In Christ there is no East or West (Oxenham - John Fahey)

John Oxenham wrote these very apt verses as part of an anthology of his poems. It sold a quarter of a million copies. John Fahey was a masterful guitar player, specialising in bluegrass style. But especially important is the vision summed up in the first line, which was a response and further development of Rudyard Kipling's "East is East and West is West".

The third verse proved problematic as time passed and trends altered the meanings of words. "Gay" used to mean "joyful" - now it has been warped and corrupted into something else; in the same way, "bretheren" and "sons", which was in the original 3rd verse, were gender-neutral terms; they meant both sexes. But on the advent of feminism, jaundiced ears no longer grasped this, and so the verse had to be re-worded. But in reality, saying to a woman in Roman times that she was a "Daughter of God" would have been bad news: daughters would sooner or later (and often, sooner,) be sent away from her home and married off and to some man or other chosen at her father's whim and for his own selfish reasons.
I chose the word "kindred" instead of "bretheren" and "as His child" instead of "as a son".

In Christ there is no East or West (Oxenham - John Fahey)

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