All the discussions so far don't hit on the implications of this line:

Jesus tol' me that the world would be 'gainst me
If He changed mah name

In Anderson's version, it is even more direct:

Jesus tol' me dat de world would hate me
If he changed mah name

I take this as indicating that the action about to be undertaken is one that is specifically and personally heroic because its consequence is rejection by the entire world in which the subject lives.

I see the song as explicitly a rejection of common values. I don't believe that it pertains to any specific social or historical experience, but entirely transcends such concerns. I believe it is entirely about a private act of self-sacrifice which goes against the community good, or the community interest, but which has a superior moral value in the mind of the song's subject.

I do think there are local, sociological, narrative and even propagandistic elements in the song, but that these elements are indirect and subsidiary. Why did Anderson, an artist of infinite sophistication and a conception of personal dignity so strong that she sometimes spoke of herself in the first person plural, not clean up the language slightly? Why de instead of the? Here I think what she is trying to say is, 'the person of this song has strivings of utmost heroism; you would be making a tragic mistake if you thought that persons of simple language are not capable of great nobility.'

I am convinced this song is an assertion of psychological sophistication and must have been understood as such by its original auditors.