“I'm gonna keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin', marchin' down to freedom land.”
Note: Please re-read the abstract as an introductory thesis paragraph for this proposal.
Civil religion can be characterized as a multivalent site that refers to a shared political religion (Bellah 1970, 1987, 1992), constituted by sacred symbols (e.g., the Statue of Liberty, U.S. flag), sites (memorials and monuments on the National Mall in Washington, DC, on First Nations sacred lands, at Confederate sites), texts (the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the pledge of allegiance), and practices (national holidays such as Juneteenth, July 4, Thanksgiving/National Day of Mourning). These symbols, sites, texts, and practices imbue and invest U.S. political life with a religious function to continually mobilize and rearticulate a national identity and associated mutual moral rights and responsibilities among a multifaith, multicultural, multiracial society. Much US civil religion is imprinted with nationalist legacies that incite manifest destiny, genocide, colonialism, racism, sexism, and other -isms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Thus, civil religion is continually contested and remade by the struggles of social justice movements for inclusion and belonging in America.
US political rituals like presidential inaugurations not only reframe and reinforce US identity but also signal the incoming administration’s priorities and policies, articulated in the inaugural address and initial executive orders. Contrasting with the Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday, President Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025 featured various musical forms of US civil religion to accentuate American exceptionalism and White Christian Nationalism, or – as the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee co-chairs stated in a press release – to offer a “celebration of music, unity, and patriotism, ushering in America’s new Golden Age.” Alongside the US national anthem, “America the Beautiful,” and “God Bless The USA” performed in operatic and acapella country styles, the inauguration ceremony concluded with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” performed by the US Naval Academy Glee Club. Although linked with multiple social justice movements in US history ranging from abolition to women’s suffrage to Civil Rights, this hymn was situated in an America First neoliberal prosperity gospel of freedom and evoked themes of divine retributive and redemptive violence and war to transfigure a free world. Together with Trump’s address and multifaith leaders’ prayers that analogized Trump to biblical kings and prophets, this hymn represented an initial flex of Trump’s divinely-justified authoritarian political muscle “to reclaim our republic” in manifest destiny-oriented ways that would be more fully articulated in consequential Executive Orders. Allegedly mandated by election results and by divine salvation from assassination attempts, this hymn divinely ordained Trump’s state-sponsored violence, weaponized against women and multiple vulnerable groups already targeted during Trump’s campaign, namely immigrants and LGBTQ+ communities but also against the healthcare, education, environmental justice, and other social service initiatives and government institutions on which these groups depend.
Contending with and transforming US civil religion, political protests claim alternative spaces for re/making US political identity, community, and practices to foster inclusion, belonging, and liberative freedom. Sponsored by the Women’s March, The People’s March held on January 18, 2025 fostered a counterpublic, counterhegemonic, even counterinaugural space for political praxis to enflesh and enact a communal and collective freedom for all in the US body politic (Copeland 2023). In solidarity with nationwide marches, the march’s primary rally took place at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, a significant civil religious site which often functions as an epicenter of discursive, ritual, and prophetic practices in US freedom movements (Carbine 2023). Confronting anti-Black racism and anti-Indigenous attitudes in the movement since 2017 (Hunt 2017, Moni 2019, Abdullah 2020), The People’s March in 2025 explicitly expressed and embodied women’s intersectional political labor for liberation, highlighting leaders and activists from multiple partner organizations, especially but not only The Frontline, The Rising Majority, Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Dream Defenders, Gender Liberation Movement, Coalition of Labor Union Women, and many more. All rally speakers in this important coalition uplifted multiple interlocking issues – Indigenous sovereignty; the rights of nature; Palestinian rights; Black abolition; DC political rights and representation; public health, safety, and transportation; LGBTQIA+ rights; reproductive and body rights; constitutional equality; immigrant rights and liberation; Black rights and liberation; disability rights; anti-racism, capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism; union and worker rights – and simultaneously reimagined an anti-fascist feminist political future. As multiple speakers testified, “solidarity is critical for our collective futures” and “our greatest strength is community.” Multifaith women leaders from Indigenous, Jewish, and Christian communities centralized and amplified intersectional inclusion by acknowledging kinship and stewardship in a common creation with human and more-than-human relatives; by interlinking human, reproductive, and LGBTQIA+ rights with antiwar struggles; and by “divest[ing] from death” and oppressive ideologies and fostering a divinely-dignified life through healthcare, education, etc.
CLUW president Elise A. Bryant portrayed unions as “the backbone of democracy.” “Today we come together black, white, brown, immigrant, native born, LGBTQIA…Diversity is what makes us strong. It’s what makes America, America.” Bryant disrupted the weaponization of civil religious symbols like “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” to reimagine a more just body politic and future liberative world by singing a union song set to the same hymnody. Written in the early 20th century as a union anthem and updated in the 1970s to reflect women’s concerns, Bryant led the marchers in this verse.
Siblings, will you stand with me, because united we stand, divided we fall.
[Verse] They divide us by our color; they divide us by our tongue
They divide us men and women; they divide us old and young
But they’ll tremble at our voices, when they hear these verses sung
For the union makes us strong!
[Chorus] Solidarity Forever
Solidarity Forever
Solidarity Forever
For the union makes us strong.
Expanding on relevant research regarding music and civil religion in America (Meizel 2006), this paper in sum evaluates how music in civil religio-political rituals and protests reshapes American identity, mobilizes elite and everyday power, and enacts dominative and transformative change in our time.
Anti-freedom and freedom movements are intrinsically intertwined, exemplified in current US political imaginaries and praxis that impede or empower freedom. In myriad ways, US civil religion perennially re/constructs an exclusionary or an inclusive worldview of “we, the people” in the US body politic. Music participates in US religio-political discourse and praxis about identity and envisions alternative possible futures. Music constitutes and signifies a sharp contrast between repressive and liberative notions of freedom, symbolized in current civil religiously-based authoritarian regimes and solidarity movements. Historically rooted in abolitionist, suffragist, and multiple subsequent social justice movements, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” played an unexpected prominent religio-political role in the 2025 US presidential inaugural event and counterinaugural protests. This paper analyzes and juxtaposes how this hymn was re-cited and re-construed in both President Trump’s inauguration and in the Women’s March-sponsored People’s March to advance either state-sponsored violence or intersectional visions of liberation, respectively.