Rewriting ‘God Bless America’

September 18, 2007

I noted earlier that the top four Republican presidential candidates angered the religious right by blowing the first-ever “Values Voter” debate. But my friends at Right Wing Watch reminded me that one of the most interesting parts of the debate wasn’t who was there, or what was said, but rather, the song that got the event started.

The clip is a rendition of “God Bless America,” sung by the Church of God Choir, from Springfield, Ohio, but in this case, the lyrics were rewritten. Instead of a song about “the land that I love,” and “home sweet home,” this version condemns the country. The song received an enthusiastic and positive response from the conservative Republicans on hand for the event.

I know it gets tiresome to hear “if this were a Democrat…” but in this case, I think it’s particularly appropriate. I’m trying to imagine the response if a number of progressive activists groups got together to host a presidential candidate forum, and to kick things off, they sang a rewritten version of “God Bless America” that disparaged the United States and reprimanded the American people.

Do you suppose this would be the kind of thing that might be on Fox News? Maybe the presidential candidates on hand for the event would be asked whether they agreed with the song’s lyrical condemnation of the country? Perhaps the far-right would be apoplectic about the “blame America first” crowd? Maybe we’d hear a few words about how “God Bless America” is fine the way it is, and doesn’t need to be rewritten to serve a radical political agenda?

Just asking.

The lyrics of the song are posted below. Don’t read them on a full stomach.

Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back
On everything that made her what she is.

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sin and heal our land

The courts ruled prayer out of our schools
In June of ‘62
Told the children “you are your own God now
So you can make the rules”
O say can you see what that choice
Has cost us to this day
America, one nation under God, has gone astray

Why should god bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land

In ‘73 the Courts said we
Could take the unborn lives
The choice is yours don’t worry now
It’s not a wrong, it’s your right

But just because they made it law
Does not change God’s command
The most that we can hope for is
God’s mercy on our land

Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land

(Reading from 2nd Chronicles 7:14) If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land

God have mercy on America forgive her sins and heal our land

Wow, that meter goes from rod to furlong, doesn’t it?

  • lets see, MoveOn insults one American and all hell breaks loose and a Democratic candidate who had nothing to do with it gets blamed.

    Seven Republican Presidential candidates and numerous Republican “insider” groups have an event where every American, including several entire Supreme Courts, is insulted and. . . crickets chirping?

    wtf?

  • I couldn’t write it any worse than that. Maybe I can.

    In ‘05 Ted H said we
    Could ban the homo unions
    Till he got caught having gay sex
    We’re not so wrong, it’s denial

    But just because we made it a sin
    Does not change our command
    It’s okay if you’re a Fundie
    God ignores our self loathing

  • I guess this is the part where we should read them some of their own bullshit about “If you hate America so much, why don’t you just leave?” But progressives would never do something that shitty to any other country.

    Life in these anti-christian United States is truly unbearable. I have no idea why God hasn’t sent the locusts yet. There’s only twenty churches per square mile around here, and God’s name is printed right on “the root of all evil”.

  • I remember rewriting the Star Spangled Banner when I was in high school. Man, I was soooo clever then.

  • Let’s keep these lyrics in mind. We need to make sure as many candidates as possible are asked if they believe them – not support the right to say them – but believe they’re accurate.

  • Where did they get the idea? These guys?

    Setting aside my atheism and assuming for the sake of debate that God exists – if this list is any indication – he’s not going to be blessing anyone or anything anytime soon.

    There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers. -Proverbs 6:16-19

  • That’s pretty ugly stuff. Are these folks from Fred Phelps’s Westboro homophobic church, “thank God for IEDs”? America, the land of the cursed and the home of the damned!

    They have “love crusades” to they picket the funerals of soldiers who’ve died in Iraq because America “loves fags” but God doesn’t.

    There should be a country for religious fundamentalists of all stripes and the rest of the world for those who want to care about their neighbors. Let the fundamentalists take on and have fun massacring each other over which religion shall rule. I used to hear about South Carolina being the destination for fundamentalists who wanted to make it a fundamentalist state. Wonder what happened to that plan?

  • Oh my goodness, the evil “other” half of this country must be made aware that four presidential candidate HATE you.

    Rove never did really go home did he?

    I’ve never seen presidential candidates trash the other half of American as a campaign strategy for Whitehouse. Strange times we live in. What eve…

  • God bless our first amendment rights. However, this should be shoved into the face of the next person who tries to push a constitutional amendment banning flag-burning.

  • Next up, their clever new version of Whistle While You Work. Christ, are they serious?

    Imagine if an Islamic group in the US, comprised of US citizens, hosted an event with a similarly re-written version of GBA?

    The fRight Wingies would be leaping up and down demanding that every mosque in the country be bugged, if not bombed.

    And the Talevan wonders why front-running candidates avoided their little Jesus Luvs Us Bestest stroke-a-thon.

  • After reading this I can only submit one comment—and it is submitted with a humble dedication to my Republic, to my Constitution that was created as a guiding beacon to that Republic, and to the People for whom that Republic was conceived:

    “Since the dastardly attack by this so-called “values-voters-centric cult of death” upon the United States of America, Her Constitution, her People, and all that She stands for, A STATE OF WAR exists between myself—as both a citizen of this Republic and a defender of Truth—and these heinous, hatemongering scum who dare to falsely call themselves both American Patriots and Christians in the same breath—when, due to the xenophobic evidence of their “anti-Jesus-ness” and “anti-American-ness”, they are neither.

    Period.

  • Isn’t “God Bless America” still under copyright? How the hell did they get away with performing an ass-backwards version of it? I wonder if Irving Berlin’s estate is aware of this.

  • I couldn’t help but notice, while listening and watching the video, the racial mix (or, more accurately, non-mix) of the choir. And I wondered if one of the values they are lamenting America “has turned her back on” and “that made her what she is” could possibly be slavery. Never mind their religion, where do these people get their history?

  • EvilPoet

    Thanks for the link. Yes, it looks like those fundamentalist immigrants to SC may not be as successful as they dreamed they’d be.

  • the ”repubilKKKan christian right” what a bunch of nuts they are. they ruin the meaning of ”being a christian” the real christians,if there is any left out there, should call themselfs ” the forgotten ones”

  • Pingback: Springfield, Ohio Rewrites ‘God Bless America’ at Progressive Cleveland

  • Good grief, the 100,000,000,000,000,000 time that the 1962 Supreme Court decision has been wrongly characterized as “taking prayer out of school.” It said that kids couldn’t lead prayer in public school during class time. This lead to the shocking effect that in the public schools of America, only geometry would be dealt with during geometry class, only biology would be dealt with during biology class, etc.
    Regarding the song in general (I’m surprised they didn’t work in any gay-bashing to the “rewritten” version) I think this is worse that the Moveon.org “Betrayus” ad. This is a new low, even for the religious right. Also, aren’t these the same people who insist this is a “Christian nation?” The song implies that America is a bad place. Religious rightists, pick an argument and stick to it.

  • I like Battle Hymn of hte Republic:

    My eyes have seen the horror of the coming of the reds
    They shred our constitution into sixty million shreds
    They are hiding in the closets, they’re wide-stancing in the heads
    Lets puke until they’re gone.
    😉

  • While I think what they did is execrable, I can’t fault it too terribly much. Hubby has a habit of making up his own lyrics to songs, and has even mapped out a gay version of “Sound of Music”.

    Eg: “How do you solve a thing like gonhorrea (sp)?
    How do you fix a pussy, dripping glans?”

    and

    “You’re a drag queen all out of Maybelline,
    I’m the Avon lady”.

  • God is finally having mercy on America. He is letting these hypocrites be exposed and less influential everyday. God sees what they really are and their self righteous condemnation only shows they missed the whole point of Jesus. That’s why they always have to refer to some other part of their book besides what Jesus said. America is progressing spiritually at last and not religiously that these freaks might control us.

  • I’m a very liberally minded person, which leaves me open to the opinions of others. So before you go denouncing these people take a listen to what they truly stand for. It is their fault neoconservative assclowns hi-jacked their party, but it was done in a secretive sinister manner. But thats another story.

    Lets get some gears turning… Freedom without Peace is chaos, and Peace without Freedom is slavery. It takes Freedom AND Peace working together to create what our founding fathers wanted.

    Imagine this, a local government having more power than the district government, district having more power than the state, state having more power than the federal. In this scenario if you don’t like the way things are run you can simply move 3 miles away. If federal government is controlling everything we are trapped, we are slaves (ever read 1984?). We must take responsibility for our government. It is meant to be for the people, by the people. It is the responsibility of the people.

    The only job of the federal government should be to rally the people to protect our national sovereignty and our way of life. This is a unique country in the fact that we have this power to control the government, but we’ve gone astray. I don’t give a fuck if you are gay, straight, blue, or orange… if you have any morals or integrity at all you can see that this works and is fair to us all. Its time to stop being left wing, stop being right wing, this two party system is tearing us apart. We can work together for the good of mankind. We can work together to lead by example and not by forcing ourselves onto other nations or even onto one another. I’m not saying its going to be easy and feel free to disagree with everything I say while you still have that freedom. But give PEACE and FREEDOM a chance.

  • Steve,

    I love you work, and thank you for highlighting this, but may I please suggest a different frame for this piece. There is absolutely no value in taking an “Aw, shucks”, imagine if…slant on this story.

    This needs to be used against the Democrats in the Senate that were happy to go after Move On for the “Betrayus” ad, while refusing to even publicize this abhorent rendition. The fact that it was conducted at a Republican presidential debate makes it impossible for the Republicans to dismiss. Rather than lamenting the media’s refusal to go after the Republicans about this, isn’t it far more important to hammer our Democrats for going after their own activists while refusing to even bring up the even more repugnant behaviour of the other side? This is less an example of a tilted playing field than it is of a refusal to try to set the terms of the debate.

  • Pingback: Republicans enjoy crapping on “God Bless America” too…. « White Noise Insanity

  • what the fuck is wrong with you gay ass people get a life and like you say say no to drugs i say say god fuck off 666 satan lives forever he will crush your shitty gay god fuck america

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