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April 21,
2003
Aspirations
for Genuine Liberation
Easter
Thoughts on Jesus and "Kanaka WaiWai"
by
GARY LEUPP
It's Easter Sunday, and what better way to observe
it than by listening to Hawaiian religious music, the music of
a people of deep spirituality colonized by Protestant missionaries,
who internalized the foreigners' faith and brought to its musical
expression their native melodic genius?
I listen to Kanaka Waiwai (The
Rich Man), one of the most popular Hawaiian songs, and my personal
favorite, often termed a "hymn" although I think it
less analogous to (say) Martin Luther's Ein Feste Burg (which
is of comparable but rather different majesty, and also, to my
mind, of progressive political content) than to a "Negro"
spiritual for reasons that will become clear.
We don't know who wrote this Hawaiian
spiritual, Kanaka Waiwai. It's typically listed as "traditional,"
rather like "Greensleeves" or "Shenandoah."
But that's appropriate. It's a song of the people, perhaps modified
over the course of the nineteenth century by different pens and
performers. It's based on the well-known New Testament story,
contained in all three synoptic gospels, of the wealthy young
man who came to Jesus and asked what he needed to do to obtain
eternal life. Jesus told him that he needed to obey the commandments;
the youth replied that he was already doing that anyway. "Jesus
looked steadily at him and loved him, and he said, 'There is
one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you own and give the
money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then
come, follow me.' But [the young man's] face fell at these words
and he went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth"
(Mark 10:17-22 but check out the Matthew and Luke versions too.
It's all good).
Kanaka Waiwai
was produced by a people who had been tricked out of the birthright
of their land by missionaries (whose church, by the way, has
subsequently apologized for its role in abetting the overthrow
of Hawai'i's monarchy in 1893). I've loved that song for many
years, since first hearing it in Hawai'i. But I don't know Hawaiian
and until recently I hadn't researched its lyrical content. There's
an English version that dilutes entirely its political content,
the implicit protest against the haoles' landgrab. Online
I found a translation that persuades me that this, rather like
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," is a song of a people protesting
injustice and aspiring for a new world.
Its triumphant refrain echoes Jesus'
words that such people cannot obtain the Kingdom of Heaven:
E haw'awi e ha'awi lilo
Ikou mau waiwai
Huli a hahai mai ia'u
I loa'a e ke ola mau ia 'oe
You have to give away all your possessions
in order to follow me into eternal life.
Of all the stories providing material
for hymns, some folks chose this one as the theme of the most
moving and popular piece in the Hawaiian hymnal. Isn't this what
Christianity was all about, once upon a time, in its inception
phase? Holding all things in common (Acts 2:44), pre-contact
Polynesian-style?
Ludwig Feuerbach, a Hegel disciple who
journeyed to atheism in the early nineteenth century, described
the "essence of Christianity" as the worship and deification
of the most ideal human type, the Jesus of the gospels.
In his view, to posit as "God" this most attractive
and admirable of mortals was a step towards overcoming the alienation
from reality that religion in general requires. Feuerbach inspired
Marx, whose early writings (especially his 1844 essay declaring
religion "the expression of real suffering and a protest
against real sufferingthe sigh of the oppressed creature, the
heart of a heartless worldthe soul of soulless conditionsthe
opium of the people") are essential reading for anyone seriously
and objectively studying this central human phenomenon, religion.
Marx and Engels and their followers into the early twentieth
century (including Lenin), insightfully commented on primitive
Christianity, and on the Protestant Reformation, with a degree
of respect and admiration that might surprise the religious believer
and/or knee-jerk anticommunist who'd never bother to read their
stuff.
But back to the point. Easter celebrates
the imagined rebirth of the dead god. Dimmuzi, Tammuz, Mithras,
Jesus. It's an old and very human story, perhaps the ultimate
myth that suffering will someday be overcome. In the meantime,
every Easter, as believers greet one another with the conviction,
"He is risen!" the land grabbing and lies and exploitation
continue. There is not, in my best judgment, really any inheritance
of eternal life, and no treasure in heaven. Just lines drawn
in the sand between the very, very rich and their global agenda,
and the prospects in this real palpable life for the genuine
liberation of Jesus' poor, who continue, as they should, to derive
inspiration from the crucified's revolutionary words.
Gary Leupp
is an an associate professor, Department of History, Tufts University
and coordinator, Asian Studies Program.
He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu
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