So the BBC is going to allow us to sing patriotic songs at the last night of the 2020 coronavirus-ridden Proms tomorrow night1. There is nothing more fashionable than U-turns at the moment. We’ve been having rather a lot of them recently, especially in relation to anything to do with Covid 19.
The BBC was blaming Covid restrictions for dropping traditional songs from the programme for the last night of the Proms, but in the face of sustained public outcry last week they issued a statement saying, “We have been looking hard at what else might be possible and we have a solution.”
Their solution is to bring together ‘a select group of BBC singers’ into the empty Albert Hall where the audience is banned. The singers and members of the orchestra will all be socially distanced, but we are told that “They will sing the usual last night favourites such as ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and ‘Jerusalem’ – it’s a jubilant socially distanced musical party designed to bring us all together” – and we are all invited to sing along at home!
It looks as though the BBC’s new director-general, Tim Davie, is going to introduce a lot of changes in BBC policy, reducing staff in many departments, including the News Services, but he has declared his intention of making the BBC more ‘impartial’ and preventing staff from declaring either left or right wing bias, or other personal opinions. What this will actually mean has not been defined but as his first decision was to restore patriotic songs to the Proms, this may indicate a less radical approach, which may be good news for those who fear that our Judaeo-Christian heritage has already been lost. Maybe there are semblances of spiritual truth from the past that could rise from the ashes and play a formative role in the post pandemic future of the nation.
God Longs for our Redemption
This may sound impossible to some people, but with God all things are possible. Even Jeremiah, who knew that God had already pronounced judgement upon the city of Jerusalem, also knew that God could and would change all that if there were real signs of repentance and turning among the people.
We must never give up hoping and praying for repentance in the nation.
Jeremiah’s visit to the potter’s shop convinced him that, even though he had been told to stop praying for the welfare of the nation (Jer 14:11), God could still reverse the verdict he had pronounced upon the nation. It was God who had told Jeremiah to go and watch the potter at work (Jer 18:1-4). What Jeremiah saw was of profound significance. The potter was trying to make a particular pot that one of his customers may have ordered. But the piece of clay on his wheel simply would not run to produce the required shape. Eventually the potter recognised the impossibility and crushed it in his hands. But instead of throwing the clay away, the potter kneaded it back into a ball, patiently putting it back onto the wheel and fashioning it into another pot. It was not the one originally planned, but it would no doubt be a useful pot that would serve a busy housewife.
From this Jeremiah learned a profound spiritual truth, that God never discards even the most wicked sinner – he longs for our redemption. As God said to Ezekiel, “If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he has committed and keeps all my decrees and does what is just and right, he will surely live” (Eze 18:21). God further said, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live” (Eze 33:11).
Back in the potter’s workshop Jeremiah heard God’s eternal promise: “If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned” (Jer 18:7). This is why we must never give up hoping and praying for repentance in the nation – actively declaring the word of God that is both judgement upon sin and a promise of forgiveness for the repentant sinner or nation.
Praying for our Nation
A few years ago, I reported that I had been told to stop praying for the welfare of the nation – a lot of people misunderstood what I was saying. I was certainly not being told to stop praying for the nation – but not to pray for shalom or blessing – because God was intending bringing a time of great hardship upon the nation. He said, “I will shake all nations” (Hag 2:7). And if I prayed for the welfare of the nation, I could be putting myself against God’s purpose of bringing judgement upon the nation in order to bring about repentance.
Now let’s return to the last night of the Proms – is it okay to sing patriotic songs? Of course it is! If we love our country, we should sing about it and express the hope that the day will come when there is repentance and turning; and God can pour out his loving forgiveness and blessings upon the people.
Slave Raids by Barbary Pirates
In the case of ‘Rule Britannia’ it has an interesting history. For more than 100 years the British people, especially those living in coastal areas had been living with slavery.2 Turkish and Arab pirates living along the North African coast of the Mediterranean were terrorising coastal towns and villages particularly in Cornwall and in Essex – even sailing as far north as Scotland. Their practice was to capture fishing boats to take their crews into slavery, often just leaving the boats to drift in the sea. Between 1609 and 1616, England lost 466 merchant ships to Barbary pirates.
‘Rule Britannia’ … was first sung in 1740 as a hymn of thanksgiving to God.
By 1625 the situation was so bad that fishermen were afraid to go out to sea and they petitioned the government calling for help. That same year the Cornish ports of Penzance, Looe, Mousehole and several others were attacked, and more than 3,000 people captured and taken to the slave markets of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Women were sold into brothels and men became galley slaves of ships from the Barbary Coast.
It was Oliver Cromwell who took decisive action to increase the strength of the Royal Navy and deal with the pirates. But it was still many years before the Navy finally cleared the seas around Britain of pirate vessels. It was not until the British secured Gibraltar under the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 that British naval power triumphed over the whole of the Mediterranean and the North Sea.
It was this sea power for which people were thanking God that inspired James Thomson3, the Scottish romantic poet, to write the words of ‘Rule Britannia’. It was first sung in 1740 as a hymn of thanksgiving to God, that the people living in the coastal villages of Scotland and England were no longer subject to the curse of slavery – Britons never again would be slaves.
References
1Last Night Of The Proms: Rule, Britannia! and Land Of Hope And Glory will now be sung by 'select group of vocalists', BBC says, Sky News, 2 September 2020
2R Davis, "British slaves on the Barbary Coast", BBC, 1 July 2003; More information can be found here.
3From The Poetry Foundation: “James Thomson, 1700–1748
When Frederick, Prince of Wales’s first child, Princess Augusta, had been born on August 1, 1737, Thomson had written an ode to the happy father ... For the Princess’s third birthday, Frederick planned a gala masque at his estate Cliefden, for which the opposition’s favorite playwrights, Thomson and Mallet, were to produce a script, with music by Thomas Arne. Alfred (1740) ended with what has become the most often-heard piece of 18th-century British music or poetry, “Rule Britannia,” written by Thomson, set to music by Arne, and sung by Thomas Lowe, who, said Charles Burney, had the finest tenor voice he had ever heard in his life.”