Our Declaration

Pastor’s Epistle—July 2022

A central contention of the morality of patriotism is that I will obliterate and lose a central dimension of the moral life if I do not understand the enacted narrative of my own individual life as embedded in the history of my country.

For if I do not understand it I will not understand what I owe to others or what others owe to me, for what crimes of my nation I am bound to make reparation, for what benefits to my nation I am bound to feel gratitude.

—Alasdair MacIntyre

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned on a number of occasions, I grew up in a home that placed a high value on patriotism—not an uncritical nationalism, mind you, but the sort of love of country heavy on history, education, community service, and a desire for us all to do better.

My parents were both public educators. We lived near several sites associated with the Revolutionary and Civil wars. We were active in Church and the Boy Scouts of America. My grandfather was a World War II veteran. My mother’s family were the descendants of Hessians. Our schools took field trips to see the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

Americana was everywhere, in our minds and hearts and homes. Still is, really. But as my parents taught me, a mature patriotism must never be “my country, right or wrong.” We must strive to love our country enough so as to be honest about its failings and hopeful for its future. Would this mindset be considered conservative or liberal? I could never quite tell. It just seemed like common sense.

In the wake of World War II, and even more so since the Gulf War, patriotism and militarism have largely merged into one in the public eye. It seems one can never celebrate an American holiday without it becoming a tribute to the Armed Forces. Flag Day, Constitution Day, Independence Day—none of these commemorate battles or wars. Yet they’re all wrapped up in the imagery of Uncle Sam and G.I. Joe.

I’m certainly not saying that we shouldn’t recognize Veterans Day, Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, and the like. But Independence Day isn’t about that. If it were, we’d do better to celebrate it come autumn, when we (along with the French) won the Battle of Yorktown. Rather, at the risk of stating the obvious, Independence Day celebrates the Declaration of Independence.

It is a remarkable document, a powerful statement of principles, honored more in the breach than in the observance. In truth, it cannot be said to have been taken seriously until Lincoln’s Second Inaugural toward the end of the Civil War—the Second Inaugural being another astonishing work that really ought to have its own day. I wish every American, amongst the customary hotdogs and fireworks, would read the Declaration aloud, in groups, to marvel at it, to internalize it. This is who we really ought to be.

It is not a Christian document, nor particularly religious, but it does talk rather poignantly about God and the assertion that inalienable human rights are divine, both in origin and nature. These ideas arose within a Christian and Enlightenment context.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes … But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security … And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

All men—male or female, slave or free, rich or poor, citizen or alien—are created equal and endowed with rights given by God, which they have both the freedom and the duty to defend. Liberty, equality, and fraternity trump the tyrannical claims of King and of Crown. One is tempted to draw a line from Mary’s Magnificat straight to the Declaration:

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. He has come to the aid of his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors.

I’m not saying that the United States is or ought to be a Christian country. But I do believe that those of us who happen to be both Christian and American have a duty to emphasize the highest and most divine ideals of our shared heritage—to “test all things and keep the good”—so that we might be the best of citizens, ever reaching out to our neighbor, ever lifting up the widow, the orphan, and the alien, recalling all the while that our true citizenship resides in a Kingdom not of this world.

Happy Independence Day. May Americans of every creed together form the community to which our Declaration still aspires.

In Jesus. Amen.