My Country, ‘Tis of Thee
This beloved, patriotic hymn was written in thirty minutes time by Samuel Francis Smith while he was a student at Andover Theological Seminary in Andover, Massachusetts. It was first performed at a children’s Independence Day celebration in Boston on July 4, 1831. It was famously sung by Marian Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Day, April 9, 1939 and the first stanza was recited at the conclusion of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the same spot. This hymn and Hail, Columbia, both functioned more or less as national anthems until Francis Scott Key’s text became the official National Anthem on March 3, 1931.
The Reverend Mr. Smith, graduate of Harvard and Andover went on to become an outstanding Baptist minister, composing 150 hymns over 87 years. This hymn expresses a deep gratitude to God for our country, asks for God’s continued guidance for our nation, and attributes the very existence of the nation to God.
The founders asserted that the entire American project rested on the understanding that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were the inalienable rights conferred by “nature’s God” not by King George or by any other human power. Jefferson, in situating these rights with transcendent reality, places them beyond the reach and control of arbitrary human power.
At the same time he acknowledges that such a transcendent reality or higher power exists and goes on in the same founding document to name this reality as the “Creator,” the “Supreme Judge of the World,” and “Divine Providence.”
The Constitution makes no mention of God. Contrary to some opinions, I do not think the Founders intended to create an explicitly “Christian Nation”, nor do I think they had any intention of creating a purely secular republic. The first right of the first amendment seems to clearly express that their intent was for religion to have wide latitude to function as salt, light, and leaven in the lives of the citizenry, creating the virtue necessary for self government while avoiding the abuses and compromises of established religion.
It is a paradoxical and ambiguous situation but a workable one until the question is called over and over again causing courts to make rulings and write opinions which have inadvertently strangled the constructive or utilitarian tension the founders set up. Over decades the courts have opted for broadening the understanding of establishment as the only way to deal with religious pluralism or even unbelief in our country, consequently pushing religion out of the public square and making it impotent to have any influence beyond that which it exercises in the lives of individual adherents.
History shows us however, that by God’s grace, a new birth of freedom is always around the corner in America.
Happy Independence Day and God bless these United States of America!
The Reverend Mr. Smith, graduate of Harvard and Andover went on to become an outstanding Baptist minister, composing 150 hymns over 87 years. This hymn expresses a deep gratitude to God for our country, asks for God’s continued guidance for our nation, and attributes the very existence of the nation to God.The founders asserted that the entire American project rested on the understanding that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were the inalienable rights conferred by “nature’s God” not by King George or by any other human power. Jefferson, in situating these rights with transcendent reality, places them beyond the reach and control of arbitrary human power.
At the same time he acknowledges that such a transcendent reality or higher power exists and goes on in the same founding document to name this reality as the “Creator,” the “Supreme Judge of the World,” and “Divine Providence.”
The Constitution makes no mention of God. Contrary to some opinions, I do not think the Founders intended to create an explicitly “Christian Nation”, nor do I think they had any intention of creating a purely secular republic. The first right of the first amendment seems to clearly express that their intent was for religion to have wide latitude to function as salt, light, and leaven in the lives of the citizenry, creating the virtue necessary for self government while avoiding the abuses and compromises of established religion.
It is a paradoxical and ambiguous situation but a workable one until the question is called over and over again causing courts to make rulings and write opinions which have inadvertently strangled the constructive or utilitarian tension the founders set up. Over decades the courts have opted for broadening the understanding of establishment as the only way to deal with religious pluralism or even unbelief in our country, consequently pushing religion out of the public square and making it impotent to have any influence beyond that which it exercises in the lives of individual adherents.
History shows us however, that by God’s grace, a new birth of freedom is always around the corner in America.
Happy Independence Day and God bless these United States of America!
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