As we begin this Independence Day holiday weekend, I must confess that my mood has been far from celebratory. During the past two weeks, the Supreme Court of the United States has handed down decisions that strip Haitians and Syrians of their temporary protected status, permitted Customs and Border Patrol to turn away asylum seekers at the Mexico-US border, increased the power of the President to fire members of Independent Government Agencies for no cause and disregarded the rights of transgendered women. Even the decision to protect birthright citizenship was passed –but by the narrowest of margins — 5 to 4.
In 1852, Frederick Douglass was invited to speak at a 4th of July gathering. The most famous part of his speech begins, “What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?” He answered his own question with, “I answer: A day that reveals to him more than all other days of 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, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade 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.”
Frederick Douglass’s words resonate into our century. Like him, I find little about this holiday that inspires me to celebrate or be proud to be a citizen of the United States. In fact, I have grieved. For every migrant detained by ICE, every detainee deported to a Central American prison, every protester arrested and charged with terrorism, every black and brown person gerrymandered out of voting power, every woman passed over for promotion, and every trans person discharged from military service, the words declaring American greatness and glory are hollow and empty. What to them is this Fourth of July?
As people of faith, we are called to truth, honest reflection, humble confession, repentance and repair. We are not the nation we claim to be. But we are not completely lost. When the kings of Israel strayed from God’s commands and led God’s people into idolatry, God — through the prophets — called out and preserved a remnant that sought God’s face and turned from the nation’s evil. May we be that remnant today.
Hymn-writer, Carolyn Winfrey Gillette was asked to write a song by Sojourner’s for this Fourth of July, entitled “In This Time of Great Reflection.” She has said that the hymn lifts up the theme of a sermon preached by Puritan John Winthrop in 1630— just prior to the Mayflower’s voyage across the Atlantic to the New World. In his sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity,” Winthrop referenced Matthew 5:14, reminding his fellow Puritans that they were the “city on a hill that could not be hidden.” He was not suggesting that they or the Massachusetts Bay Colony they would establish was exceptional or destined to greatness. Instead, he was warning them that as a city on a hill, “the eyes of the world are upon [them]”. Would the world see a people committed to doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God? Would the world see love of God and love of neighbor? If not, Winthrop warned, “if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause [God] to withdraw [God’s] present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world”.
Douglass’s honest assessment, Winthrop’s warning, and Gillette’s prayer hymn are sober reminders that on this 250th Anniversary of our independence, we, the people, have a choice to make about who we want to become and about the values and ideals that will guide us into the future. Let’s choose with sound judgment. Otherwise, we are destined — not to glory — but to be “a story or a byword” and a “cautionary tale.”
Tongue on Fire 