Six months ago, for the first time in 50 years, I sang the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Aloud. In church. Off key. With tears and a certain bravado.

Using a Union soldiers’ marching ditty, “John Brown’s body Lies a-mouldering in the grave,” as her musical inspiration, abolitionist Julia Ward Howe rewrote the lyrics on the night of Nov. 18, 1861, seven months after the start of the American Civil War. Howe’s lyrics were first published on the front page of the February 1862 edition of The Atlantic Monthly. The Atlantic paid her $4.

Over the decades, the “Battle Hymn” became a staple in even Southern church hymnbooks. Since 1915 the University of Georgia Bulldogs have used the music for their rally song, changing the chorus lyrics to “Glory, glory to old Georgia.” Its quick-stepping tune is irresistible. Your feet tap of their own accord; your voice begs to shout out the “Glory, glory, hallelujah” chorus. You just know the “truth is marching on.”

There have been changes over the years. Many hymnals now title it “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord.” The lyrics, too, have had updates. Today we Presbyterians sing “Let us live to make all free,” instead of “Let us die to make men free,” though the message remains the same: Good people fight for freedom and justice for all.

For five decades I’ve had a hard time singing a rally song for war in church. And so I didn’t. I was prepared, when I saw it listed in the bulletin, to sit this one out again. Then I reread the words in the context of what’s happening as our state and federal governments (and perhaps even our elected Key West officials) recast American freedom and justice into something that no longer resembles the United States for which millions of Americans have died.

I would add “Onward, Christian Soldiers” to the list of war songs that I felt were out-of-step with me. I may have second thoughts on it, as well. Written in 1865, “Onward, Christian Soldiers” became an anthem for Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 presidential campaign and has long been associated with the American civil rights movement. These days it doesn’t appear in many mainstream Christian hymnals, including my own, Presbyterian Church USA, being considered too militaristic.

And, yet, there’s something about this verse that resonates: “Like a mighty army moves the church of God; Brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod; We are not divided; all one body we, One in hope and doctrine, one in charity.”

Dear Connor | Live to make all free

Since at least the 1960s, mainstream religious organizations largely took the easy way out. Let the political types protest social injustice; let them do battle for strangers among us, for the meek, the hungry, the sick, the frightened and the disenfranchised. In church, they said, we’ll not be political and we certainly won’t “take sides.”

Our passive silence and our preference for going along to get along opened the door for hard-right politicians and Christian Nationalists to position mainstream Christians as weak, ineffectual and, gasp, woke liberals. We forgot that our roots in Christ’s one commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” required more than lip service for an hour on Sunday morning. We became irrelevant.

Something changed in the last year. Like a sleepwalker awakening, mainstream denominations have been relearning that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will not happen until all are free and that doing the right thing demands proactive, fearless work in the face of overwhelming political opposition.

It started Jan. 21, 2025, when Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde bit her lip and took a deep breath near the end of her sermon at the Washington National Cathedral. She looked directly at newly inaugurated President Donald Trump and said, “Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now.

“Our God,” she continued, “teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and to walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people in this nation and the world. Amen.”

Across the United States, the national organizations representing Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics and Episcopalians, among others, have issued calls to action that support and further social justice, equality and freedom, with specific emphasis on the immigrants living in fear as Immigration and Customs Enforcement rounds up thousands of people and sends them to concentration camps without due process.

In Key West, some of our churches have stepped forward, publicly decrying the inhumane ICE overreach. They’ve become an integral support structure for immigrants and a vital public voice for the Key West Immigrant Support Network. Pastor Madeline Baum of Key West United Methodist Church has boldly taken the lead.

The work has just begun. We’re feeling our way along this unfamiliar activist path. We’re learning that “thoughts and prayers” without action are useless. It will be an uncomfortable, if not dangerous, path. We will falter and we will get back up to fight on.

For the first time in decades, I could sing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” knowing that Christians, the real ones, the ones who may have been sleepwalking through their professed faith, are reclaiming their roles as defenders of Christ’s teachings: “As you do to the least of these, you have done to me.”

Let us live to make all free. And, if we must, we will die to make them free.