Leave our Hymns Alone: A Christian Response to the George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address

Certain hymns still bring back warm remembrance from my holiness upbringing. “Oh victory in Jesus, my Savior, forever,” my blue-collar congregation would sing with relish. My friends and I would open the hymnal with anticipation when the music minister would call out the number for “Wonderful Grace of Jesus.” In this song the men of the congregation for once had the privilege of singing the lead in the chorus, while the women joined with their descant line. In a rousing climax, the whole congregation would unite our voices with “Praise His name!” In youth camps, we sang “There’s Power in Blood” even more energetically: “There is pow, pow, pow, pow (breath) pow, pow, pow, pow (breath), wonder-working power, in the blood, (yelling) in the blood, (singing) of the Lamb, (yelling) of the Lamb!” The songs formed me to know that, as a Christian, my salvation was found in the faithfulness of Jesus. A confidence sprang out that helped me understand that living in Jesus entailed more than the forgiveness of sins: “Would you o’er evil the victory win? There’s wonderful power in the blood!”

My eyes opened wide, therefore, when I read a turn of phrase in the midst of George W. Bush’s State of the Union address: “There’s power, wonder-working power, in the . . .” Immediately, chords of gospel music involuntarily rang in my ears. I was primed for the word “blood” that should have come next. I was ready to shout at the top of my voice “in the blood!” . . . “of the Lamb!” But I was disappointed. Salvation, victory o’er evil, does not come in Jesus, in the blood of the Lamb in George Bush’s world. Salvation, power over evil, the wonder-working power, comes in the “in the goodness, in the perseverance, in the faith of the American people.”

As I read, I was confused, even bewildered. The President had stolen our song! Moreover, he’d stolen the very means of salvation that is at the center of my life as a Christian, my life as a member of the body of Christ, a people that comes from every tribe and every nation. Years earlier at our teen camp, such a shift in the terms of “There’s Power in the Blood” would have brought a laugh at our camp variety show. All would have recognized it as a parody of our deepest Christian convictions. The problem is, no one laughed during the State of the Union address. No one caught the joke. Mr. Bush had replaced Jesus with the United States as a messianic people and had set himself at its head . . . and everyone seemed to take him seriously!

Sadness crept over me as I felt that a life-long friend had been violated. As I continued to read through the speech, I began to understand why no one had laughed. In my holiness church, we had sung how Jesus had freely given his life for victory over evil. By dying for evil-doers, for sinners like me, God had in Jesus defeated the power of evil. We no longer needed to live bound under the power of evil, cowering in fear. We could “not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:20). What wonderful good news! No wonder the congregation sang so voraciously.

While the President’s address received the predictable partisan resolve, it did not -- and could not --elicit the profound joy that my childhood congregation expressed in their hymn singing. Mr. Bush pledged that the United States would save its citizens and even the whole world from evil. Unlike our holiness songs, however, his prescribed method was not overcoming evil through the power of the blood of the Lamb, but by bringing death and destruction to those deemed evil – and, by implication, anyone around them. Such is the record and the prospects for Iraq. Experts estimate that the 1990-91 Gulf War resulted directly in 110,000 civilian deaths; long-term effects of the war and the subsequent embargo have killed between 344,000-525,000 children under the age of five alone. If the President’s plans for war against Iraq go forward, a leaked United Nation’s report estimates that deaths of 48,000-261,000 will occur in a conventional war; 375,000-3,900,000 will die if a civil war breaks out with weapons of mass destruction unleashed by either side. In both scenarios, an additional 200,000 will be killed from indirect effects of the war. All I could do was think of Jesus, on his way to the cross, telling the daughters of Jerusalem, “Do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed’” (Luke 23:28-29).

We no longer sing those rousing holiness hymns any more. Choruses are in vogue now. My children would not catch the parody of salvation in Christ that the President offered in his version of the “wonder-working power.” I will point the parody out to them, but I’m not sure whether they will really feel why I think it is so important. That saddens me too. Perhaps such sadness is appropriate in days such as these. Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus.