Pete Seeger Was No Saint

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/culture/7598/pete_seeger_was_no_saint/

February 16, 2014
By GWYNNE WATKINS
Gwynne Watkins is a Christian, but not the kind that sucks. Visit www.gwynnewatkins.com or tweet @gwynnesanity.



Last Sunday, I saw a few new faces at my church in Beacon, New York. They came not because of a sudden call to Presbyterianism, but to mourn the death of Pete Seeger, the town's most beloved resident.

As you may have read in every single obituary, the revolutionary folk singer lived in this Hudson Valley town for forty years, on the side of a mountain, in a home he built himself. Everyone in Beacon is indebted to him for one reason or another, be it the cleanliness of the Hudson River, the opening of the town's first live music venue, or the grant in his name that gives us free entry to the local museum. In the two years I've lived here, I've seen the way that Seeger shaped this place: not single-handedly, but by inspiring others to join hands. He made us feel like change was both possible and necessary.

And now that he's gone, the people of Beacon must figure out how to carry on his legacy. One peculiar thing I've noticed is that people struggle not to beatify the singer. It may be a losing battle; the phrase "patron saint of Beacon" has commonly come to describe him. But it's not who Pete was.

Seeger was, first and foremost, a man of the people. His songs were his message, and they were intended to bring people together—not so he could lead them, but so they could lift each other up. He did not discriminate between different kinds of people. He wanted all of us to sing together. Even in his final years, he'd play Carnegie Hall one week, then sing with local schoolchildren the next. As he told the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, prior to being blacklisted:



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