Tag Archives: Independence Day

Let Freedom Ring

Posted on July 3, 2016 | Leave a comment

Declaration of IndependenceMy husband and I are usually early to Mass, early to everything for that matter. This morning was no exception as we entered the spacious nave of our local parish church.

I was glad to be early, for the organ soon sounded a lilting prelude. The time is a precious one, the fifteen minutes in this gentle quiet, a hushed time that settles my heart and mind. It is a quarter of an hour that bridges the rushing noise of the world outside with the sacred space of the church inside. It bridges chattering thoughts demanding attention with silence and melody. Time enters eternity in this brief segment of time and I wanted eternity to enter my soul.

Today, especially, this Third of July, I wanted to pray extra thanks for tomorrow, the Fourth of July. I opened our Book of Common Prayer and began reading the Psalms appointed for this day, kneeling on the cushioned kneeler and glancing up to the bright chancel before me.

A worn red carpet led to the chancel steps and on to the marble altar and white-draped tabernacle. Bouquets of red, white, and blue carnations shared the altar with gilded candlesticks and flaming tapers. The red brick apse caught some of the morning light shafting from the skylights, light that illuminated the medieval wooden crucifix. The red, white, and blue, the band of light descending, the American flag draped to the left all seemed to express truth, beauty, and goodness.

As my eyes rested on the flag, I recalled why I was giving thanks.

Every Eucharist (Greek for thanksgiving) is a prayer-song of thanks, an offering of praise and glory to God for his great gifts, including freedom, and today was one of many Sunday thanksgivings. But Independence Day, remembered in our Prayer Book, is when church and state unite, for our church would not be here without the protection of the state.

True, history tells us that we are celebrating our independence from Great Britain. But the essence of that departure is the freedom to worship as we please. And freedom of worship is the daughter of free speech, free expression within the law. As long as we keep the peace, our Founders reasoned, we could express ourselves freely. Self expression has come to mean many things, but originally America was colonized by those pilgrims fleeing religious persecution. And so we hold this truth to be self-evident, that man should be allowed to worship God as he chooses.         

No longer could the elite dictate to the rest of us, for we Americans declared in writing on July 4, 1776 that, 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 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… “

We are created equal by our Creator. We have the right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. We have the right to withdraw or grant our consent to government action. 

The Declaration of Independence led to revolution and the creation of a sovereign nation. In the next years a Constitution and Bill of Rights (first ten amendments) limited government’s powers to those consented by the governed (1789). And so the First Amendment reads: 

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (Italics mine) 

And so I considered these things, these American things, as I knelt in the pew of our parish church, gazing at the stars and stripes of the flag. I knew such liberties were British too, going back to Magna Carta, but somehow they had been overruled in these American colonies. So, naturally, we expressed our dissent. 

The American flag stood appropriately between pulpit and altar, connecting these two threatened expressions of religion – word and sacrament. For we are men and women who express ourselves in many ways, with five senses, with bodies and minds, hearts and souls. Our Creator gave us imaginations enriching the human community with poetry and art, song and dance, love and longing. We are created whole persons by our Creator, known by him even in the womb, and are made holy by our Creator in Sunday worship. For he too expresses himself imaginatively (we were made in his image), creatively, for each one of us is unique. 

But perhaps the ultimate creative act of our Creator was to give us freedom. For in giving us the choice to love or not to love, he gave us the ability to define the outline of our souls, who we really are, who we desire to be. Free will, the greatest gift of love, opened a world of surprise, a Pandora’s box, allowing evil and suffering, disease and death into our world, so that in our last days, our last breaths, we see two doors, one to death and one to life. And even then we have the freedom to choose. 

I sat back in the polished oak pew and found the processional hymn #279. And as the crucifer and the torchbearers lead the clergy up the worn red carpet, I joined my brothers and sisters in song: “Praise to the Lord the Almighty the King of Creation….” The Mass began, the prayers were prayed, scripture and sermon were sounded, as the Holy Eucharist pulled us into eternity, into Love. 

It was good to be in church today, to celebrate our freedom of religion, to give thanks for our country’s founding. It was good to sing together, just before the sermon, Hymn 141: 

My country,’ tis of thee,  Sweet land of liberty,  Of thee I sing; 

Land where my fathers died,  Land of the pilgrims’ pride,  From every mountainside  Let freedom ring! 

My native country, thee,  Land of the noble free, Thy name I love; 

I love thy rocks and rills,  Thy woods and templed hills;  My heart with rapture thrills,  Like that above. 

Let music swell the breeze,  And ring from all the trees  Sweet freedom’s song; 

Let mortal tongues awake;  Let all that breathe partake;  Let rocks their silence break,  The sound prolong. 

Our fathers’ God, to thee,  Author of liberty, To thee we sing; 

Long may our land be bright With freedom’s holy light; 

Protect us by thy might,  Great God, our King. Amen.

 Samuel Francis Smith, 1832

 Indeed. Let freedom ring!

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The Land of the Free

Posted on July 7, 2014 | Leave a comment

american-flag-2a2As I watched the children running through the grass, clutching strings tied to red and blue and white balloons, I was thankful once again to be an American, to live in this land of the free. The burgers were grilling, the buns waiting to be slathered with mustard and catsup. Folks mingled and chatted, then scooted onto wooden picnic benches. It was our annual church picnic, enjoyed this year on Fourth of July weekend.

And so far, the last I heard, we are still the land of the free. As I watched the children, I thought as I often do, how law protects us, allowing these children to run with such abandon and joy. I then recalled a few lines from the movie A Man for All Seasons, where Sir Thomas More challenges the thinking of his son-in-law Will Roper:

Roper:  So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

More:  Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper:  I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

More:  Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast– man’s laws, not God’s– and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

Our national Independence Day is a time to reflect on who we are as Americans, the stuff we are made of, the values for which we fight, suffer, and die. And while freedom from tyranny comes to mind, considering how our fledgling family of thirteen colonies protested British taxation, I usually return to the principle of law and order, something we happily inherited from British common law.

We have inherited a great deal from Britain in spite of our young rebellion over two hundred years ago: language, literature, philosophy and religion; traditions, secular and sacred; the desire for monarchy as seen in our icons, political and cultural; freedom of speech, especially in the media, freedom of thought and belief; the rights of property and families and individuals.

On July 4, 1776, in the “unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America” we held certain truths to be self-evident: that all men were created equal, that God has given them the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that governments derive their power from the people, from the consent of the governed. And so to guarantee these truths, to protect the great heritage we received from Britain, and to thus ensure a peaceful democracy, the young union of States constituted a body of law.

Our nation would have not survived, will not survive, without the rule of law. Without laws, we, like young Roper, would have no protection from tyranny in all its forms, in all areas of our national life.

But changing the law is a tedious process. Perhaps this is wise, helping to ensure good laws. But we are a nation of do-ers, and we become impatient. We march with banners and placards year after year before the White House or the Supreme Court or Capitol Hill to challenge a 1973 law considered immoral and deadly not only to the individual and the unborn, but to our cultural climate as well. Killing the innocent, some of us cry, begets more killing of the innocent. Please change this law, we say with our signs and heartfelt tears.

We look to government to lead us and to govern with our consent. We demand they too be law abiding, knowing that if our governors are corrupt, so will be their governing. We demand of them what the law demands of us.

Internationally we are the saviors of the world. Immigrants throng to and over our borders, determined to touch and taste America, scrabbling over fences, tunneling under boundaries. Confident in America’s salvation, they give away their children, hoping they will have will have a better life, a peaceful life, or simply life itself. They are desperate, for they see us and other Western nations, as we truly are, the bearers of law and order, the protectors of freedom, the guarantors of peace.

And yet, they too must realize somewhere deep within that to break the law is to break America. To loosen and lessen, bend and broaden without the consent of the people is to invite disorder. And disorder leads to anarchy which demands, even welcomes, the bully, the tyrant, the one who promises to restore order, at a price. In America, these immigrants know as do we, that cutting ahead in line is unfair, simply wrong. And Americans are fair; they desire to right the wrongs.

So this year, this Fourth of July, 2014, I am thankful our nation is still undivided and that we still form a more perfect union, even if imperfect. I am thankful that our separation of powers (Congress, Courts, Presidency) though threatened, may right itself in the future. I am thankful that outrage may still be penned, if penned respectfully (with due regard to libel and slander), that the press’s freedoms are not always misused, that debate and dissent still breathes (although barely) in our land. I am especially thankful for the courageous men and women who fight for us, for our freedoms.

I am glad that God is not dead as has been pronounced, and that respect for all beliefs is honored if not always practiced.

I’m glad, too, that I for one do not take America for granted. I see her as exceptional, enlightened, and great. The rest of the world sees her this way, as a shining light that will not go out, a beacon on a hill. She may not be perfect, but she values life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. She rules with the consent of her people, a nation of rules that protects dissent as well.

And now as I write, I see in my mind (and my heart) the children running freely through the grass, their colorful balloons flying high.

Happy Birthday, America.

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On Freedom

Posted on July 1, 2013 | 1 comment

It is with a reflective pause that I approach this Fourth of July, 2013, for it seems to me we have never before faced so many threats to our freedoms as Christians and to our freedoms as Americans, as part of a culture steeped in a Judeo-Christian ethos.

The encroachments have been small and sliding, one here, one there, hard to trap, painful to face, difficult to define, control, and challenge. The most recent – the Supreme Court’s definition of marriage – has, I believe, harmed the traditional family and thus has harmed the Church, two pillars of our society. The answer perhaps is to change the naming, the wording, and call marriage “traditional marriage” and not simply marriage to separate it from other forms, for polygamy and incest will soon follow (there is no legal argument against either now). Either way, the government has decided to no longer support the traditional family as a vital institution in American society, one to be encouraged for the sake of the country.

Of course the family has been assaulted for many years, at least since the 1960s. The birth control pill divorced sex from procreation, and redefined marriage. We wanted our sexual freedom without responsibility. We wanted to marry and not necessarily have children. These desires naturally led to the right to kill those children in the womb. When we fell out of love, when the bliss settled into everyday reality, we embraced the chance to deny our marriage vows.

I have been divorced, and I know the heartache and trials that preclude, include, and result in divorce. I do not defend easy divorce – we must take stock seriously any act that threatens the family.

Yes, I pause each year and count our freedom-losses as we approach Independence Day. The Founders knew the importance not only of faith and family, but of free speech, and the harnessing of free speech is part of that  freedom-loss count. For language has been vandalized, truth has been put on trial, and in many cases Christians have been muzzled, afraid of offending.

If we deny our Judaic-Christian ethos, what have we as a nation? What rights, what freedoms are left to protect?

I read recently an article by Mary Eberstad, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, that was most encouraging. She believes that when we hit rock bottom and realize that the government cannot possibly afford all it promises, that it cannot replace the family as a social institution of caregivers and educators, passing on the values of our society, that the government will wake up and support the institution of family once again. We pray this will happen sooner than later, at least the realization, and that there will be an America still to protect and an institution of family still to revive.

So this year, I celebrate the freedoms we have left, which are many. Conservatives and Christians – Christian conservatives and conservative Christians – can still speak out. We can still meet in the public square. Our voice can be still be heard, even if faint, often muzzled and, more effectively, ridiculed. There is time, but the clouds gather. The pulpit is threatened, print is threatened, public education is threatened.

As a Christian, I believe what the Church says is true: God wins in the end. But I love my country, I love my culture, I love the freedom and creative energy of Americans. I love that someone like my husband, a “poor boy from East Oakland,” as he has often called himself, could rise in a major corporation through sacrifice and hard work.

But the values of sacrifice and hard work are part of this body of traditional values that is dying. Without marriage and the family this treasure will not be passed on to the next generation. Many of our public schools no longer teach those values or where they came from. They no longer teach American History, World History, the History of Western Civilization, the past that shows us what makes civilization civil. And what does make civilization civil? The Judeo-Christian heritage upon which our Founders founded our nation.

Many have fought for these values, many continue to fight around the world. Martyrs die daily for their faith. Soldiers lay down their lives.

We celebrate these men and women, and our Founders and our freedoms. We raise the flag on the Fourth of July. But we also kneel in prayer as never before.

Here’s to thee, America the Beautiful!

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