Editor's note: This commentary by Brigham Young University-Hawaii President John Tanner is part of an ongoing Deseret News opinion series exploring ideas and issues at the intersection of Faith and Thought.
We sang one of my favorite patriotic songs in church on Sunday, “America the Beautiful.” It has a charming history. It was written by Katherine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College when she was visiting Colorado College in 1893 to teach summer school. On her journey across the country, Bates witnessed firsthand the vast “amber waves” of wheat in American’s Great Plains. She also admired images of futuristic gleaming white cities in the Chicago World’s Fair.
But above all she was deeply stirred by a vision of America’s beauties atop Pike’s Peak. The thrilling experience of being surrounded by ”purple mountain majesties” with “fruited plains” stretching far into the distance below led Bates to write “America the Beautiful,” a poem originally titled “Pike’s Peak.”
Katherine Lee Bates’ words stir us with a vision of a land graced by abundant natural beauty. But more than the physical beauties celebrated in the poem, Bates speaks to beautiful American ideals, such as freedom and brotherhood and self-sacrifice. She evokes the dreams of pilgrims and patriots and all those “who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life!” I love Bates’ celebration of American ideals and values.
But what most moved me in singing the song on Sunday was its admonitory subtext. Bates recognizes that America, however blessed with natural beauties, lofty ideals and patriot dreams, is a work in progress — a flawed and imperfect republic, especially measured against the lofty patriot dream of America as a city on a hill, a light to the world. Bates repeatedly acknowledges that America needs God’s grace to mend its flaws and refine its gold; that its successes need to be rooted in nobleness; that its gains (or prosperity) must be not merely material but divine; and that our much-vaunted liberty must be grounded in self-control and law.
If America needed these reminders in the late 19th century, how much more do we need them today! I suppose every generation needs to be reminded to embrace what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” This is an ongoing national and personal struggle. Every generation rightly can invoke God to mend its every flaw because none is flawless. This Fourth of July I am especially conscious of our national flaws and especially grateful for our glorious, beautiful ideals. And so I sing with deep feeling this anthem to our beautiful, beloved country and to the patriot dreams that are still ours to fulfill.