I'm a Christian and an Indian journalist and while covering our general election campaign earlier this year, I attended a campaign event by the Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu fundamentalist party which believes India should be a Hindu nation. (It's allegedly behind the demolishing of mosques and churches and its members have been involved in the persecution and killing of Christian converts and missionaries in India.) The party's leader was L.K. Advani, and he was introduced at the event by his daughter Pratibha. She said her dad's favourite poem was "Footprints", that he had it hung up on his study wall, and that it had taken him through a lot of hard times in life. Clearly, though, he read the "Lord" of the poem as a Hindu deity.

Well, that story left me flabbergasted, since, like many evangelical Christians around the world, I had grown up reading Footprints on everything from wall calendars to coffee mugs to mouse pads and had absorbed it as a distinctly "Christian" poem. So that night after typing in my copy on Advani and the campaign event, I sat down to do a little research on the internet, in order to prove to myself that no matter what Pratibha Advani thought, Footprints was part of my Christian heritage.

Every version of the poem I've seen has "Anonymous" or "Author Unknown" written at the end. But the internet doesn't respect anonymity, so I discovered a rather twisted story. One claim for authorship comes from a woman who thinks she is a descendant of Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote the poem as a poor and abused 14-year old locked outside in the cold on the front porch of her childhood home in Chester, PA in 1936 on a piece of scratch paper. She died in 1999, but her son and the women who "discovered" her authorship are now embroiled in a court case over her "exploitation". Two other women are also claiming authorship, and the Copyright Office, the Library of Congress, a forensics expert and several books are quoted in support of the various claims. The story is here: http://www.wowzone.com/fpnews.htm.

At the end of which, I'm still not sure if it was written as a Christian poem. At least one of the claimed authors says that she supports all religions and feels that people should believe whatever they want since it all leads back to God no matter what we worship. Which sentiment would shock most of the devout evangelical Christians I know!

So at the end of the day, all I really know is that it is still the favourite poem of Hindu fundamentalist LK Advani. So Jon, I wouldn't worry too much about the fact that it's also on a shot glass in Florida.

This drink may delight
But God's grace runs over
Choose Him tonight
Don't wait 'til you're sober.

Then buy your friend another round and show 'em the chasm & the cross drawing on a paper napkin.

Here's the poem the way it should have been:

You'll never ever be a winner
All you have is scotch for dinner
Your chance at heaven's growing thinner
Turn or burn you heathen sinner!

On a related front, Jon… if you get a chance, try an offering from Big Boss brewery here in Raleigh, NC. Great stuff.