Get Right Church – Anonymous

What was going on with this writer, that he was looking forward to leaving for ‘home’? It wouldn’t be hard to imagine someone not appreciating his surroundings, and longing for rejuvenation with a call to “Get Right, Church”. It’s a pretty common emotional state, this unhappiness with where I am, and imagining a place – perhaps where I once was – that is recalled affectionately. Good memories push out the less attractive recollections, so that unknowingly I create a vision of home that is perfect, too perfect perhaps. It’s really a reflection of hope, this yearning for home. But, why a train to take me there? Is that merely a method for transit to this place, or does it suggest other characteristics of this trip? Is the train armored, like the one shown here? What does this train trip offer that another way of journeying does not?  

Rail transport has been on planet Earth for many centuries, though its full potential became evident in the 19^th Century, particularly during the U.S. Civil War. Moving large amounts of materiel made trains essential for effective and long-term military campaigns that needed consistent resupply.  Perhaps these facts about them were what influenced the writer, whoever he was, to include a train in three of the verses of ‘Get Right, Church’. Did he live near a train station, perhaps daily observing the habits of a train? They pick up people – ‘I’m goin’ home on the morning train…’(v.2) – or they get loaded with various cargo – ‘back, back train gotta get your load’… (v.4). Either way you imagine it, a train doesn’t leave with a single passenger or just a few pieces of cargo. Scores of people and-or thousands of pounds of materiel depart on any one train. A train might not always be on time (v. 3), but no matter when it arrives, lots of travelers and various cargo go out within that string of cars pulled by a locomotive. So this anonymous author was thinking of a crowd going in the same direction, with the same objective, the same hope. Were they struggling with their circumstances (v.1) – Get right church? Most attribution lines for this old song mention its origin as ‘traditional spiritual’, suggesting that the song’s words gestated and were born among a black, African-American culture in the South.  Many of this genre’s first collection (Slave Songs of the United States) were first published in 1867, a time when railroads were making the U.S. a continental nation. Was home somewhere far from where this author and his generation wanted to be? A train could take them all to this distant place, the motivation they needed to stay together and remain alert for its arrival.

Had the author and his people actually been to this home where they wanted to go? His habitat at the time of the song’s emergence might have been more like a penal colony, if this author was indeed from a slave culture of the South. To get right, would be to gather as a people and proceed joyfully. The destination might never have been seen before, but that didn’t stop someone like Abram from setting out from where he’d lived for so long and traveling to such a place (Canaan -- Genesis 12). I’ve never been to where I expect ‘home’ will be, probably not more than three decades from now. Can you see it, even if you’ve not been there? 

See this site for information on spirituals in music history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_(music)

 

History of rail transport here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport