When a President sings
A few weeks ago I was having a conversation online with a friend in North Carolina about a feature of the Welsh Revival – the hwyl. In the Preacher’s A to z, I describe it like this:
Some describe it as the word for sail, whilst others describe it as the kind of whoop uttered by followers of cock-fighting when their bird is winning! It encapsulates that moment when the preacher becomes so caught up with his theme, that the Spirit of God seems to carry him along, like the wind filling the sails of a huge sailing ship and sending it skimming across the waves. During the revival, a particular feature of this was that the preacher would move from an ordinary speaking voice into a kind of song, where he would begin to intone the sermon in an almost sing-song way. Each preacher would have his own distinctive tune, and when he moved into it he was said to be preaching ‘with the hwyl’.
When President Barack Obama segued from speech to song and back again in his funeral address in South Carolina last week, was this the phenomenon we were seeing? It is tempting to be very sceptical about this. Obama and his team are past masters at judging mood and tone for every crowd and occasion. This is a man who can stride energetically to and fro in shirtsleeves for a College audience, or speak with measured statesmanlike tones from the White House lawn as the world’s cameras turn. Was this just another outing for the consummate pro and a true communications chameleon?
I would be tempted to say that it were, except that the song in Obama’s address started long before the music began. Consider this segment, for example:
This whole week, I’ve been reflecting on this idea of grace. The grace of the families who lost loved ones. The grace that Reverend Pinckney would preach about in his sermons. The grace described in one of my favorite hymnals — the one we all know: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind but now I see.According to the Christian tradition, grace is not earned. Grace is not merited. It’s not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings. Grace.As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind. He has given us the chance, where we’ve been lost, to find our best selves. We may not have earned it, this grace, with our rancor and complacency, and short-sightedness and fear of each other — but we got it all the same. He gave it to us anyway. He’s once more given us grace. But it is up to us now to make the most of it, to receive it with gratitude, and to prove ourselves worthy of this gift.
The timbre of these words is such that for anyone from certain traditions breaking into song would be almost inevitable. From such heights and depths of speech, where else would you go?
To see a British politician do such a thing would be almost inconceivable. Maybe it is because they do not ‘do’ religion in the same way that American politicians do. Maybe it is because our own scepticism would not allow us to believe that such a thing were genuine. Are we really capable of singing… or hearing such a song in public discourse, I wonder?
