Amazing Grace – Engaging Peace

Columbus Day. Everybody loves a day off, but honestly, does the United States really want to continue celebrating the name of a man who was a slave owner, a slave trader, a greedy, cruel, vicious dishonest brute? A lot of people have been asking that question.

The demythologizing of Columbus has begun; an engaging and chilling example can be found in the comic strip story by Matthew Inman. [His exposé is based on information from A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, and Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James W. Loewen, both of which use primary sources such as eyewitness accounts, journal entries, and letters from Christopher Columbus himself. It’s worth reading.]

In recognition of the genocide started by Columbus’s invasion of the not so new “New World,” some communities have renamed Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day or Native American Day to recognize and honor the native people whose lives, communities, and cultures have continued to suffer . South Dakota has renamed the day as Native American Day and this year Vermont (I love Vermont!) is celebrating Indigenous People Day.

Matthew Inman recommends renaming Columbus Day as Bartolomé Day after Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566), a settler in the New World who initially participated in atrocities committed against Indigenous Peoples by Spanish colonists but ultimately came to reject all forms of slavery. Although his name will never catch on for a U.S. holiday, he appears to be a man very much in the image of John Newton (1725–1807), who wrote Amazing Grace .

Our most recently named federal holiday is Martin Luther King Day, honoring a man who is an icon of the nonviolent pursuit of civil rights and social justice. Let us not forget that Columbus is also an icon; he represents what is most repellent, most harmful, and perhaps most dangerous in many segments of the United States today. Greed was his predominant motive. He lusted for wealth in the form of gold but enslaving and selling men for labor and women for sex would do. He relentlessly pursued power. He did not hesitate to use military violence to accomplish his goals. Sound familiar? Are these the people whom we want to represent the United States?

Recognizing that Columbus is the anti-hero surviving in our culture will not be pleasant, but it is a task that is long overdue. Maybe today should become U.S. Redemption Day.

In these troubled times, I appreciate more than ever the spiritual Amazing Grace, especially the first stanza:

Amazing grace how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now I’m found.

Was blind but now I see.

I have always found the melody grippingly moving, and always want to sing along, but it was probably the film version of Amazing Grace, based on the true story of the movement against the slave trade in 18^th century Great Britain, that imbued the song with the power it has for me. That world-shattering anti-slavery movement was led by William Wilberforce, who was inspired by English poet, clergyman, and former slave-trader John Newton (1725–1807), who wrote the song.

To me, Amazing Grace is not simply a rapturous expression of Christian faith, although Christianity was the particular vehicle embraced by John Newton to rescue him from the evils in which he had become ensnared. Rather, I see it as a song of redemption and hope that reaches out across estranging and often evilly-manipulated divisions of religion, race, gender, nationality. Also, I resonate to the idea of grace as a force and gift available to all, not restricted to people claiming a particular set of beliefs in a particular religion.

My recent fantasy was that somehow Amazing Grace could become a tenacious torrent of sound that would envelop all the pseudo-Christians, deceived disciples, and lost souls of other religions who profess love and peace but promote hatred and perpetrate violence. And while it was at it, I hoped the torrent would sweep up all the angry, frightened, defensive, and sometimes venemous people who vilify fighters against injustice.

Among the people I would like to see swept up are those who scorn Colin Kaepernick for standing up against racism by sitting down during the playing of a national anthem written by a slave owner, originally including a stanza degrading runaway slaves, and a sadly apt metaphor for a nation awash in centuries of murderous racism.

My grand fantasy for the future is that the world, before it is too late, will replace national anthems and battle hymns of republics with Amazing Grace and other songs that honor love and redemption rather than violence and vicious victories.