Keeping God in the American Culture as Depicted in the Audio Adrenaline Song, Can't Take God Away
Music has always been a big part of our culture. People sing and listen to songs for entertainment and for encouragement. Explore folk songs or Negro spirituals for instance. Many slaves sang spirituals for encouragement and hope to carry them through the rough times they experienced. Even today, most people enjoy listening to music because they can relate to the things about which the artists sing. Often artists sing about things that either upset or please them. These days, much of American music exposes problems in our society. In a song entitled, Can’t Take God Away, the Christian rock group Audio Adrenaline sings about how God is being taken out of various aspects of the American culture more and more, but nothing can take Him out of the singer’s life. This song is an accurate assessment of the nation today.
The song deals first with education when it explains, "You can take God out of my school/You can make me listen to you/You can take God out of the pledge" in lines 1-3. It used to be that there was daily prayer in our nation’s schools. At one time, students learned about God there. In recent years, though, God has been taken out of school as much as possible. Some people have even gone as far as taking the "under God" clause out of the Pledge of Allegiance. I agree with this portion of the song. Every day, I attend a school where I’m taught that my beliefs are just as good as yours - if you think something’s right, you are justified in doing it, even if I believe it’s wrong. I am forced to listen to the concepts of evolution that say we came from essentially nothing. Rather than learning about God, we learn about how...
... middle of paper ...
...o tell you something you need to understand
CHORUS
You can't take God away from me
You can take my life, my land, my liberty
Lock me up, I'll still be free
'Cause you can't take God from me
You can take God out of the law
You can make me listen to ya'll
You can take God out of the start
But you can't take God out of my heart
Listen to me closely, lend me your ear
The substance of my statement lets you know I'm sincere
Government officials, shapers of the land
I've got to tell you something you need to understand
REPEAT CHORUS
BRIDGE
You can't take God, you can't take God away
You can't take God, you can't take God away
You can't take God, you can't take God away
You can't take God, you can't take God away
REPEAT CHORUS
Copyright © 1993 Gotee Music/BMI/Up In The Mix Music (A Division of The ForeFront Communications Group, Inc.)/BMI
The daughter of an atheist, Michael A. Newdow, attended public school in the Elk Grove Unified School District in California, where teachers started school days by leading students in a voluntary narration of the Pledge of Allegiance. The pledge included the phrase “under God”, which was added to it in 1994 through a Congressional act. The atheist sued the school district in federal district court in the state on the basis that making students listen to the phrase even if they were not willing to participate was an infringement on the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He had argued that his right to influence the religious views of his daugh...
Secular rock music has influenced contemporary Christian music by in essence decentralizing God from being the main motive of the music. The journal entry Watering Down Christianity? states that “With the mainstream success of [contemporary] Christian bands such as Jars of Clay, Sixpence None The Richer, and P.O.D., people are questioning Christian bands that may de-Christianize their lyrics to sell albums to a larger crossover audience” (Livengood and Book 121). Many contemporary Christian bands stray away from the message they should be focused on in order to reach out to a more diverse crowd. It is understandable for contemporary Christian artists to be so heavily influenced by secular rock music if their intention truly is to reach out to people who are not considered Christian and show them a better life. However, the decentralization away from God might actually be harming the image of God by, like the journal entry says, watering down Christianity.
In almost every American school, students are required to say the Pledge of Allegiance. By doing this, they are forced to utter the two words that confess the authority that an ultimate being has over the nation they live in. Children are being taught every day that America is a country centered on God and a Christian nation. By making them say the pledge, the questio...
He recognizes that the controversial phrase only contains two words but explains that the combination of the preposition “under” implies that God holds some sort of power and authority over a whole nation. If one nation is under God, as the Pledge of Allegiance states, then that must imply that there is only one God “and if there is only one God, then the God of the pledge is the one true God” (Rourke, p.41). This conclusive reasoning entails that all other supposed gods around the world are false gods. Thus it is clear to see that the government is in definite violation of the first amendment by relaying preference for a certain God and thus a certain
Not known to many, the genre of rock music originated from gospel music sung on the slave plantations in early Mississippi. A common musical device used in rock music is known as “call and response”. This is where the singer sings the line and everyone else involved in the chorus repeats that line. This came from slaves working in the fields and singing songs to get through the day. Theses hymns are fondly referred to as “negro spirituals”. In Anne Moody’s novel, Coming of Age in Mississippi we revisit African Americans in Mississippi struggling not through slavery, but through the oppression of the Civil Rights Era. At the same plantation but in a different time, Jim crow has made life almost impossible for blacks to get by in the South. In a country were all men were created equal, laws were put in place to ensure that blacks could never achieve equality. Through Anne Moody’s work and through the work of musical artists Johnny Cash, and Nas, we will discover just how far we may or may not have come.
Music, for generations, has been used to display the continuous atrocities occurring within our world; whether the musical composition be “We Are the World” or “Imagine” by the infamous John Lennon. These influential songs helped identify the sociological struggles the world was facing during those times of turmoil and strife. Currently the American society is dealing with various forms of racial tension amongst the communities of our diverse country. Society’s perception of race and the values we have tied to individual ethnic groups for a long time have been misconstrued in such a way that they have led to institutional racism and privilege. Discussing race and its role in society often times is a taboo subject for many individuals, but in
For this reason, I believe that the Pledge of Allegiance should continue to be recited in American Public Schools, I do however believe that for those with contrasting religious views should be allowed to omit “under God”. They should also be given the choice whether to say the pledge or not. We have amendments in the constitution granted citing freedom of speech to include freedom of religion. I believe that not allowing those with differences of opinion of the pledge would devalue those amendments and would be very contradictory. I grew up in an abusive home as a child and I was unsure of what my purpose and self worth was. I wasn’t an especially patriotic person, but I believe that my time in the Air Force was where I found those things. I was proud to protect others and it gave me a sense of pride to do for others what I could not have done for me in my
The threat of global terrorism continues to rise with the total number of deaths reaching 32,685 in 2015, which is an 80 percent increase from 2014 (Global Index). With this said, terrorism remains a growing, and violent phenomenon that has dominated global debates. However, ‘terrorism’ remains a highly contested term; there is no global agreement on exactly what constitutes a terror act. An even more contested concept is whether to broaden the scope of terrorism to include non-state and state actors.
AUM 154.3 Music Analysis Essay - Nathan Morrissy ( Dubstep/Trap ) Include links to recorded materials (aka links to song).
Education Week talks about the freedom and practice of religion stated in the United States Constitution and how the government has altered that in their article, “Religion in Schools”. They touch base on how “under God” was taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance and elaborate how students can participate in religious clubs outside of school because of the placement of the federal Equal Access Act of 1984.
The issue of race is something the world faces in almost every element of life. In todays society there are issues of racism in politics, crime and media. One form of media that can be looked into specifically is music. Kembrew addresses this in lecture by stating, “Music and culture flow across racial, socioeconomic, and geographic boundaries” (McLeod Week One). Recently a particular Brad Paisley song featuring LL Cool J has sparked some controversy for acknowledging racism in a country song. The song is titled “Accidental Racist” and is featured on Brad Paisley’s new album Wheelhouse. The song brings up racism in a genre that tends to avoid controversy and typical does not discuss race. The way this song is being viewed brings up many interesting cultural questions about todays country music and the history of the genre.
Erik Erikson was a researcher of the Psychodynamic perspective who lived through the years 1902 to 1994. He developed a theory that dealt with the stages of human development and was referred to as a Neo-Freudian. A Neo-Freudian are those “who have revised Sigmund Freud’s theory” (Massey, 1986). His theory argued that “both society and culture challenge and shape us” (Feldman, 2011). Erik Erikson’s theory of psychological development does not specify specific ages, so the age categories can only be guessed upon. It is my personal thought that this was a smart move due to different age milestones for different cultures. The essay titled Erik Erikson: Ages, stages, and stories argues that the stages “are organized into a system of polarities that tempt us to think about psychological dynamics in a form that is more binary than Erikson intended.” Each stage has a ‘resolution’ or goal. Each stage presents a “crisis or conflict that the individual must resolve” (Feldman, 2011, p.16)
Erikson’s theory has some limitations. It seems to focus mainly on childhood, even though it does span the entire life. Another limitation in the theory is how it is applied to other cultures. Each culture is in its own category and has a different way of doing things. Erikson’s stages are rather concrete, whereas numerous cultures vary in ages of toilet training, breastfeeding, and even marriage. Since Erikson’s theory has rather concrete stages, how would these types of cultures fit into his model? Yet another limitation to Erikson’s theory is how can one resolve an issue within a certain stage? These are unlimited examples of both strength and weaknesses.
The vivid imagery, symbolism, metaphors make his poetry elusive, through these elements Frost is able to give nature its dark side. It is these elements that must be analyzed to discover the hidden dark meaning within Roberts Frost’s poems. Lines that seemed simple at first become more complex after the reader analyzes the poem using elements of poetry. For example, in the poem Mending Wall it appears that Robert frost is talking about two man arguing about a wall but at a closer look the reader realizes that the poem is about the things that separate man from man, which can be viewed as destructive. In After Apple Picking, the darkness of nature is present through the man wanting sleep, which is symbolic of death. It might seem that the poem is about apple picking and hard work but it is actually about the nature of death.
The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 and “by the time of the Second World War, many states had made the daily recitation of the pledge mandatory for teachers and students” (“The Pledge of Allegiance,” par. 2). In 1954 congress passed a law inserting the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Students in schools started to refuse to stand and recite the pledge along with their teacher and classmates and as a result they would be punished for not doing so. This was seen as a big controversy. Eventually the mandatory recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance was seen as a violation of constitutional rights. Despite this opinion by some, a lot can be learned from having students recite the Pledge in school. It is a way for students