In the century and a half since, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” was composed, it has come into widespread use by both Britain’s Royal Navy and the US Navy, becoming known as the Royal Navy Hymn in the former and the Navy Hymn in the latter. William Whiting of England composed the poem in 1860 for a student of his who was soon to sail for America. The music was composed by another Englishman, Rev. John Bacchus Dykes, an Episcopalian clergyman. The music was published in 1861, but I don’t know how the lyrics and the music came to be put together.

The hymn was sung at Franklin D. Roosevelt’s funeral, as well as the funerals of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. And as the 1999 movie, Titanic shows, it was sung during services aboard the doomed vessel the Sunday before she sank. (However, the version sung in the movie was not arranged until 1940.)

Since the hymn was penned, a number of other verses have been composed by various persons over the years. Some of these have been adopted by the Armed Forces Chaplain’s Board for inclusion in worship services conducted by military chaplains. These additional verses, prayers for the Marines, aviators, astronauts, the wounded, families at home and others, are included as an addendum on the US Navy’s web page devoted to the hymn.

Verses for the hymn are easy to write. The rhyming is simply, aabbcc, with each line consisting of eight syllables in iambic tetrameter (which, definitionally, is eight syllables anyway).

The original hymn itself, of course, long ago passed into the public domain, so anyone may use the music or compose a verse thereto. In my church service today, we will sing the hymn in five verses honoring all who serve at sea, on the land or in the air, finished by a verse of prayer for our country, thus:

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

O Lord of hosts, to you we turn
To give us grace we cannot earn.
Our soldiers guard our way of life;
Be with them all in times of strife.
Let courage flow from your command;
We pray for those who fight on land.

Eternal Father, grant, we pray,
To all Marines, both night and day,
The courage, honor, strength, and skill
Their land to serve, thy law fulfill;
Be thou the shield forevermore
From every peril to the Corps

Lord, guard and guide all those who fly
Through the great spaces in the sky.
Be with them always in the air,
In darkening storms or sunlight fair;
Oh, hear us when we lift our prayer,
For those in peril in the air!

Almighty God, whose arm is strong,
protect us e’er from doing wrong.
We pray to always do what’s right,
for justice only be our fight.
Let peace now reign across our land,
brought to us by your gracious hand.

Of the verses above, authorship is as follows:

Verse 1 - William Whiting, the original first verse.
Verse 2 - me, composed for this day as a prayer for the Army
Verse 3 - J. E. Seim, 1966
Verse 4 - Mary C. D. Hamilton, 1915
Verse 5 - me again

You can hear the US Navy Sea Chanters, the service’s chorus, sing the first verse by clicking here:
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/media/eternal_father.mp3

Update: Hmm … through referrer files I see that, as of today, this post is listed third on Google’s search results page, right behind Wikipedia’s entry for the hymn and the US Navy’s official page about it.

One hundred thirty Muslim scholars have sent a letter to Pope Benedict and other Christian religious leaders calling for competition between Islam and Christianity ” ‘only in righteousness and good works.’ “

“If Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the world cannot be at peace. With the terrible weaponry of the modern world; with Muslims and Christians intertwined everywhere as never before, no side can unilaterally win a conflict between more than half of the world’s inhabitants,” the scholars wrote. …

Using quotations from the Bible and the Koran to support their message, the scholars told people who relished conflict and destruction that “our very eternal souls are” at stake “if we fail to sincerely make every effort to make peace and come together in harmony.”

So let our differences not cause hatred and strife between us. Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works.”

The letter was signed by Muslim scholars from around the world, including the Algerian religious affairs minister, Bouabdellah Ghlamallah, and the grand mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa.

These are very fine sentiments and the letter should be warmly received by the Pope and the other Christian leaders. Let me propose, however, that sentiments (by either faith) will not do the job. Both sides much adopt and teach true “think and let think” habits among their faithful. This will be much more difficult for Muslims than Christians. Freedom of personal conscience and personal religion will have to be adopted by Muslim societies before the sentiments expressed by the scholars can become reality.

Example: while the scholars were writing their letter, the secretary-general of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America (AMJA), Dr. Sheikh Salah Al-Sawy, issued a fatwa declaring “that marriage between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man is forbidden and invalid, and that children born of such a union are illegitimate.” The fatwa says, among other things,

“A person must have some buffer between him and [deeds] that will bring him to perdition. A person about to commit suicide may expect society to intervene in order to safeguard his right to live. This is why shari’a prohibits marriage between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man - because it is the first step towards religious suicide, whether [it is the woman’s] suicide or that of the children she will bear. This [form of] suicide is much worse than actual suicide, which also [involves] the murder of [unborn children]. The woman can expect Muslim society to stand between her and this fate, thereby safeguarding her faith and her salvation in the world to come.”

Not that at least some Christians don’t need to look in the mirror when it comes to intolerance:

Slash-and-burn columnist Ann Coulter shocked a cable TV talk-show audience Monday when she declared that Jews need to be “perfected” by becoming Christians, and that America would be better off if everyone were Christian.

Coulter made the remarkable statements during an often heated appearance to promote her new book on advertising guru Donny Deutsch’s CNBC show “The Big Idea.”

In response to a question from Deutsch asking Coulter if “it would be better if we were all Christian,” the controversial columnist responded: “Yes.”

“We should all be Christian?” Deutsch repeated.

“Yes,” Coulter responded, asking Deutsch, who is Jewish, if he would like to “come to church with me.”

Deutsch, pressing Coulter further, asked, “We should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians?” She responded: “Yeah.”

Coulter deflected Deutsch’s assertion that her comments were anti-Semitic, matter-of-factly telling the show’s obviously upset host, “That is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews.”

A transcript of their conversation about Jews appears at the link. It must be read to believed. Ann Coulter is probably the most religiously uninformed public figure I have ever heard of. I do not consider myself a “perfected Jew” as a Christian, nor can I help but gagging at the idea Ann expressed (see transcript) that Christianity is the “Federal Express” way to heaven compared to Judaism. Before Ann or any other Christian starts talking about “perfecting Jews” they need to pay attention to perfecting Christians, for which there is very way long to go.

Foxnews.com has more about the scholars’ letter.

Prof. Arthur Brooks writes in OpinionJournal that too much has been made of Mother Theresa’s admission in her private papers that she felt “terrible sorrow about her life, describing it in terms of ‘dryness,’ ‘darkness’ and ’sadness.’” He goes on to point out that studies show that as a class, religious people say they are much happier than secular or sort-of religious persons, and that this is true regardless of the identity of the religion itself or the culture of the respondents.

I left the following observation in the comments to Prof. Brooks’ essay:

Professor Brooks does indeed raise an interesting fact about religious life but it is not an “inconvenient truth”. Mother Teresa’s “sorrow about her life” is not a reflection of dissatisfaction with her religious life; rather, it is an effect of the sort of rarified consciousness that animated her mission until she died. If she had retired to some religious retreat in the south of France in her later years and wrote these words-O.K. But she did not. She continued her work in the slums of Calcutta caring for the dying and the unimaginably poor.

Mother Teresa’s words reflect, instead, the writing of Ecclesiastes. Kohelet, the author of Ecclesiastes, repeatedly tells us that life is “futility of futilities, all is futile”. However, Kohelet concludes “banish anger from your heart and remove evil from your flesh-for childhood and youth are futile”. The timeless message, echoed in Asian traditions as well, focuses on the need to override the apparent emptiness of existence in the world with our own righteous actions and an awareness of accountability.

At the core of leading a religious life (even once a week) is a sense that there is a larger meaning/process that transcends our experience, that endures beyond our life. The fact that so many Americans manifest and process a religious component to their personal wellbeing speaks volumes about how they come to terms with the world in all its forms. Like Mother Teresa, Americans know the difficulties in the real world; yet, they continue to act with civic pride and civil discourse in a gentile fashion. Professor Rodney Stark of Baylor University tells us that Americans have the highest church attendance in the world. Perhaps that is why so many theological monopolies fear American culture.

See what you think.

… you need to do better than this.

Yesterday the Boston Globe editorialized about the al Qaeda or al Qaeda-like cells springing up in Lebanon and “Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Morocco, and Algeria.” It concluded,

There is a revelatory lesson in all this urban warfare and jihadist violence: From Baghdad to Beirut and from Gaza to Kabul, these recruits to the ultimate in reactionary cults threaten the existing states in the Muslim world far more than America or its Western allies. They are one side in a conflict centered within the Muslim world. Contrary to President Bush’s notion, this is not America’s long war against terrorism but the Islamic world’s conflict with itself.

In November 2003 I wrote,

Al Qaeda’s war is not only against the West; in fact, I say that they are not even principally fighting against the West. Their primary war is against other Muslims. What is at stake are lives, human freedom and the very definition of Islam itself.

Nice to see the BoGlo finally figure this out, too.

An epoch-dividing event recently took place in the religion that brought us B.C. and A.D. Too bad hardly anyone noticed.

For years, a dispute has boiled between the American Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion it belongs to, with many in the global south convinced that Episcopalians are following their liberalism into heresy. This month, Archbishop Peter Akinola, shepherd of 18 million fervent Nigerian Anglicans, reached the end of his patience and installed a missionary bishop to America. The installation ceremony included boisterous hymns and Africans dressed in bright robes dancing before the altar — an Anglican worship style more common in Kampala, Uganda, than in Woodbridge.

The American presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, condemned this poaching of souls on her turf as a violation of the “ancient customs of the church.” To which the archbishop replied, in essence: Since when have you American liberals given a fig about the ancient customs of the church?

“Missionaries in Northern Virginia,” by Michael Gerson in The Washington Post. RTWT.

HT: Peter Wehner, via email.

Combat and the problem of forgiveness

For someone who professes to follow Jesus Christ, or at least follow his teachings, the subject of forgiveness is probably one of the most vexing. Jesus taught plainly that his followers are obligated to forgive, for example, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Mt. 6:14-15).

On the face of it, this would seem simple enough because most of the wrongs we suffer are petty enough that it is not worth carrying a grudge. In fact, we tend to think someone odd or a little unbalanced who nurses such grudges and always wants to balance a score, no matter how slight and unimportant the offense by any objective standard.

But hardly any of us suffer wrongs by someone who can realistically be called an “enemy.” An adversary perhaps, even an opponent, more likely a friend of family member, but how many of us have actually enemies, who seek to do us actual, genuine harm? I don’t mean only physical harm. Even so, I’d wager a small minority of people endure the blows, physical or otherwise, of actual enemies.

Except combat soldiers, who face very real and very lethal enemies practically daily. I use “soldiers” in its ancient, generic sense of any member of the armed forces who engages in direct combat or suffers its lethal effects.

Soldiers have actual enemies who really do wish them lethal harm and try to achieve that end. Are soldiers, the ones who profess loyalty to Christ, required to forgive those who try to kill them, or who succeed in killing or harming close friends?

If, in combat, an enemy takes the life of your best friend, or blows off your leg, and if you think of yourself as a disciple of Jesus Christ, are you required to forgive that enemy? Is a Christian soldier required by the commandments of Christ to forgive those who have sought to kill him, or who have killed or wounded his comrades?

Do soldiers in battle do anything, absent atrocities, for which forgiveness is required by their enemies?

I know that ordinary soldiers, fighting for the right, can commit heinous acts that later repulse their own consciences. I have known former soldiers who have carried guilt of such deeds for many years. But I am not addressing whether soldiers need to be forgiven for deeds they have committed - a topic for another post, perhaps - but whether they are required to forgive their enemies. I reiterate, I speak from a Christian perspective.

“All alike have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” whether fighting for justice or oppression. To say “just warrior” implies that the just warrior’s enemy is unjust, yet both alike will be judged by God.

By this question, I do not mean that warfare somehow provides a magic exemption from the commandments of Christ. If so, where would we stop naming other exemptions?

I mean, Is soldiering in war generally just a all-around “suckathon” for which the enemy’s mere participation incurs no offense requiring my forgiveness, though God must still be faced by us both alike?

Jesus again:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” [Matthew 5:43-45]

It’s a little flip to say that the command to “love your enemies” cannot possibly include killing them in battle; I’m not going to argue that point here. Go read Aquinas. This post is not about the abstractness of Just War Theory but about the concreteness of a seemingly simple question: Do the duties of a Christian soldier vis-a-vis armed military enemies include forgiving them?

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