Free and Just
I loved the Mormon hymn, “God of Our Fathers, Known of Old.” It was a setting of a Rudyard Kipling poem by Mormon composer, Leroy J. Robertson. I think my parents knew him, growing up in Logan, Utah. Unaware of Kipling's imperialist context I only saw the calls to remember God's great blessings. I didn't see the colonialist nationalism: “Don't forget that God is the one who made you rulers of the world! And He can take it away just as quick!”
I still love the music, so I wrote a different kind of patriotism to it, relevant to the world I hope to live in.
Free and Just
Visions and dreams cross seas and tongues,
Echoing long in living airs.
New hymns rise up from other times
To lift us through our lonely cares—
Hopes of our mothers from the dust:
Live in a land that's free and just.
My whiteness is not yours to claim
For you to make another small,
And wealth from others' labor gained
Lends all your riches deathly pall.
I'll stay a stranger if I must
To build a home that's free and just.
Until there are no rich no poor,
No man above another raised,
None bound, all free from want and fear,
To speak, to worship as they choose.
No law is sacred—claims my trust—
Until our home is free and just.
Music by Leroy J. Robertson, © 1948 LDS Church, free for noncommercial home and church use.
Words by Jonathan Gunnell Cannon 2024 CC-BY