‘Everybody Loves a Holy War’

The manufactured “controversy” over President Obama’s speech at the National Prayer Pageant has me thinking of another old Mark Heard song.

This is “Everybody Loves a Holy War,” from Heard’s 1982 album Victims of the Age, on the CCM-industry label Home Sweet Home records. It sounds, musically, like a lot of what the CCM machine was churning out in Nashvegas at the time — a Christian-radio friendly arrangement that I suspect was something of an intentional joke, served up like sugary-sweet icing on the arsenic cake of the song’s rather harsh lyrics. It’s the same deliberate contrast you can hear in the song’s hymn-like chorus, which conjures up the image of a hymn-singing congregation finally having the candor to sing lines like “Slay the ones who show the most resistance.”

Here’s a not-a-video video from the album itself:

I’m disappointed that’s the only version of the song I could find online. I’ve found cover versions of many of Heard’s other songs, but not this one. Not even one of those home-made web-cam renditions.

That’s a shame because this is a good song that only seems to get more sadly relevant year after year. It also really deserves better than the CCM-radio arrangement of the original.

Here are the full lyrics.

Some say that God has approved of their mob
Esteeming their purposes alone
Choosing sides with a definite pride
And taking their cause for His own
Everybody loves a holy war
Draw the line and claim divine assistance
Slay the ones who show the most resistance
Everybody loves a holy war

Many’s the man with the iron hand
Supposing his own thoughts to be Divine
He will break any bond-
’cause the other man’s always wrong
It’s a handy excuse for his crimes

Everybody loves a holy war
Draw the line and claim divine protection
Kill the ones who show the most objection
Everybody loves a holy war

Dissident cries are met with cold eyes
And treatment that the devil would get
Righteousness and truth
can be weapons in the hands of fools
While innocents go to their deaths

Everybody loves a holy war
Draw the line and claim divine assistance
Slay the ones who show the most resistance
Everybody loves a holy war