Six hundred years BEFORE the birth of Jesus, Nebuchadnezzar II, King of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, marched on Jerusalem, destroyed Solomon’s temple, and subsequently through a series of deportations, exiled thousands of Judah’s citizens to Mesopotamia. People found their sense of self and sense of place within geography, government, religious practice, and a cultural way of life absolutely upended by forces beyond their control.
Living in exile in Babylon and torn away from the geographic center of their way of life, refugees from Judah struggled with making a new life while forcibly detained in a foreign land.
Amid all this upheaval and chaos, a common lament and question tormented the exiled people. The lament and question are remembered in what today is known as the 137th Psalm. It begins:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?
NIV. Psalm 137:1-4
Since this past November 5th and most certainly in the weeks since January 20th of this year, I think there are at least 75 million people in our country who are feeling as if we are suddenly in exile emotionally, politically, and perhaps spiritually.
As a result of empowered MAGA Republicanism, many of us are asking how to sing the Lord’s song in a land that is suddenly strange to us. Beyond policy disagreements which are always a part of the American way of life, how do we sing in our land where character no longer seems to matter? How do we sing the Lord’s song of freedom and responsible citizenship in the land when willful lying and propaganda have replaced truth-telling and journalism?
We are in a United States where all the federal agencies are reeling under Executive Orders based in a desire for revenge. Indeed, how do we sing in this landscape which has become so foreign?
How do we sing the Lord’s song in a time of ridicule for any other way of religious life than that of the strident oxymoron – but reality nonetheless – ‘Christian Nationalism’ praise songs? How do we sing the Lord’s song amid purges of government employees, amid the constant claims – always without evidence – of fraud, and the daily effort to establish in practice, it not in law itself, the provisions of Project 2025?
I ran across a quote reported in an article by historian, Heather Cox Richardson. She cites John Simpson of the BBC who writes this:
…there are years when the world goes through some fundamental, convulsive change and 2025 is on track to be one of them: a time when the basic assumptions about the way our world works are fed into the shredder.
In these days of bombastic trumpeting of ludicrous things (such as making Canada our 51ststate and memos by an unelected billionaire dismantling the Federal Government) those of us feeling in absolute exile must make the most difficult effort to sing songs of joy.
We will be aided in this effort by doing several things.
- Get involved with people who share our songs. Promote the songs of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Distinguish between true efforts for justice and inclusion and the misleading characterizations of DEI by MAGA Republicans. Support the causes, programs, and institutions lifting up or built around these songs. Support candidates for office who sing these songs…WELL!!
- Remain skeptical regarding MAGA Republican culture wars. They are being waged to keep us angry with one another and divided. Amid our division, the real effort to destabilize global relationships and build alliances with Russia and other right-wing movements outlined in Project 2025 take place beyond our attention.
- Refuse to succumb to intimidation by proponents of MAGA Republicanism. Resist the often-present temptation to ‘give in’ or sing silently in the presence of any prevailing voices of prejudice, nationalistic extremism, Christian Warrior Theology, misogyny, and purveyors of rumor and conspiracy.
- Do not get into arguments with MAGA Republicans. Love them. Pray for them. But LEAVE THEM ALONE in their world of alternative facts. Repeat number one.
- Limit daily news intake to trusted sources such as NPR, the AP wire service, or the BBC. Repeat number one.
The exiled citizens of Judah learned to sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land. It was not easy. But they were strengthened by choir practice!
With the obvious exception of number 5, they practiced their version of the points above. They were convinced that those who had put them in exile by acts of violence – violence perpetrated by those consumed by a desire for power, revenge, conquest, greed, and consumed by racial and religious prejudice, as well as a twisted view of success – would ultimately not succeed. Their tyranny would come to an end.
It did. Babylon crashed and burned 70 years after initiating the destruction of Judah.
So too with MAGA Republicanism. It will ultimately fail and crash under its own ponderous weight of in-fighting, a love for power for power’s sake, the fixation on extraordinary wealth, and the tyranny of willful lies, conspiracy-promoting voices of hate and anger all portrayed as truth. Such government authority will not stand for long. There will always be a return to Zion.
Let us sing the Lord’s song in this present very strange and increasingly dangerous land.