Leave your flocks

Today’s Advent offering should probably come closer to Christmas, because it’s about the shepherds. But I’m thinking a lot lately about the people who work in the fields, on ranches and in the slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants that keep us fed, so…

“Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow” was sung by African-American slaves in the ante-bellum South. It was first published as “A Christmas Plantation Song” in Slave Songs of the United States, in 1867. The songs in this collection were gathered during the War Between the States, and the melody is probably from the coastal islands off South Carolina and Georgia. A lot of those songs would have been call and response, which is how “Rise Up, Shepherd” is framed.

Back in those days so glorified now by Republicans, slaves were property, to be used and disposed of at their master’s pleasure, like cattle and sheep. White owners, almost always professing Christians, were conflicted about converting their slaves. In one respect, it made no more sense than spreading the gospel to their cattle or sheep; property’s property, duh. But in another, preaching Christ’s teachings was downright radical—all that talk about all of us one under the Lord kinda runs contrary to the whole master-slave thing. What if—and bear with me on this for a minute—what if all those black people got the notion that spiritual liberation should be followed by, you know, actual physical liberation? Scary stuff, right?

So it was not at all uncommon for colonial legislatures to enact laws to ensure clarity on this issue: white guys = free; black guys = not free. Ordained by both God and man; end of. Maryland was the first colony, in 1664, to legislate that baptism had no effect on the social status of slaves. Southern theologians intoned that slaves had no soul; ergo treating them as property was copacetic, whether baptized or not.

Just like cattle and sheep.

(For the record, there are no reports to my knowledge of plantation owners baptizing their cattle or sheep. It could have happened, I suppose, but they didn’t document it in the parish ledger.)

Generally speaking, slaves were also kept illiterate; no need to read to pick cotton, tend babies or shoe horses. Also—man, that Gospel; you do not want anyone in captivity to have free access to that sucker, to parse and to ponder and to come up with weird-ass conclusions like Jesus preached to the poor and had no particular love for the rich, and what do we make of that? No, no—none of that Protestant notion of putting the Bible into everyone’s hands so s/he can build an individual relationship with God. You might as well give the field hands guns.

Also, slaves were forbidden to gather in large numbers, where they might talk with one another, share information about their conditions and maybe discuss things that property owners would prefer that their chattel goods didn’t discuss.

So being unable to write or congregate, generations of men, women and children developed a musical code for communication with one another, across geographical and chronological boundaries. This code would be spirituals and gospel music. When you dig into some of these songs, they’re about as incendiary as it gets; they’re just cloaked in metaphor. “Follow the Drinking Gourd”, “Jacob’s Ladder”, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”—they all sound kind of meek and pious, but they’re built on pain and anger and aspirations.

And so is “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow”. I mean, how on earth did slaveholders even hear those first two words without the hair on the backs of their necks standing on end? The response to the call—twice in the verses and twice again in the chorus—is literally telling the listeners to rise up. And follow that star to freedom.

This is really clever—the star followers in the Nativity story were the wise men, the three kings, the guys who’d have been identified with the slave owning class; not shepherds, who clearly align more with the slaves. Also, the star in the song is in the East, and the one slaves followed was in the North, so a bit more subterfuge. No, no, massa—don’t worry your white head; this song isn’t about slaves escaping or rebelling or anything like that. It’s all about your blue-eyed Jesus.

The song urges the shepherds/slaves to ditch their responsibilities to follow that star. I have to admit that it seems irresponsible and unshepherdly to abandon their sheep; I feel bad for the animals. But if we’re talking tobacco and cotton fields, I can totally see slipping away and hoofing it north of the Mason-Dixon line. Massa can bloody well get up and milk the cows himself. Or pay someone to do it.

In addition to the call/response framework, I also notice that “Rise Up, Shepherd” has what I call a work rhythm to it. Like sea shanties—it’s steady with a strong beat, which you could use to coordinate repetitive labor, like swinging a scythe or pulling ropes. Or packing chicken parts onto Styrofoam trays on an assembly line.

I do not know why I can’t find a really good recording of this for you; all the versions out there are way too far removed from the slave quarters—all laundered and pressed, with no dirt or sweat in sight. Here’s the best I could manage, from the Christ Church Cathedral choir in Victoria, British Columbia.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu