I Vow To Thee My Country is a hymn that emphasizes the fact that Christians are citizens of two kingdoms, the earthly one and the heavenly one. This has created all sorts of tensions in the minds of Christians especially on how they are to relate to civil authorities. This hymn, I Vow To Thee My Country is a patriotic song that tries to show how these two loyalties operate. This hymn came from a patriotic poem written by Sir Cecil Spring Rice. It was set to music by Gustav Holst in 1921. Sir Cecil Spring-Rice was a British diplomat who later became the UK Ambassador to the United States of America. He used his influence to persuade Woodrow Wilson to join Britain in the war against Germany during the First World War. It was while in America that he rewrote this hymn in 1918 to concentrate on love and sacrifice rather than "noise of battle" and "the thunder of her guns". Sir Cecil Spring Rice This song was originally known as Urbs Dei
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