Mother's Day, War, and Hymn Singing

Author, speaker, and activist Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) was active in numerous social efforts and was involved in some controversial issues: peace and war, anti-slavery, voting rights for women, health and disease, equal rights for all, child protection, labor laws, prohibition, safe working conditions. It is ironic that her familiar hymn, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory/Battle Hymn of the Republic," written during the Civil War in 1861, is now so often used by politicians, governments, civic groups, sports promoters, and religious leaders in a pro-war, militaristic, patriotic context.

In 1870, after the horrors of the U.S. Civil War and as new hostilities were beginning in the Franco-Prussian War, Julia Ward Howe composed her "Mother's Day Proclamation,"a call to women of all races, religions, and nationalities to come together to oppose the evil of war and to promote the cause of peace by recognizing what they all hold in common. In 2006 United Methodist musician Lisa Quoresimo (Temple UMC, San Francisco) composed a hymn inspired by Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation to be sung to the BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC tune. She subtitled her hymn "Mother's Day Battle Hymn."The opening line reads, "Arise, all mighty women of the earth."

Publication of the hymn on the Discipleship Ministries website led to some controversy. There were charges that the hymn pushes an antiwar agenda and that churches should not take a stand against the USA's war in Iraq. One writer said that this hymn is insensitive to the "raw feelings" of congregations over this issue in 2007 and that the hymn should not be presented.

Let's consider what the text actually says rather than what we might read into it. Here are the points made in the hymn's two stanzas:

• Women should join together to stop the scourge of war.
• True victory will result from the abandonment of war.
• Christ's peace should reign on earth.
• War is destructive to life on earth.
• In war we commit injustices while claiming our actions to be just.
• Death of those on both sides ("any mother's son") in war is not a cause for claiming honor.

I agree that this hymn (speaking generally about war rather than the specific war in Iraq) does, indeed, voice an antiwar agenda and affords congregations who sing it an opportunity to take a stand against war. Individuals may want to claim this hymn as a political instrument against the Iraq war, but they cannot do so solely on the content of its text. The hymn is in the tradition of women leading the great moral and political battles of our history, almost always ahead of men taking them on: antislavery, keeping children from being exploited in business and manufacturing, prohibition, equal rights and vote for women and minorities, racial integration, anti-pornography, and others. Other than the author's subtitle and references to Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation, there is really nothing to tie this text to Mother's Day. It is much larger than that single day. It is in the tradition of hymns of the church that call us to peace rather than to war, that remind us that the message of the gospel is one of justice, honor, life, and love, and not one of war's killing and injustice. If we cannot sing of such things in the church, then we have lost our way and have departed from the teachings of Jesus and Scripture.