rousing music and drama of Onward Christian Soldiers? I still get a pang of excitement when I hear its martial beat and still love singing many of the hymns I learned sitting in a pine grove on summer Sundays belting them out with the other 150 ardent voices. Onward Christian Soldiers marching as to war with the cross of Jesus going on before. It sounded joyous to me, verse after verse!
It is a 19th-century English hymn; words by Sabine Baring-Gould and music composed by Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. The hymn’s theme is taken from references in the New Testament to the Christian being a soldier for Christ, for example II Timothy 2:3 (KJV): “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”
When Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt met in August 1941 on the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to agree to the Atlantic Charter, a church service was held for which Prime Minister Churchill chose the hymns.
“We sang “Onward, Christian Soldiers” indeed, and I felt that this was no vain presumption, but that we had the right to feel that we were serving a cause for the sake of which a trumpet has sounded from on high,” Churchill said. “When I looked upon that densely packed congregation of fighting men of the same language, of the same faith, of the same fundamental laws, of the same ideals … it swept across me that here was the only hope, but also the sure hope, of saving the world from measureless degradation.”
I often feel sad for Jesus. I think he got a bad deal; he came to teach us about love and often throughout history ended up being conscripted to lead armies that increase injustice, incite hatred, and condemn millions of the innocent to brutal deaths. He suffers the fate of so many truth tellers who have been misunderstood or denied until it was too late to save the lives or ecosystems they warned us we were abusing.
And why is it acceptable for some members of our society to espouse the values of Jesus and at the same time try to revoke other people’s right to the sanctity of their own bodies? Millions of women may soon lose access to legal abortions, even young victims of rape or incest. More alienated, unhinged youths, living within a culture of unregulated guns, lies, and political hostility, will continue to murder innocents of every age.
You are surely aware of other instances of a contradiction between avowed values and subsequent behavior. We recognize it in ourselves.
Still unchurched, I confess to being ignorant of Christian theology and risk absurdity trying to interpret it. I even had a dream recently in which my grade school teacher assigned the class to write a letter to Jesus. I was again late to class and, moreover, I was anxious because I was afraid I didn’t have the right to communicate with Him because I did not believe He was divine. I scribbled apologies to Him until I suddenly remembered a passage in Scripture (John 7:53) I had heard at camp and never had never forgotten:
Jesus had come across a group of townspeople eager to stone to death a woman taken in adultery. Sharp rocks were about to be hurled and the lust for rendering this cruel punishment smoldered in the hearts of the leering taunting crowd. Jesus stepped forward and spoke; Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. And they withdrew, ashamed.
We cannot remain as children failing to examine closely whatever text we use to justify our actions, be it Christian scripture, secular humanism, radical feminism, or Kantian philosophy. We will always be stirred by the voices of politicians, of warmongers, of professors, of religious leaders, and of the hopeful peacemakers. It is our nature to respond, to seek resolution through solidarity, but we must respond to the voices with discernment, with caution and self-awareness as Jesus warned that unruly mob centuries ago.
As Robert Frost concludes in Masque of Mercy, “Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.”
Margot Fleck, a disciple of Darwin, lives in Northfield.