From the Salmon

Before I decided to write about my own musical journey, Brandon’s post took me back to a time when all I listened to was “Christian Contemporary Music.” As I mentioned previously, one of the first uncomfortable memories that came to mind was of getting way too pumped up over Petra’s “This Means War!” And as I commented over on Brandon’s site, this also reminded me of a time when I was very, very young and my favorite hymn was “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

It turns out that Brandon G over at Born-Again Liberal was thinking along the same lines, because later in the day, I came across his post “The Lord’s Propaganda.” In reminiscing about the songs he learned as a kid growing up in the church, Brandon remembers one called “I’m in the Lord’s Army.” I remember singing this song as well, but I hadn’t remembered the lyrics until Brandon reminded me:

I may never march in the Infantry,
Ride in the Calvary,
Shoot the artillery.
I may never zoom o’er the enemy,
But I’m in the Lord’s Army.

I’m in the Lord’s Army, (yes, sir!)
I’m in the Lord’s Army, (yes, sir!)

In my memory, there were most definitely motions that went along with this song (marching, riding, shooting(!), flying and saluting), which made it a favorite for the kids in my Sunday School or Vacation Bible School. In the interest of figuring out how on earth a song like this ended up in the canon of Christian kids’ songs, Brandon dug a little bit into the song’s history. He discovered that the song was from one of the World War eras, and that the original lyrics contained the line “I may never fly over Germany.” He continues:

That’s right: the song wasn’t just modeled after war propaganda; it was, in itself, war propaganda. They took the importance of the war that America was drilling into its citizens and used it to try to make children behave, as if to say that they could do their part in supporting the war by being good little Christians.

Which brings me back to “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” A cursory search into the history of this hymn revealed that Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould wrote the hymn in 1864 (in England, so this had nothing to do with the American Civil War) as a processional for children celebrating Whitmonday (the day after Pentecost Sunday).

Let me just say that I love hymns. Give me Newton or Watts in four parts any day of the week. But every now and then as I’ve gotten older, I’ll sing something that I’ve sung all my life, and it will make me supremely uncomfortable. “Onward, Christian Soldiers” is one of those hymns:

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before:
Christ the royal Master leads against the foe;
Forward into battle, see, His banner go.

Now, I don’t have children. And I’m not yet a pacifist. And when I was younger, I was as fascinated by tanks and fighter jets as many of the other boys my age. Hell, even now, I enjoy kicking me some alien butt with a plasma gun from time to time. So I don’t think that it’s just the Baby Patton part of these songs that bother me. I think that what bothers me is the idea that I was encouraged as a child to think of myself as a Christian Soldier in the Lord’s Army.

“But it’s only a metaphor,” you might say. “Besides, Paul uses that metaphor himself when he talks about the ‘Armor of God.’”

Fine. But I think metaphors matter. The image we have of God matters. And this one troubles me.

There’s a lot that I could write at this point about the conflation of patriotism and faith, the creeping Americanism in the church, the statements of Gen. Boykin and others about our army engaged in a fight against Satan. But let’s save all that for another time…

What worries me is that I see a tendency among Christians today to see our relationship with the rest of the world as one of conflict. We use terms like “culture war.” We talk about how we’re “under attack” by nebulous secular forces. We wall ourselves off and put up defenses. We attack. We say some pretty awful things. Quite frankly, we hate. I’m in no way saying this is all we do, but I think that if you’ve spent a decent amount of time in the American church, you know that there’s some truth to this.

I find this troubling because, on a very basic level, I think it makes it easier to live with ourselves if we think that we can point to something outside of us as being “what’s wrong with the world.” And if we could only defeat this enemy, all would be well. I see this from Christians (and non-Christians, for that matter) on both sides of the political spectrum. I do this. If we just get this law passed or this candidate elected or these people on the courts and on and on....

And those things matter; I’m not trying to say that they don’t. Lord knows I’ll be writing about them a bunch in the future. But they miss the point.

In his book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller writes about attending a protest:

When we were done, I started wondering if we had accomplished anything. I started wondering whether we could actually change the world. I mean, of course we could — we could change our buying habits, elect socially conscious representatives and that sort of thing, but I honestly don’t believe we will be solving the greater human conflict with our efforts. The problem is not a certain type of legislation or even a certain politician; the problem is the same that it has always been.

I am the problem.

I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.

By thinking of ourselves as Christian Soldiers locked in a battle against the forces of whatever, we’re able to distract ourselves from our own brokenness, our own pride, our own greed. I am the problem.

Furthermore, I think that the image of the Church at War makes us unable to fully embrace the idea of the Church as Healer. In everything Jesus said and did, he sought to make whole the brokenness of those around him. The world he entered expected him to triumph as a warrior; instead, he ministered as a healer. And I think God wants the same from us. God doesn’t want us to win. He wants us to heal.

And it’s a shame that they don’t write catchy children’s songs about that.