Religious Studies for Lawrentians
A Divine Dilemma Sid Ramachandran ’21 Devotional music has been a set piece in Christian orthopraxy. One of these works, titled “How Far is it to Bethlehem?” (HFB), written by Frances Chesterton, is a traditional English Christmas carol. This song, also known as “The Children’s Song Of The Nativity,” features music based on a 16th-18th-century tune called the “stowey.” The song has numerous simple questions—some answered, and some left for the singer or listener to answer on his own. Two contrasting theories provide different lenses of understanding the song. Deconstructionism is a theory devised by Jacques Derrida which questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth with the intent of finding contradictions in a text. It asserts that words can only refer to other terms and attempts to organize a text hierarchically can subvert deeper meanings. On the contrary, Peter Elbow’s Believing Game is the “disciplined practice” of accepting and trying to believe everything that one encounters on the premise that any analysis devalues the originally intended thought (Introduction to Religion for Lawrentian Reader). Although the believing game theory, supported by traditional music, suggests that the song “How Far is it to Bethlehem?” honors the divinity of God, the deconstruction of the open-ended questions in the song casts doubt about God’s omnipotence. The believing game is a tool to help us find the “hidden virtues” found in weakly supported positions (Introduction to Religion for Lawrentian Reader). In HFB, which is about infant Jesus, the various questions such as the stable room being “Lit by a star?” imply that the baby is divine (“Christmas-Songs.org”). Rhetorical devices are employed to express joy and anxiety experienced by someone who is about to meet their creator. When the performer/composer asks, “Will he awake?,” the human form of God is highlighted, and the believing theory suggests that God has taken the form of a baby and has human-like behaviors, including following the circadian rhythm. Furthermore, the song refers to “God” sleeping in his mother’s arms and all the babies sleeping with the satisfaction of their fulfilled desires, implying that the chief appeal of all living beings is to meet God (“Christmas-Songs.org”). The believing game suggests that the song is about God’s arrival and connotes an affirmative response to all the questions. However, systematic analysis of the text and its inner meaning provides a reasonable middle ground to dissect a verse intellectually. 43
