Often, probably the most moving moments of the Olympic Games are when athletes climb onto the rostrum to receive their gold medals as their country’s anthem plays. When Hidilyn Diaz won the ladies’s 55-kilogram class in weightlifting on the Tokyo Olympics in July 2021, it was the Philippines’ first-ever gold medal in any sport. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she heard her country’s national anthem, “Lupang Hinirang,” play for the primary time on the Olympics.
The pageantry around today’s Olympic award ceremonies are a Twentieth-century invention. The Olympic podium debuted on the Lake Placid Olympic Winter Games in 1932, and the tradition of raising the flags because the champion’s national anthem plays began on the Summer Olympic Games later that 12 months in Los Angeles.
As the Paris Olympics progresses and national anthems sound in living rooms world wide, CT has put together short explainers of 5 anthems filled with Christian references and themes. While probably the most well-known Christian anthem on this planet—and the oldest—is the UK’s “God Save the King,” little is understood about its origins, so we as an alternative featured anthems from New Zealand, Suriname, Peru, St. Kitts and Nevis, and South Africa.
“God Defend New Zealand”
God of Nations at Thy feet,
In the bonds of affection we meet,
Hear our voices, we entreat,
God defend our free land.
Guard Pacific’s triple star
From the shafts of strife and war,
Make her praises heard afar,
God defend New Zealand.
The New Zealand Saturday Advertiser published Irish journalist Thomas Bracken’s five-stanza poem “God Defend New Zealand” in 1876. Declaring it a latest national hymn, the newspaper asked readers to send in music to accompany the poem for a prize, and Catholic teacher John Joseph Woods submitted the winning rating. Two years later, it was translated into the indigenous language of Māori and titled “Aotearoa,” which is Māori for “New Zealand.”
At the time, the then-British colony’s anthem was “God Save the King,” and it wasn’t until 1940 that the federal government purchased the rights to Bracken’s lyrics and Woods’s music. After a petition calling for it to change into a national anthem garnered over 7,000 signatures in 1976, “God Defend New Zealand” was finally given equal footing with the royal anthem in 1977, making it one in all New Zealand’s two national anthems.
Today, about nearly half of New Zealanders claim no religion, and while some have criticized the anthem for its religious focus, no concerted effort has been made to alter it. Geoff Macpherson, principal of Grace Theological College in Auckland, believes it is because New Zealanders are reserved of their patriotism.
Meanwhile, amongst Christians, “most feel proud and comfortable that our anthem is so blatantly Christian,” Macpherson said. Will Warden, pastor of Tawa Baptist Church in Wellington, describes the anthem’s first verse as “an acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty. God isn’t just God of Israel or New Zealand, he’s the God of all nations and cultures.”
Today, the anthem is generally sung first in Māori, then in English. Macpherson believes the Māori translation has endeared the anthem to Kiwis: “Anything within the indigenous language of a people brings it closer to their hearts.”
“God Be with Our Suriname”
God be with our Suriname
May He elevate our lovely land
How we got here here together
We are dedicated to its soil
Working we take note
Justice and truth will let out
All that is nice to devote oneself to
Will give value to our land
(Translated from Dutch)
A former Dutch colony, Suriname is the smallest country in South America and mostly covered by rainforests. Pastor Cornelis Atses Hoekstra initially penned “God Be with Our Suriname” in Dutch for his Sunday school class in 1893. Later, the poet Henri Frans de Ziel translated the lyrics into Suriname’s native language of Sranan Tongo. The government officially adopted it because the national anthem in December 1959.
Similar to the experience of its neighbors—French Guiana to the east, and Guyana to the west—Suriname first heard the gospel through their Dutch colonizers. Today, about half of the country’s population identifies as Christian.
Yet the Dutch also brought enslaved Africans to the country. Some Surinamese take issue with the Christian themes of the anthem due to these historic ties to colonialism and slavery. Gerno Odang, a speaker and visual artist who promotes Afro-Surinamese culture, noted that, while he respects other religions, “Christianity was used as a tool to enslave people before and throughout the slave trade and even afterward,” pointing to the experience of the Maroons, descendants of Africans within the Americas who fled plantation slavery.
Rebrouf Sanvisi, worship leader at Christ Embassy Suriname church within the capital of Paramaribo, said that at any time when Christians like him sing the anthem, it gives them a “sense of hope, trust, and confidence, knowing that the very best power within the universe is standing with us.”
“And if he’s with us, who or what might be against us?” he adds, referring to Romans 8:31.
“O Land of Beauty!” (Saint Kitts and Nevis)
O Land of Beauty!
Our country where peace abounds,
Thy children stand free
On the self-discipline and love.
With God in all our struggles,
Saint Kitts and Nevis be,
A nation sure together,
With a typical destiny.
In early 1983, the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis, an island nation within the eastern Caribbean, held a contest to pick a national anthem months before it attained full independence from the UK.
Artist and musician Kenrick Georges decided to put in writing and compose an entry at 2 a.m. on the day of the deadline—March 31—and accomplished it at 6 a.m., based on local media. An hour later, he asked a piano teacher to play it for him, and he submitted a recording of the song on a cassette tape later that day.
The subcommittee for the competition selected his song, noting that it could “stand the test of time,” and in September, it became the national anthem. In a tribute to Georges, who died in 2019, former prime minister Timothy Harrison called the song a “deeply moving and luxurious ode to the country’s beauty and tranquility.”
About 75 percent of the country’s small population of around 50,000 discover as Christian, because the British brought the gospel with them as they settled within the country in 1624. The St. Kitts Evangelical Association is a founding member of the Evangelical Association of the Caribbean, which represents five million evangelicals within the region.
“Himno Nacional del Perú”
We are free!
May we all the time be so, may we all the time be so!
And may the Sun surrender its light,
its light, its light,
Before we break the solemn vow
that the Fatherland lifted as much as the Eternal,
Before we break the solemn vow
that the Fatherland lifted as much as the Eternal.
(Translated from Spanish)
In August 1821, following Peru’s declaration of independence from Spain, the country’s Argentinian liberator José de San Martin invited most of the people to send in submissions for Peru’s national anthem. As the brand new government was bankrupt on the time, it could only offer the country’s gratitude as a prize.
A young Dominican friar, José Bernardo Alcedo, who had written hymns for Mass, submitted two compositions, with the lyrics written by his lawyer friend José de la Torre Ugarte. Alcedo was amongst the finalists, and he presented each compositions to San Martin. After hearing the melody of the second song, San Martin said, “Without a doubt, that is the national anthem.”
The explicit mention of God within the lyrics might be present in its final stanza. The English translation of its last line reads, “Let’s renew the good oath that we rendered to the God of Jacob.” While there have been many attempts to alter the wording of the unique anthem, the problem has been the song’s emphasis on the Peruvian struggle for freedom, relatively than its mention of God, as about 76 percent of Peru’s population is Catholic.
National Anthem of South Africa (South Africa)
Lord bless Africa
May her glory be lifted high
Hear our petitions
Lord bless us, your kids
(Translated from Xhoso and Zulu)
One of only three anthems on this planet that start in a single key and end in one other, the South African national anthem fuses together two songs: the Xhosa hymn “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” (God Bless Africa) and the Afrikaans song “Die Stem van Suid-Afrika” (The Call of South Africa). The anthem, which also incorporates five South African languages, signifies a call to unity after the top of apartheid.
Enoch Mankayi Sontonga, a Xhosa teacher and choirmater at a Methodist mission school, composed “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” in 1897 as a faculty anthem. The song, which reflects each Methodist hymnody and African praise singing, was first performed publicly in 1899 on the ordination of John Hlengani Mboweni, the primary Tsonga Methodist pastor.
The song gained popularity because it was sung to shut the 1912 meeting of the South African Native National Congress (now the African National Congress), the liberation movement in search of to advance the rights of black South Africans. The congress adopted the song as its official anthem in 1925, causing it to be banned during apartheid.
Meanwhile, poet C. J. Langenhoven wrote “Die Stem van Suid-Afrika” in 1918, and three years later, Dutch Reformed pastor Marthinus Lourens de Villiers composed its melody. It became the national anthem in 1938, alongside “God Save the King.”
In 1994, before Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as president, State President F. W. de Klerk declared that each songs can be the country’s national anthems. Three years into his administration, Mandela declared a latest official national anthem that combined shortened versions of each songs.
“The declaration of trust [in God] is the primary and most vital component of the South African National Anthem,” wrote Morakeng E. K. Lebaka, an African musical arts researcher on the University of South Africa. “The second element … is the invitation to trust and to unite, addressed to the community (South Africans).”
Four other African countries have historically adopted Sontonga’s “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” as their national anthem: Zambia, Tanzania, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. Zambia and Tanzania still use the melody for his or her anthems.
