I was enjoying a bowl of warm chili and the fellowship of friends watching the Seattle Seahawks ravage the defenseless Denver Broncos last night. Having thoroughly enjoyed seeing Stephen Colbert's head splitting open in a pistachio ad, we eagerly anticipated the next commercial breaking the monotony of the game. Suddenly our TV was filled with an image of a beautiful southwestern landscape and a familiar tune graced our ears. We continued to watch as several singers serenaded us to "America the Beautiful" in various languages including: Spanish, Hebrew, and Keres Pueblo, while people of various cultural backgrounds drank coke.
When it was all over, I thought, What a beautiful commercial! I am not particularly patriotic, but I am reminded again why America is indeed beautiful. Not just for her mountains majesty, but for the beautiful people who have come from every corner of the earth to unite as one nation. People who have escaped poverty, tyranny, and oppression to seek opportunity, prosperity, and freedom. It reminded me of another poem I've heard:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!*
With all the bad things we can say about our country these days (and there are plenty to choose from) the melting pot of immigrants and the hope they bring with them is one of the things we still get right in America.
I can't say I am surprised at the backlash. My wife and I predicted it within seconds of the end of the song. There will always be those who will look back to the glory days of the past and say this is what America is supposed to be. Soon after the commercial aired, Twitter flooded with statements like "Characters in these Cola commercials, from Mexicans to Indians, learn to #SpeakAmerican already!” and "Nice to see that coke likes to sing an AMERICAN song in the terrorist's language." (What language do terrorists speak anyway? Pueblo?) I can only hope the people who made these comments don't realize how much they offend Americans who recently immigrated here, Native Americans, Jewish Americans, and many others.
If this is your take on America, so be it, but don't deceive yourself into thinking you have any claim to the song "America the Beautiful" If the commercial was so offensive to you, then you probably won't like the song much either.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!**
We are fighting over a song that idealizes brotherhood, the idea that we are all equals, that we all have something in common that connects us to one another, that draws us to love one another. For the follower of Jesus, we already have a mandate to love our neighbor as our self. But for the rest of the populace, this song proclaims that as Americans we love each other as brothers, or at least that is the ideal we strive for. So if we are going to say things in order to offend our brother Americans we are spitting in the face of the very song we claim to be defending.
There's more in the second verse
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law**
The "beautiful pilgrim feet" are not just the feet of the "Pilgrims" who landed on Plymouth, but of all those who made a pilgrimage to America, every immigrant from those first Puritan separatists to the ones who stepped off the plane today. America has always been a nation of immigrants, just ask the Cherokee. And each successive wave has struggled to blaze their thoroughfare of freedom, their place in our society, their American dream. And we are all better because of it.
So if you sing this song, sing proudly of the country where by God's grace your ancestors landed or you yourself were able to reach. But also sing that God would "mend ...every flaw" in our country, including every root of hate and prejudice. Sing for the brotherhood of the diverse people who have immigrated here and those who (willingly or not) welcomed us here. Because that is what "America the Beautiful" is about. And that is what makes America beautiful.
#speaklove
*"The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus 1893 was originally mounted on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty
**"America" penned in 1893 by Katherine Lee Bates. I quote the version which first appeared in 1913 as "America the Beautiful" and reflects how it is usually sung today
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