Greetings,
Most of
you know that I am into observing patriotism, flying the flag, and touting the USA as the greatest place to live in the world. However, as we prepare to celebrate the
Independence Day holiday I thought it might be useful to examine again the
meaning of the event from a variety of perspectives.
Thomas
Jefferson wrote: “Indeed I tremble
for my country when I reflect that God is just.”
John
Quincy Adams wrote to his father (in 1816):
“Fiat
justitia, pereat coelum [Let justice be done, though heaven fall]. My toast would be, may our country be always
successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.”
In 1971
William Stringfellow, a great Christian lawyer, commentator, church leader and
political gadfly wrote the following. I
had the opportunity to be with him several times, and he was a gracious,
sincere and devout individual, and very committed to the cause of Christ. As I read this selection today, even though
he was referring to the Nixon Administration, I could place headlines from
today’s papers with every comment.
“Jesus was
a revolutionary. Barabbas was a
revolutionary. But the two are
distinguished from one another…This issue is dramatized, for us Americans
today, poignantly in the American Revolution which, from the New Testament
perspective, was a revolution of Barabbas and not a revolution of Christ,
despite what either Pilgrims or politicians have said. We who are Americans witness in this hour the
exhaustion of the American revolutionary ethic.
Wherever we turn, that is what is to be seen: in the ironic public
policy of internal colonialism symbolized by the victimization of the welfare population,
in the usurpation of federal budget…by an autonomous
military-scientific-principality, by the police aggressions against black
citizens, by political persecutions of dissenters, schemes to intimidate the
media and vitiate the First Amendment, by cynical designs to demean and neutralize
the courts. Yet the corruption of the
American revolutionary ethic is not a recent or sudden problem. It has been inherent and was, in truth,
portended in the very circumstances in which the Declaration of Independence
was executed. To symbolize that, white
men who subscribed to that cause, at the same time countenanced the
institutionalization in the new nation of chattel slavery and many were
themselves owners of slaves. That
incomprehensible hypocrisy in America’s revolutionary origins foretells the contemporary
decadence of the revolutionary tradition…
“There are
no doubt some serious distinctions to be kept between Rome and America or
between the Nazi State and the United States or, for that matter, between
Revolutionary American and contemporary America; but such issues must not
obscure the truth that every civil power shares a singular characteristic which
outweighs whatever may be said to distinguish one from another. And it is that common attribute of the
State as such to which the New Testament points where the texts deal with
Christ being condemned as criminal.”
To this I
would just add the comment by Samuel Johnson, the great English author and
lexicographer, who from his admittedly prejudiced point of view, in reference
to the hypocrisy of the American Declaration of Independence observed with
accuracy: "How is it that we hear
the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?"
More
thoughts on the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. Refer to Matthew 23:23-39, preferably in the
NRSV or the New Jerusalem Bible.
American history and the history of God’s people are not the same. The Christian Church does not view the
American Revolution as a major event in the life of the church. Jesus, in Matthew 23, was speaking of ancient
prophets and not of the heroes of the Revolutionary War, but his words may well
apply to our celebration of their achievements.
John Adams
wrote to his beloved wife Abigail on July 3, 1776, after the Congress voted to pass the Declaration of
Independence [we switched the celebration to the day of the signing rather than
the day of approval]:
“The
second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to
believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great
anniversary festival. It ought to be
commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God
Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with
pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and
illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time
forward for evermore.”
Frederick
Douglass wrote (about 1855):
“What to
the American slave is your Fourth of July?
I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days fo the year
the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your
boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, your sound of
rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted
impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers
and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parades and
solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin
veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”
James
Madison weighed in with the comment: “The most common and durable source of
faction has been the various and unequal distribution of property.”
And, for
today at least, a final comment by theologian Krister Stendahl:
“The
Sermon on the Mount is actually a rebellious manifesto which gives to disciples
of Christ the right to break the Law in the name of Christ. But it is important to remember that it is
subversive, and that the disciple must be prepared to pay the price for such
action…The license…can only be appropriated in faith, and will always threaten
the equilibrium of God’s created world.”
Our “Founding Fathers” and Mothers were
prepared to and did “pay the price.” Are
we so committed?
Yours
& His,
DED
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