Bruce Cockburn Follow

Tabloids, bellowing raw delight
Hail the return of the Teutonic Knights
Inbred for purity and spoiling for a fight
Another little puppet of the New Right

See through dollars and mystery plagues
Varied detritus of Aquarian Age
Shutters on storefronts and shutters in the mind
We kill ourselves to keep ourselves safe from crime

That's the gospel of bondage
The gospel of bondage
The gospel of bondage

We're so afraid of disorder we make it into a god
We can only placate with state security laws
Whose church consists of secret courts and wiretaps, and shocks
Whose priests hold smoking guns and whose sign is the double cross

But God must be on the side of the side that's right
And not the right that justifies itself in terms of might
Least of all a bunch of Neo-Nazis running hooded through the night
Which may be why He's so conspicuously out of sight

Of the gospel of bondage
The gospel of bondage
The gospel of bondage

You read the Bible in your special ways
You're fond of quoting certain things it says
Mouth full of righteousness and wrath from above
But when do we hear about forgiveness and love?

Sometimes you can hear the spirit whispering to you
But if God stays silent, what else can you do?
Except listen to the silence, if you ever did, you'd surely see
That God won't be reduced to an ideology

Such as the gospel of bondage
The gospel of bondage
The gospel of bondage