Much like Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA,” Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” is one of those purportedly “patriotic” songs whose subversive lyrics generally just wash over most listeners. The 1940 folk-standard is typically treated like a jaunty little pep-rally, perfect for school children, and more than safe enough for the Reagan-celebrated Mormon Tabernacle Choir, who recorded a version of it for their 2003 album Spirit of America, produced during that post-9/11 fever-pitch of American hyper-patriotism.
The irony, of course, is that Woody Guthrie was a died-in-the-wool leftist radical, Socialist, and Union man, who wrote “This Land Is Your Land” specifically as a rejoinder to the rah-rah-patriotism of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.”[1]“God Blessed America for Me” was his original lyric, before adjusting it to “This land was made for you and me.” His intention was not merely to sing some facile celebration of American exceptionalism, but to emphasize that this land was made us—not the rich, not the oligarchs, not the plutocrats or fat cats, but us—you and me, the common workers who built this country up in the first place. He makes his Socialist leanings even more explicit in the oft-ignored fourth verse:
“Was a big high wall there, that tried to stop me
A sign was painted, said Private Property
But on the back side, it didn’t say nothing
This land was made for you and me.”
This denigration of private property is not the part that generally gets taught to school children, and it definitely never gets recorded by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Except…shouldn’t it be? Recorded by the Tab Choir, I mean. Despite how much the Church in America has been aligned with far-right political ideology for nearly a century now, it’s worth remembering that our own D&C 117:4 reads, “for what is property unto me? saith the Lord”–a sentiment that Woody Guthrie’s fourth verse would certainly agree with.
For that matter, we also have canonized “But it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin” (D&C 49:20), another idea that Woody Guthrie could’ve probably set to music. And the time would fail us to review 4 Nephi 1:3–“And they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift”–which itself is an echo of Acts 2:44-45, “And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need,” not to mention the Law of Consecration, the Temple endowment ceremony, the United Order, Christ to the rich young man[2]Matt. 19:16-24, and so on and so forth.
The fact that most practicing members of the Church barely have these principles on their radar nowadays scarcely needs comment at this point. But it is also inescapable that our own most sacred scriptures still heartily endorse Woody Guthrie’s radical egalitarianism, and his deep skepticism for the supposed inherent virtue of private property. It is worth also recalling, from time to time, that when our own 10th Article of Faith claims “Zion…will be built on the American continent,” that we need to consider what exactly this American Zion will look like–and who exactly this land will be made for, because “the LORD hath founded Zion, and the poor of his people shall trust in it” (Isaiah 14:32).[3]And as further endorsed by our own 2 Nephi 24:32.
That is, there may come a time when the Tabernacle Choir will sing the fourth verse to “This Land Is Your Land” after all.