There is an opinion column by a Methodist minister named James P. Marsh in The Washington Post, titled “Why I Sit Out ‘God Bless America.'”
Explaining his discomfort with the song, he states:
I imagine that the God I believe in isn’t interested in dispensing special nationalistic blessings. (Or, perhaps more to the point, blessings for our bullpen, error-free fielding and sufficient run support.) When we ask for blessings to be bestowed only on “us,” we are in danger of seeing ourselves as set apart from the world. Faith is global, and one nation doesn’t get any more or less of God than any other.
Amazing.
It honestly never occurred to me that in praying for God’s blessing on America, I was praying that He not give his blessing to any other nation or people. What a strange way of perceiving prayer. There is nothing in the lyric of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” that condemns any other nation or people. By extension, if one prays to God to bless one’s own family, is it implicitly a prayer to God to curse everyone else’s family? Continue reading “(Sitting Out) God Bless America”