America! America!
/by Rev. Eric Folkerth
“America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!”
This is a lesser known verse of my favorite “patriotic” song. As I shared during “Coffee on the Porch” this week, I love the story of “America The Beautiful.” Written in 1893 by a young teacher from Boston named Katherine Lee Bates, it reflected her experience of traveling across America to see the best of what the nation was.
Along with her lover of 25 years —who was also a woman named Katherine; yes, that’s right, another reason to love this story— she travelled through the country.
They passed through Chicago…known then as “the white city.” (“Thine alabaster city..”
They passed through Kansas (“amber waves of grain…”)
And finally, they came to Pikes Peak in Colorado (“purple mountains majesty…”) where she was first inspired to write the words of the song that *almost* became our national anthem.
Personally? I think it SHOULD be our national anthem.
And a big part are these powerful lines in the second verse:
“God mend thine every flaw…”
You see, instead of *assuming* God’s grace and blessing, the song assumes America needs God’s help. It assumes America still must change and grow to be all it is supposed to be.
As you know, there was a great patriotic celebration at a large church downtown, which shall remain nameless. I find the overt mixing of politics and religion to be dangerous. For faith to wrap itself in the flag, or for politicians to wave around Bibles…both of these are dangerous. And we’ve seen both in the past few weeks.
I think our role as the Church is to continue to humbly pray what Katherine Lee Bates writes here:
“America…America…God mend thine every flaw…”
The next two lines are just as powerful for our current day.
“Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!”
As we continue to be roiled by a great pandemic, we are certainly seeing the need for more “self-control,” more folks to just wear their masks!
But also, we should remind ourselves that “liberty” and “law” are not opposites, as the song suggests. Our “liberty” is not *from* the law, it comes through respect for the constitution, not just symbolic things like a flag.
On this 4th of July weekend, it is certainly the case that America still has many “flaws” in need of God’s mending.
Rather than wrap ourselves in a flag, let’s pray a humble prayer that God might “mend” our nation in this troubled time.
Eric Folkerth