by Cecilia Kingman Miller, Summer Minister

A sermon given July 6, 2003

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

I love the Fourth of July.  I truly do.  Every Independence Day, I make it a practice to read the Declaration of Independence out loud, to my family and anyone else who will hold still.  Some years I get on a tear and read not only that great document, but also the Preamble to the Constitution and yes, occasionally I’ve been known to read the Federalist Papers.  Usually I reserve that as punishment for any whining from my assembled guests—or perhaps we should call them my victims. 

Why this fuss?  Why such fervent patriotism?  I was raised to revere the commemoration of our fight for Independence, heard the stories—literally at my mother’s knee—of those women and men who pinned their hopes on—and risked their lives for—the dream of self-rule.  My heart never fails to soar when I hear the national anthem, or when I sing “America the Beautiful.”

Ardent patriotism is both in fashion and out of fashion these days.  A certain simplistic patriotism, what more rightly would be called nationalism, is on the rise these last two years.  This kind of fervor is quickly reduced to a “my country, right or wrong” flag-waving impulse.  A patriotism that has militaristic, triumphalist overtones, one that at times goes far enough to stifle dissent—that’s in fashion now.  It’s this brand of American pride that sends many of us scurrying, has us struggling when the National Anthem is played at baseball games, and complicates our celebrations of Independence Day.

But that’s not the patriotism upon which this country was founded.  Today, I’d like to reconstruct the virtues of a nuanced and critical patriotism, a patriotism founded on certain ideals that our own Unitarian Universalist faith shares.

You see, it’s more than family custom that calls me to this intensity of feeling.  The reason I love this holiday so dearly, and practice what might be called a religious devotion on July Fourth, is because I believe in the dream of democracy.  Democracy is in fact the religion to which I belong. 

I am a Unitarian Universalist precisely because this faith is grounded in democratic principles, and our religious forbears were influential in establishing this nation on the self-same principles of freedom and tolerance.  My religion can no longer be separated from my actions as a citizen—they are one and the same.  And I set my eyes on the example of our early religious leaders, whose courage and fidelity were likewise grounded in our free faith. 

There is much historical evidence to show that had this nation’s religious base not been undergoing a profound shift towards Unitarianism just prior to the War for Independence, there might have been no revolution, and certainly the scope of protected freedoms would have been greatly limited.  Many Unitarians and their friends pushed the boundaries of state-protected rights far beyond what had currency at that time, and their doing so was a manifestation of their religious beliefs. 

Who were these religious forbears, and what influence did they wield during those heady days of the young nation?  Let me read to you just a few of these names—people who were either espoused Unitarians, were accused of being Unitarian, or who attended our early churches and were sympathetic to our free faith:

Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Rush, James Freeman, John Quincy Adams, Abigail Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and many, many more.  Later in our history came Horace Mann, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Margaret Fuller, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Horace Greeley and so many more. 

But in those early days of this nation, people like Jefferson and Madison, the framers of democracy, were striking out for shores no one had yet seen.  There was a struggle going on both inside and outside the churches—a struggle between those who would declare the mind and the conscience free, and those who would fetter the human soul to the dictates of an external authority. 

The Reformation had not yet ended (indeed, it has not ended yet today) and the far flank, what scholars call the Radical Reformation, was surging through the young colonies.  The urge for civil self-rule arose out of the ideas of the religious reformation: that a person can think for themselves, and that no one ought to hamper the free mind and heart of another person—these religious ideas naturally affected the conception of citizenship as well. 

If a person were free to judge Scripture and spirituality for themselves, then it follows that they might want to judge the state of society as well.  And once the idea of inherent rights and freedoms was introduced into the religious sphere, there was no way to contain its application in the civic realm. 

Listen to a few voices:

 “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it.  We have staked the future upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves.”  James Madison

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”  Thomas Jefferson

“God grant that not only the Love of Liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of [humankind] may pervade all the nations of the earth.”  Benjamin Franklin

And the brilliant Unitarian preacher Theodore Parker, who first wrote the phrase made famous by President Lincoln: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

These men, and many other people, were afire with a dream of self-rule, of self-determination.  And they were willing to risk their lives for this cause.  When the Continental Congress gathered on that fateful day in Philadelphia, and put their signatures to the Declaration of Independence, they knew they could just as well be signing their own death warrants.  Their treasures, their families, their own heads were all at stake on this patriot’s dream: of freedom and democracy. 

Who more than self their country loved, the song goes.  And mercy more than life. 

As A. Powell Davies wrote:

“The time for change had ripened.  The day of the supremacy of king and priest had passed. […] The religion of fear and bondage was declining.  The higher religions of liberty and [community], the religion that said that all [people] are endowed by their Creator with the same freedom, the same inalienable rights, […] the religion of courage, not surrender; of inclusiveness, not restriction—this religion was claiming the New World today and seemed likely to spread through the rest of the world tomorrow.”

The religion of liberty, Davies called it.  Scholars of civil society assert that there is in fact what we could call a “civil religion” in the United States—a religion not housed in churches but in our public institutions, and that this religion is what Jefferson, Madison and the others practiced.  It is the religion of democracy.  They also assert that it is this democratic religion that most Americans practice today.

If this sounds odd to you, think about the markers of religion from a sociological perspective: there is usually a creed, sacred texts, a shared language, and often pilgrimage sites. 

The creed of this civil religion is the principles of democracy, including the rights of the people to govern themselves, the freedoms inherent in human existence, and the importance of an informed citizenry.  G.K. Chesterton once joked that America is the only nation ever founded on a creed.  Most countries locate their identity in ethnicity, geography or culture.  Our nation was founded on an idea: Democracy.

And we have our sacred texts: the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights.  Lest you disagree here, first listen to these phrases: 

When, in the course of human events…

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…

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…

Don’t these words still stir your blood—even after all this time?  Even if you have seen their betrayal, or betrayed them yourself—don’t you long to see their fulfillment? 

Think about the reverence we have for those documents, such that we refer to them as ultimate authority over and above any other.  A shared language arises from those documents, one that informs our literature and our music. 

We even have hymns to go with this civic religion, with words like “the land of the free,” or—and how many of you remember this one: “Columbia the gem of the ocean”…whose rousing chorus sings out “Thy banners make tyranny tremble, when borne by the red, white and blue.” 

Or the tender ballad, ironically set to “God Save the King,”  “My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.”  Sweet land of liberty. 

And of course, we also have pilgrimage sites: Every year, people take their children and make the trek to Washington, D.C. Like pilgrims going to Jerusalem or Mecca, they come to stand on the steps of the Capital Building, stating firmly to their children the principles of one person, one vote. 

And they weave in long lines for hours, just to catch a glimpse of our sacred texts and relics at the National Archives.  The Constitution, the Declaration, kept under dim light to protect the original papers, their likenesses are sold at the gift shop much as pieces of bone or small crosses are sold at the tombs of saints.

And we even have scholars as serious and authoritative as any Talmudic expert: those constitutional scholars whose life work it is to comment upon the original texts and the author’s intent, so that the rest of us may understand the right path we are to follow.

Finally, a bit less playfully, but most significantly, religions offer a worldview, a way of organizing reality so that it makes sense.  Our civil religion does just this, by framing our understanding of human existence in concepts of rights and freedoms.  We are unwavering in this—we cannot easily imagine a different worldview.

And violations of the democratic order offend us as much as any venal sin, if not more. 

Or at least, they should.  For lately, we have gotten sloppy in our democracy.  Like many religious faithful, we want the benefits without the work.  We want our prayers answered without hours spent on our knees, our goddess Liberty to be benevolent without making sacrifices upon her altar. 

We know that democracy requires an informed and active citizenry, or it will fail.  Yet we remain, largely, ill-informed and inactive.  Many of us have expressed our concerns about the direction this nation is heading, and we rent our clothing, gnash our teeth and wail like mourners of old about the demise of our freedoms. 

People, our grief is premature.  Now is not the time to toss earth upon the grave of the goddess Liberty.  Democracy, like God, is not dead, just wounded.  And the only way that we shall see her strong, safe and secure is if we exercise her principles. 

You know the tasks: Speak. Write. Vote.  Call for truth and mercy.  We must place our own comfort and perhaps even at some point our own security upon the altar of freedom, if the dream of democracy is to flourish. 

Just maybe, for those of us on the Religious Left, the thing we most need to sacrifice on that altar is the luxury of our cynicism.  The luxury of our cynicism.  There’s no time for cynicism.  There never was.  If, as James Madison said, we have staked the future upon the capacity of each and every one of us to govern ourselves, then govern we must. 

The curious experiment that is American democracy is still young, and has not seen its final fulfillment.  We are no longer the only place in which democracy is practiced, and we can see in the various forms it now takes around the world a wider expression than our forbears ever dreamed. 

But all eyes remain on the American experiment.  We have been that city on a hill—to deny that is wrong, and to let our own democracy fail through laziness or fear is to betray not only our own heritage, but also the dreams of all those who are not yet free. 

And we, as Unitarians, have a particular charge to fulfill.  Our religion must gird us for our citizenship, just as it did for our martyrs in Europe four hundred years ago, and just as it did two hundred and thirty years ago when those early Unitarian and Universalist forbears put their lives and treasures at stake on their patriot’s dream. 

How much do we love justice, and freedom, and mercy?  More than our selves?  I think so.  I know so. 

Let us then practice this beloved civic religion called democracy.  Let us live its precepts daily, with courage and fidelity.  Let us live up to the charge given us by Edward Everett Hale, Unitarian minister and Senate chaplain in the 1800s, who said:

“For your life and mine, today, and tomorrow, if we wish to maintain a republic, we must keep in mind our own part in living up to the ideas of our forbears.  This is not because they are the ideas of the forbears, but because they are infinite ideas.  They represent the eternities…they rest on absolute religion, the religion in which all people are of one blood, every person is a child of God, and the burdens of one of us are the burdens of all.”  

May it be so, my friends.  Amen.

PRAYER

Holy One, spirit of love and truth, we come before you each week with prayers for a peaceful and just world.  Help us to find courage and strength in the building of our communities and our nation.  Help us to seek mercy and justice.  And help us to remember that we do not walk this path alone, but with one another, hand in hand all of our days.  Amen.

Note: I’ve preserved the original language of the founding documents, but some quotes, including Hale’s, were paraphrased for inclusivity.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Copyright 2003, Cecilia Kingman Miller, Summer Minister.  All rights reserved.