On July 4, 1831, the Sunday school children of Park Street Church in Boston sang a new hymn with words by twenty-three-year-old Samuel Francis Smith: “My country, ’tis of thee,/Sweet land of liberty,/Of thee I sing.” The conjunction of patriotism and religion seemed natural. Entitled simply “America,” it was sung to the tune of “God Save the King”— originally written in reaction against the Stuart uprising of 1745 and once popular in the British colonies. “America” became the unofficial national anthem, and good citizens stood up upon hearing it. (During the First World War, Americans felt the
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