I have never been a part of the take-down-Nelson lobby because I believe that history is what it is – good, bad or indifferent.
We cannot change what has already happened, but we certainly have it within us to determine how we relate to our past.
What am I on about again? All sorts of thoughts rushed through my mind two weekends ago during our Independence celebrations and I was mad to write a column about it all, but I just had to postpone it because I felt the situation at White Hill, St Andrew, should be given priority.
During the televised Independence service, the choir and congregation sang I Vow To Thee My Country with so much gusto I could not help but recall my days as a little boy attending the then St James Mixed School in Trents. I have sung that song more times than I can remember, and almost instinctively I started singing along.
But then the lyrics struck me in a way that would not have entered my thoughts as a primary schoolboy.
Then I asked myself: “How the hell can you sing that song, Roy?”
I went to the Internet to refresh my brain:
I vow to thee, my country
All earthly things above
Entire and whole and perfect
The service of my love
The love that asks no questions
The love that stands the test
That lays upon the altar
The dearest and the best
The love that never falters
The love that pays the price
The love that makes undaunted
The final sacrifice
And as I recited the first verse, again I asked myself: Is the songwriter asking me to put my country before God?
But the second verse really got to me – A love that asks no questions? Is this not the kind of thinking that creates religious and nationalist fanatics and terrorists who follow others so blindly, they will kill dozens at a time without a second thought?
Then there is Verse 3: “The love that makes undaunted, the final sacrifice”. What cause demands that we give our lives for our country?
It is from thoughts like these that wars are born.
According to Wikipedia, these lyrics were first written as a poem in 1908 – prior to World War I – by British diplomat Sir Cecil Spring Rice, while he was posted in Stockholm, Sweden, and apparently spoke to how a Christian owes his loyalties to both his homeland and heavenly kingdom.
In 1918, however, at the height of World War I, he rewrote the lyrics as a rallying cry to British troops, after nearly one million were killed in conflict. At the time he was charged with the responsibility of convincing the Americans to join the war. The lyrics were not put to music until 1921 and “rapidly became an Anglican staple”.
As I reflect today I can’t help but ask: Why were we colonials made to sing this song each morning for so many of the most formative years of our lives?
Then I came across a Mail Online article in which Church of England minister Reverend Gordon Giles described the hymn as “dated” and “unjust”, and called for it to be rewritten if it is to be sung by modern congregations.
Giles wrote in an article in the Church Times: “Many would question whether we can sing of a love that ‘asks no question’, that ‘lays on the altar the dearest and the best’, and that juxtaposes the service of country and that ‘other country’ of faith.
“Should we, undaunted, make the sacrifice of our sons and daughters, laying their lives on the altar in wars that we might struggle to call holy or just?
“The notion of vowing everything to a country, including the sacrifice of one’s life for the glorification of nationhood, challenges sensibilities today.”
He added: “This gives offence, as it is based on the idea of a king as head of an empire, whose bounds need to be preserved for the benefit of subjects at home and abroad.
“In post-colonial Britain this comes across as patronising and unjust. Associating duty to king and empire with a divine call to kill people and surrender one’s own life is a theologically inept reading of Jesus’ teaching.”
While I’m at it, I can’t help but refer to that most popular children’s song, All Things Bright And Beautiful. Again as tots we sang it with all the energy we could muster, never once thinking of the messages embedded in the lyrics. So let’s look at them again:
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.
Now, I have no problem with the chorus, but looking at the second verse as an adult, I can’t help but conclude that there was an intent to make sure the “poor” and “lowly” never forgot their place by stressing that God ordered it and therefore it must be so. Your poverty is by divine design as is the rich man’s station – and you dare not attempt to change either.
The master-servant relationship comes over with a total absence of subtlety.