Independence Day

Today, the U.S. celebrates 245 years of its independence.  Still a relatively young nation, the U.S. has long projected itself first as a, then as the major world power, with a particularly powerful and attractive narrative that once appealed to people to come here from all over the world, among them my own grandparents.

As John Adams famously wrote, Independence Day "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 Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more." Sadly, I suspect that far too few "solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty" will mark this holiday. (The U.S. edition of the Roman Missal does provide a proper Mass for Independence Day, which I will celebrate tomorrow). How easy it has become for Americans to forget the necessary prerequisites for a moral community and, in the U.S. case, how that ultimate expression of American exceptionalism, "a city on a hill," has an explicitly Christian origin and makes sense only in that context. In applying that New Testament image to the Puritan colony in New England in 1630, John Winthrop challenged settlers in this new land:

"We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “may the Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going." 

No wonder, signer of the Declaration of Independence (and third President of Princeton) John Witherspoon said that one "is the best friend to American liberty who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion.”

That said, we can in any case certainly expect the rest of Adams' proposed festivities in glorious abundance as we celebrate today not only our historical independence from the British Empire but our present independence from the covid pandemic and more than a year of personal and social restrictions. The desire to celebrate today is understandably almost universal.

Less frequently quoted is the continuation of what Adams wrote. "You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.”

As Adams well understood, it would take lots of "Toil and Blood and Treasure" for his small minority of American colonists (certainly less than half, maybe merely a third) to impose their will on both their fellow colonists (not to mention on the Native and African Americans they were sharing the space with) and on the mighty British Empire, well on its way by then to being the world's greatest naval power and at that time (after the French and Indian War) also the preeminent land power in North America. Adams also understood, as his collaborators in the subsequent and equally challenging task of forming an actual nation from 13 fractious former colonies (and then actually governing it) did, what "Toil and Blood and Treasure" it would take to create and maintain vibrant and stable political institutions that could endure the multiple stresses of the next two centuries and more.

We who are the beneficiaries of all that "Toil and Blood and Treasure" - most of us descendants of subsequent migrations of immigrants or else immigrants ourselves - must also understand the challenges involved in maintaining a stable and successful society in this very changed world. As the current "infrastructure" debate has highlighted and so many commentators in recent years have lamented, this country that once led the world in innovation and landed the first man on the moon is increasingly incapable of accomplishing much of anything or even trying - a dangerous state of affairs indeed as we face the full force of climate change, which is challenging us to change our ways right now. Additionally, the solidifying of our cultural divisions and political polarization, the increasing and rapid deterioration of democratic and constitutional norms among so many of our fellow citizens, and the increasing and rapid abandonment by one of our political parties of previous presumptions about democracy and constitutionalism, highlight how precarious our situation has become, how imperiled the national project Adams and his collaborators set in motion 245 years ago. 

In the musical Hamilton, King George III presciently foresees the fundamental challenges facing the new country and warns "they will tear each other into pieces."

Thanks to our cultural conflicts, political polarization, and social separation into mutually antagonistic communities no longer ready to recognize one another as fellow citizens with a common purpose, we are today, to paraphrase Lincoln, engaged in a cultural, political, and social civil war, testing whether this nation, so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

Let us pray that it does. Let us pray that we will rediscover the challenges of citizenship that energized previous generations of Americans, while there is still time.