Tag: liberation theology

Cry Freedom in the name of God

image from freegiftfromgod.com

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is Michael Forster’s “Cry Freedom in the name of God”.  The tune written for it, called “Free indeed”, was not easy to sing just from the score, and I’ve not found a version of it online.   I note that John used the better known tune ‘Battle hymn of the Republic’, but that sounded a bit too jolly to me for the words here, and I can’t hear it without thinking of the irreverent words sung at school camps many years ago!)

Interestingly though, a search for “cry freedom” mainly brought up references to a 1987 film set in South Africa’s times of apartheid, and it may have been that which inspired Forster to write this hymn, which is obviously influenced by liberation theology (the idea that God is necessarily with those who struggle against injustice).

The first verse sets the scene by referring to the freedom found in Jesus Christ, and that has to be what distinguishes a Christian response to injustice from the equally strong motivation of humanists to respond to the same issues for the sake of its victims.  For the Christian, we are not only working for justice in human society but seeking to establish God’s will “on earth as in heaven”.

The second verse highlights two specific injustices that are found in the world today, and not only those in ‘underdeveloped’ countries: unfair responses to natural disasters in which the poor always come off worst (think India’s current Covid pandemic compared with the levels of vaccination in Europe); and the tendency to promote defence spending over relief for the poorest (as our own Government has just launched two vast aircraft carriers while cutting aid budgets).

The third verse focuses on the dictators who ‘hid behind their bodyguards and fear the open mind’. Imprisoned in their own mindset, and in constant fear of uprising or assassination, these men (as they nearly always are) may be vastly wealthy but do not have the peace of heart that comes with living openly for God and for the welfare of others.   But it’s not only dictators. We can all be a bit like that, comfortable in our houses (be they palace or bedsit) and saving or spending for our own benefit rather than giving our money away for the aid of others.  It takes a true repentance (metanoia, change of heart) for people to start to use whatever wealth and power we have for the “good of humankind”. Jesus said “the truth shall make you free” but as his biographer John put it, “people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”

The fourth verse turns to the Church, where the assertion is that we Christians need to be freed from the way the Church sometimes works: “honest doubts met with fear and vacuum-packed theology”.  In other words, we deserve the freedom to explore faith for ourselves and not be condemned where it takes us down a different route from that laid down by church ‘authorities’.  This is always a difficult balance: in a world of many religions and philosophies, there has always been a natural concern among Christian teachers to stop people in the pews straying so far from received wisdom that what they believe contradicts the basics of Christian orthodoxy. But it’s all too easy for that to lead to laying down strict wording of creeds, prayers and forms of service that are “required”.  What did Jesus actually teach us to do?  To break bread together and remember him, to pray in in private and use the Lord’s prayer as a pattern, to let the (Hebrew) scriptures be our guide to God’s will. Nothing more specific than that.

The final verse is about being freed from focussing on ourselves so that we are free to live for the good of others.  Putting all these together, we have freedom from unjust structures in society, from living in fear of others because of our own acts of injustice, from being too tied to specific ways of practising Christianity, and from being inward looking.  Together they make for the freedom in Christ that allows us to bring God’s freedom to others.  To go back to John’s choice of tune, surely we must end with a chorus of “Glory, glory, hallelujah! Cry freedom in God’s name!”

Forgive us when…

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is one by Martin Leckebusch from the selection for Lent.  The full words can be found on the Jubilate Hymns website.  Sing Praise offers two choices of tune, neither familiar to me, and John Hartley has composed one for the occasion in a minor key, but in fact as it is in the frequently used “long metre” (eight syllables per line) there are many suitable tunes and the Jubilate website suggests the well-known “Tallis’s Canon”.

The first line is “Forgive us when our deeds ignore your righteous rule”. In fact all the verses begin “Forgive us…”, which is a good clue to the theme, which is that of penitence (saying sorry to God for the things we’ve done wrong and asking his help not to repeat our mistakes). 

Traditionally the sort of sins repented of in Lent were greed, pride, lust and envy – sins of thought more than of deed, for the most part.  Not that those are suddenly acceptable these days, and indeed in verse two we confess “dreams of pleasure, wealth and pride” and in verse three “our endless greed for what was never truly ours” (more than a nod to the traditional vices there).   

But the focus of what we think of as sin has shifted in recent decades.  The things that Martin asks us to repent of include what we might call “woke sins”, thoughts and actions that harm the world and its people and our relationship with nature. More specifically, verse one refers to “decisions that harm the poor”, reflecting the  theology of “liberation” or “bias to the poor” that has become popular since the 1960s.  Verse three expands the concept of greed beyond personal acquisition to encompass the way “we harness this world’s brutal powers” (meaning perhaps its fossil fuel and nuclear energy, although it may also suggest structural and corporate greed riding roughshod over the poor).   

Verse four gives an interesting take on what ‘sin’ might mean in its widest sense: “we change the rules by which the game is played”. The Biblical understanding is that God’s commandments – his rules for living – are for everyone’s benefit.  But by changing those rules to benefit ourselves more than others, by making greed a strength and living sustainably with a view to the needs of others a weakness, we undermine the way the world was supposed to work.

The last two lines combine a traditional observance of Lent with this more contemporary understanding as we ask God to “help us walk your holy way, to make your world a better place”.  Personal holiness and concern for the world around us are not two opposing or different approaches to religion, they are more like the intertwining strands of DNA or the interplay of electricity and magnetism: only together can they bring life and power into being.