A few
years at seminary teaches one the art and science of exegesis; that is, the
drawing out of meaning from historic texts, often with lessons for modern
minds.
The process, usually applied to ancient languages such as Hebrew, Greek
and Latin (and more recently, Ugaritic and Aramaic) is not much different
from what many of us learned to exercise in elementary school when we confronted
difficult sentences.
It's called parsing. Some schools probably called it diagraming. The idea
is to dissect a sentence into its principal parts and analyze each part of
speech to understand its function in the sentence. Then the sentence is put
back together again with the benefit of insights gained from the analysis
and the slow reading. Voila! You have exegesis.
I've often thought America could use some exegesis of its key documents
-- and of its casual ones.
The Supreme Court exegetes the Constitution. Who exegetes ``The Star-Spangled
Banner''?
I was reminded of this need by the recent flap in the National Basketball
Association over a
player's balking at standing for the national anthem.
Perhaps if someone had exegeted ``The Star-Spangled Banner'' for Mahmoud
Abdul-Rauf, he wouldn't have such difficulty with it.
Perhaps if someone had exegeted the anthem for us, we wouldn't have such
difficulty with his religiously motivated freedom of expression.
By the way, a check of the files would show that Abdul-Rauf is hardly the
first person-- celebrity or otherwise-- to balk at our national anthem.
Consider these: In the summer of 1990, Irish pop singer Sinead O'Connor
refused to play at New Jersey's Garden State Arts Center if the national anthem
was played before her concert.
The anthem was not played, the Arts Center banned O'Connor from future
concerts, and she apologized profusely that she ``didn't mean to be direspectful.''
Comic Roseanne Barr
groaned through the anthem at a Cincinnati-San Diego baseball game in 1990
and grabbed her crotch and spit on the ground at the conclusion of her screech.
Then President George Bush called her performance ``disgraceful.''
Barr later explained she was trying to mimic players with her spitting
and crotch scratching and said, ``I may have done it a little too close to
the `Star-Spangled Banner.'''
In 1963, a federal judge in Phoenix decided that a school board rule requiring
students to stand during the national anthem was unconstitutional.
Three students-- arguing that standing would violate their Jehovah's Witnesses
beliefs-- had been expelled for refusing to stand during the anthem.
The judge made clear that he saw no merit in the argument based on religion,
but he defended the students' actions as a fundamental freedom of expression
guaranteed by the Constitution.
Add to these the hundreds who have challenged the anthem as unsingable.
Had the NBA required players and coaches to sing the national anthem-- as
some schools have attempted-- 99 percent of the players would be backing
Abdul-Rauf's protest.
I think part of our problem dissolves when one exegetes the anthem. We
simply have to give it a slow reading.
For your edification, I offer the first stanza in its entirety:
``O say, can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof, through the night, that our flag was still there.
O say, does that Star Spangled Banner, yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?''
Perhaps the first
and most important item to note in parsing this patriotic song is that the
first stanza is a question; indeed, two questions, one compound and the other
after an implication of proof.
First question: Can you see what we hailed at twilight?
First question amplified: Can you see what streamed on the ramparts during
the battle?
Implication of proof: The flashing lights of battle in the night showed
it was still there.
Second question: Does that banner still wave over a free and brave land?
So the anthem actually poses a challenge. Those who challenge the anthem
may be surprised to hear that it's challenging them.
History has to be called in on this exegesis.
Key was watching a battle of the War of 1812. The British, whom the Americans
saw as defenders of tyranny and oppression, were attacking Fort McHenry in
Maryland.
If anything, the anthem is a challenge to tryanny and oppression, not a
symbol of the same.
Granted, there are misguided bigots who wrap themselves in the American
flag to defend racism, tyranny and elitism, but simple exegesis shows they
are fools. The anthem mocks them.
There are four stanza's to Francis Scott Key's 1814 song, but let's face
it, only a handful of grade-school children can recite any but the first verse.
In the barely remembered fourth stanza, Key put the victory of free people
after the battle under heaven's rescue:
``Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation,'' he wrote.
Clearly, Key never
intended nationalism to precede Providence, though Abdul-Rauf can't be faulted
if he's seen that precedence twisted in some expressions of Americanism.
But Americans don't worship the flag or a song; we don't worship the country;
we surely don't worship any American leaders.
The flag and the song are symbols of some key ideas: freedom, liberty,
justice, and Key simply challenged us to see them through the din of battle
and the dimness of night.
All four stanzas of the anthem end with the same line: ``the land of the
free and the home of the brave,'' and the writer challenges us to see the
ideas in the streaming, spangled standard.
In his way, Abdul-Rauf is a brave man expressing his freedom, but the anthem
is his ally in this challenge not his enemy.
Alas, it's difficult to hold anyone accountable. Key wrote his song in
1814; Congress made it the national anthem in 1931. What song did Americans
stand for during the 117 intervening years?
Allan R. Andrews can be reached at arandrews@toadmail.com
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