“And now, oh God of our fathers, we will bless Thy name forever, for we are the people of thine inheritance! With our fathers, eight score and seventeen years ago, didst Thou make a Covenant, and Thou hast confirmed and amended it with their seed throughout all Enlightened Time! Thou hast made us unto Thee an eternal people, and hast cast our lot in the portion of light, that we may evince Thy truth, and from old hast Thou charged our Angel of Light, Uncle Sam, to help us. In his hand are all works of righteousness, and all spirits of truth are under his sway. But for corruption Thou hast made the Phantom, an angel of hostility. All his dominion is in darkness, and his purpose is to bring about wickedness and guilt. All the spirits that are associated with him are but angels of destruction. But we — we are in the portion of Thy truth!”
It’s knee-bending, God-hollering, crying-in-the-chapel time in Times Square for the sons and daughters of Sam Slick the Yankee Peddler. The restless razzle-dazzle of the Pentagon Patriots and the Radio City Rockettes has been displaced on the Death House stage by the Singing Saints of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, whose eyes have seen the glory, and a spirit of communion, like half time at a big football game, has settled on the gathered masses. There’s been a moment of silent prayer (as silent as one can hope for amid so much bubbling excitement) in memory of the late U.S. Army Master Sergeant John C. Woods, the world-famous Nuremberg hangman; the Reverend Bob Jones, Sr., has unleashed his new sermon, “Shoving Jesus Christ Around,” and the Notre Dame Law Dean Clarence Manion of the Holy Six has blistered the so-called intellectuals of the nation for their heretical “allergy to absolutes,” their reluctance to accept the basic facts of the existence of God and the divine origin of American rights and duties:
“…For the sake of pure political hypothesis, it makes little difference whether man is a creature of God or the hind end of a happenstance. But for the sake of American freedom in its life and death struggle with Communism, it makes all the difference in the world!”
His fellow Holy Sixers — Rabbi Bill Rosenblum, Editor Dan Poling, Father Joe Moody, Presidential Aide Sam Rosenman, and Businessman Electric Charlie Wilson — join him onstage and together they reaffirm their righteous fury against the reckless Rosenberg Committee clemency seekers, who “have knowingly or unwittingly given assistance to Communist propaganda…”
…Crafty men are they;
they think base thoughts,
seek Thee with heart divided,
stand not firm in Thy truth!
With stammering tongue
and with barbarous lips
they speak unto Thy people,
seeking guilefully
to turn their deeds to delusion!
I SAY THE REAL AND PERMANENT GRANDEUR OF THESE STATES MUST BE THEIR RELIGION! says the Wrigley Chewing Gum sign, and around the Times Tower on the electric bulletin runs Reverend Phillips Brooks’s evangeclass="underline" “… In thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight!”
If the hymns — even when rendered majestically by the Singing Saints and recognizably old American favorites like “It Is No Secret,” “The Christian Warfare,” and “No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus”—tend to sound like party songs tonight, if Christ’s blood tastes a little like Old Grandad and crotches are more fingered than crosses, that doesn’t signify there’s been a weakening of the faith, a drift into the dominion of darkness — on the contrary, it’s as though it’s all coming together here tonight in a magical fusion, the world of the sacred locking onto the world of the profane like the two images at a 3-D movie, and all these provocative confluences are not only possible, but necessary. One visits the Hiroshima freak show and the belly of the Whale as one would walk the Fourteen Stations of the Cross, treasures stolen panties like relics of the True Cross, exchanges dirty jokes like recitations of the Seder Haggadah, knowing that every act is holy because, only so long as God be praised, it cannot be otherwise, and that, like the President says, “THE ALMIGHTY WATCHES OVER PEOPLE OF ALL NATIONS.” And takes His pick.
Kate Smith comes out and sings “God Bless America,” and then out on stage comes Sister Emma Bennett Fowler, the pride of Perryton, Texas. She squares her frail shoulders, rears back, and lets fly: “God bless America has come ringin’ down the corridors of time ever since the Mayflower landed on our shores! It was in this faith that our forefathers begun to build, feelin’ their way and searchin’ for religious truth! Isaac Watts invented the steam injin, revolutionizin’ travel and much industry!” She feels her way over to the electric chair. “Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin that done the work of fifty men! And Seth Thomas and his podner Eli Terry seen that by mass production they could cut the costs on clocks, enablin’ more people to buy and makin’ more money for theirselves!”
“They seen the light!”
“The Spirit was up-on ’em!”
“Tell ’em about it, Emma!”
“And so it has been through all the ages! Americans have invented thousands of machines, savin’ men and labor, enrichin’ theirselves and the Nation! And so’s it might be known to be of God,” cries Emma, “‘In God We Trust’ was lettered on our coin, and printed on our dollar bills a ‘Pyramid under the all-seein’ Eye a God.’”
“Oh yes, he’s laid us down in the green pastures, Emma!”
“The Eye of God!”
“Shine on!”
“But!” she shouts, and her demeanor suddenly changes. A hush falls. Here comes the good part. “After the First World War, Communists begun infestin’ our guvvamint, schools, and churches! They got a weird creed which they spread by bein’ fanatically inspired by Satan, whose disciples they are! It is with a missionary zeal they spread this pizen all over the world—!”
The people groan and gnash their teeth; women scream, children cry. Everybody is having a terrific time.
“We have refused to live under God’s control, and now live under guvvamint control!” cries Emma over the uproar. The sound-system engineers crank the decibels up to give Emma the power she needs to carry above the racket. “The food for which we refused to give thanks has rose to exorbitant prices! The tithes we refused God we must now pay in taxes! Besides traitors in our own guvvamint everywhere, our allies is trickin’ us and sellin’ goods and weapons to the inimy, and are beginnin’ to ridicule us in the eyes a the whole world!”
“It’s a cryin’ shame!”
“Don’t let ’em get away with it, God!”
“Throw the rascals out!”
“We cannot ignore the fact that it is our boys who have suffered all the atrocities only Satan can conceive,” Emma shrieks, “and that there are millions a Reds swarmin’ all over the world!”
“Get us outa this, God! Give ’em hell, fer Chrissake!”
“Our world is now divided into two groups,” cries Emma: “Communism with hammer and sickle, and America and Christians with cross of Christ! But we have placed ourselves where we cannot grow spiritually! God stands outside the door knockin’ with His nail-pierced hand!”
“Oh Lord, I hear him!”
“I hear him knockin’!”
Indeed, someone is knocking. It is Uncle Sam, behind the set, rapping at Emma to get on with it.
She spreads her arms out to the people. “May God’s richest blessings be upon us and our Nation! Amen!”
“Amen!” the people respond, checking their watches. “Amen!”