Act 2 · Track 20

Our God, Our Religion, Our Peace

A soldier in the ranks watches his captain tear his coat, and rallies behind a leader who fights for the right reasons.

pov

a soldier in the ranks

genre

Anthemic Cinematic Rock

scripture

Alma 46

Lyrics

Verse 1

The would-be king was coming

With a hundred banners and a hundred lies

He was promising us greatness

He was promising us power

He was promising us anything

To make us forget who we were

And the people started listening

The proud ones, the angry ones, the young ones with empty hands

Started believing him

Started talking like him

Started forgetting why we ever stood up

In the first place

Verse 2

Our captain was twenty-five years old

He had no patience for the lies

He went into the streets at noon

With his sword still on his belt

And his coat on his shoulders

And his hand on a pen

He tore the coat off his own back

He spread it on the stone

He wrote on it with his own hand

Words I will remember when I am dying

And he raised it

On a pole

Above his head

And he ran

Pre-Chorus

He ran through the streets shouting it

He ran through the marketplaces

He ran into every territory we had

And every man who saw the standard

Felt his own coat

Felt his own heart

Felt the words begin to rise

Chorus

Our God

Our religion

Our freedom

Our peace

Our wives

Our children

Our God

Our religion

Our freedom

Our peace

Our wives

Our children

Verse 3

And we came

We came from the farms

We came from the fishing villages

We came from the high country with our fathers' swords on our backs

We came running toward the man who had run for us

And when we got to him

He was still standing in the square

Holding the standard up

Waiting

Bridge

He looked at us

He did not look like a captain looking at his army

He looked like a brother looking at his brothers

And he said

If we are going to do this

We are going to do it together

And we are going to do it before God

And we are going to make a covenant

That we will never break

So we tore our own coats

Every man of us

We tore them on the spot

And we threw the pieces at his feet

And we said let our names be cast among the wicked

If we do not keep faith

Let our names be cast among the wicked

If we do not keep this oath

Final Chorus

Our God

Our religion

Our freedom

Our peace

Our wives

Our children

Our God

Our religion

Our freedom

Our peace

Our wives

Our children

Outro

And the standard kept flying

And the men kept coming

And the would-be king

Did not know yet

That he had already lost

The standard is still flying

Behind the Song

The album’s first sing-along

Every other song has asked the listener to sit and witness. This one asks them to stand and chant. The chorus is the literal Title of Liberty — six words, twice. Chantable, shoutable, memorable. A listener can join by the second time it appears. The album’s only true congregational moment, and the song that earns it.

A twenty-five-year-old with a torn coat

The greatest leader in the album is a kid who tore his own coat off in the marketplace. The song refuses to make him a politician giving a speech or a general issuing orders. He is a young man with a piece of fabric and a steady hand, running through the streets. The image is anti-grandiose. The leadership is the running, not the rhetoric.

Words I will remember when I am dying

A small but loaded line. The narrator — a soldier in the ranks — is now old, looking back. He has carried those words his whole life. They are that important to him. The song is being told decades later by a man whose whole identity was formed in that moment. A banger that ages well, because the man singing it has aged.

He ran for us, so we came running

The captain ran through the streets raising the standard. The men came running toward him. The song’s structural symmetry — running leader, running followers — is the song itself. Leadership in the album is not what you say. It is the direction your body is already moving.

The covenant by torn coats

The bridge transforms a rally into a sacrament. The captain stops being a captain and becomes a brother. Every man tears his own coat and throws the pieces at his feet. The oath is the scripture’s own words: let our names be cast among the wicked if we do not keep faith. The army arrives as a congregation.

The standard is still flying

The outro names the implication. The rebellion is already lost — it just does not know it yet. The standard is not a historical artifact. Wherever free people are calling each other to remember who they are, the standard is still flying. The song’s last gift to the listener: this is not just a story about a Nephite captain.