David Schraub, at The Moderate Voice, offers this entry about a guy who objects to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” being played by a High School band with the argument that it would never be allowed to play “Amazing Grace”.

He calls B.S. and so do I.

He goes a little far in asserting that NOBODY would argue against playing Amazing Grace in a school.  And that’s not exactly true.  I’ve met a few people who would.  They are a distinct minority, and not really anything to worry about.

Most of the music played by my High School Orchestra was inspired by religious feeling.  We read Chaucer and Milton.  We discussed religion in depth in History of Western Civilization.  Our Literature Curriculum had a whole unit on Norse, Greek and Roman Mythology...presumably so that we could understand the flowery language of such Christianity-inspired texts as Milton.

One day when I went to Grasshopper’s classroom to volunteer, I heard the teacher reading a story about “the true meaning of Christmas”.  I don’t remember the title.  It was about a little girl in Guatemala who goes to mass and has an epiphany about her family, her society, and how she belongs there.  The reason the teacher chose this story was because it was written by a woman from Guatemala and had a lot of information about daily life there.  This teacher went to Guatemala every summer and taught as a volunteer in the schools, and headed a supplies drive at the school, where school kits were assembled by parent volunteers for her to bring down to the children in her school.

The subject of religion cannot be ruled out of proper education, and few people want it to be.  When you study music, it is ridiculous to consider eliminating all music with religious significance from your course of study.  Ditto Literature, ditto the effects of religion upon our history.  But that doesn’t fit with the religious fanatic’s world view, and so they have to believe that there are hoards of secular humanists, atheists and “secular Jews” out there who are determined to completely erase all mention or thought of God.

And their intended audience is not exactly primed to question it…or anything else their leaders say…

…but beyond that, come on people “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”?  Does anyone on the planet actually think that this is a song is intended to be interpreted as a true story about a kid who meets the devil in person?  Does anything about the song seem to indicate that it has a ring of reality about it at all?  Is it someone’s inspired creation of their personal experience of Satan?  Does it assert the reality of the devil in any credible way? 

No.  It clearly does not, and furthermore, it makes the devil look like an idiot and a loser.  A fictional, or at least allegorical, idiot and loser.

Sheesh.

These people are so hungry to prove their zeal in battle, they will go to any lengths to invent one.