Jon Schaff posts the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic below. It is a very fine example of its genre. The ancient Athenians had lots of battle hymns, though I don't know if any survive. We learn from Aristophanes' The Clouds that old men liked to hear them recited. We don't have a lot of them in American political culture. Our national anthem is the only other one I can think of off-hand. Other patriotic songs (America the Beautiful, My Country Tis of Thee) remind us of the blessings and not of the iron and blood. I am content with that, but the Battle Hymn and The Star Spangled Banner are very powerful songs, and are robust with civic piety.
One reason we don't have a lot of such songs is indicated by the oddest feature of the Battle Hymn. That is one militant Jesus in that song, brother. That's Christ with Rambo make-up, ammo belts over both shoulders, and a blazing rifle in each hand. The hymn also joins war and politics on the one hand, with religious fervor on the other. Americans tend to be nervous about that sort of thing. But then the Civil War was a very unusual war.
Andrew Ferguson has a piece in the Wall Street Journal on the Lincoln Memorial. As it happens, I posted a comment on this remarkable piece of civic architecture back in December 2006, in a series of friendly exchanges with David Newquist concerning Abraham Lincoln.
Professor Newquist denies that his posts reflect hero worship. I am not so embarrassed by that term. In ancient times such a leader would be literally worshiped after his death. I have stood before the Lincoln memorial, and I have to say that it looked a lot like a Roman temple. Todd Epp was quite right to point out that Lincoln was a man and not without his flaws, and that it is no insult to Lincoln to recognize this. We may be like the ancient Romans in some respects, but we are not ancient Romans. Still, in Lincoln's case, a little hero worship is in order.
Ferguson's piece is worth reading in its entirety. He takes issue with some churlish interpretations of the monument. But he also points out something very important about the monument that distinguishes it from its ancient counterparts.
The statue that French produced is casually called an "icon." It's a double-edged cliché. We use it sometimes as a compliment, more often as a sly denigration, to describe figures of history who have been idealized into unreality -- stripped, as Mr. Thomas says, of all earthly imperfection.
Yet French worked hard to make his huge Lincoln a man and not a god. This is one rumpled icon. The imperfections are hard to miss. His hair is uncombed. His tie is askew. His hands betray a fidgety disposition, and his eyes aren't quite symmetrical. He's really, really big, but he's still a man.
Yes. The Lincoln depicted is very much a human being. But why is Lincoln so big?
The truth of the icon, the reason behind it, is there in the temple itself, in plain sight, not hidden or encoded or insinuated. It's found etched in the wall to the right of the statue, in the Gettysburg Address, in which Lincoln reminded his country that its potential for greatness lived in its founding proposition. And that's why the memorial is so large, so grand, so perfect in form and scale: It honors not just a man but a proposition -- an idea that no wised-up debunker can hope to deflate.
Worship of the dead is hardly unknown in Christianity. But saints have only rarely been military heroes. We do not visit the Lincoln Memorial in the hope that Lincoln can reach forth from the grave and intercede on our behalf, nor do we celebrate Memorial Day because we believe that our fallen men at arms can stir the wind behind our ships or terrify our enemies by night. We remember our dead to remind ourselves of how lucky we are that others were willing to pay a heavy price for the liberties we have inherited. My father and three uncles served in the Pacific in World War II. One of them, my Uncle Bill, perished on Okinawa. This has been a good day to remember him.
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