America’s Independence-the mutual dependence of faith and liberty

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died within hours of one another fifty years to the day after the Second Continental Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence. Was that “a remarkable coincidence” or a providential exclamation point? Though today we think of July 4 as the day on which we celebrate the fateful step that severed Great Britain from the thirteen colonies that would become the United States of America, that act of Congress actually took place on July 2. July 4 was the day the Congress adopted The Declaration of Independence, the statement drafted to explain its action to the American people and the rest of the world. Given the roles Jefferson and Adams played in the drama that eventually produced the United States, we could surmise that the coincidence of their death put a Divine imprimatur on a truth sadly forgotten these days. The successful assertion of American liberty, for which Adams worked so strenuously, was and is inseparable from the justifying moral ideas Jefferson is famous for putting into words.

For much of our history the American people have been well known for their plain spoken practicality. Yet their national identity cannot be defined without reference to their freedom, i.e., the condition of political liberty that could not have been established or sustained apart from the moral and intellectual understanding expressed in the Declaration of independence. Ancient Greece had its philosophers, Rome its men of war and conquering laws. China has its meticulous administrators, and the kingdoms of Europe their courtly ways and pompous nobility. But in more than just its anthem, the United States of America has been the land of the free.

But in the first era of its existence, that fact of freedom strove for and against the all too common and prevalent reality of human slavery and repression. Though we take for granted now the crisis of conscience that culminated in the American Civil War, we would be wiser, and our liberty today more secure, if we every day reminded ourselves that the pairing of liberty and justice is not at all so amicable as our modern pledge of allegiance takes it to be. When superior abilities and pride are free to work their will, they have more often than not produced in government not justice, but long eras of thwarted and wronged humanity. When resentment against such wrongs eventually rouses the people with a cry for justice, it is all too often but a wishful prelude to abuses of power that exact revenge rather than justice, and that lead to excesses so evident and disturbing that the people abandoning, their appetite for such freedom, rush into the grip of anyone who promises to be a reliable tyrant.

The American founding offers the unique historic example of an instance in which the resentment against injustice was not first articulated in some angry uprising of the people against their oppressors. Rather it was expressed by people of superior ability and pride, speaking the language of reasonable right and justice. Some of them had great wealth, many of them led enviably prosperous and comfortable lives. They might have done well for themselves had they been content merely to seek ratification in the New World of the rights and privileges their rank would have conferred upon them in the Old.

Not a few members of the articulate elite at the time were quite content to so do. With strenuous arguments, they rejected or opposed compatriots they saw as rabble-rousers, waving the red flag of specious liberty before the face of people without the breeding or disposition to use it wisely. But their contempt for the people came at a time in the New World when the common sense of natural reason mingled with the appreciation of justice God had by that time placed within the reach of every human being.  The one arose from at least the time when Plato sought with logic to reform the arbitrary rule of ancient gods; the other from the moment when, by his life, love and true sacrifice Jesus Christ reformed the heart of modern humanity. Some who put their faith in God-given reason joined with others who acted by reason of their faith in God, to assert the common truths they all agreed to be self-evident. These were rooted in the primordial truth that God shared His liberating gift of creation equally with all who could, by nature and by conscious choice, lay claim to the title of humanity.

There are many reasons for the grim crisis of liberty America faces today. But I think none of them is more fundamental than the fact that we have allowed ourselves to forget the alliance of faithful reason and reasoned faith in which our free way of life was conceived. On account of that alliance, the people could be trusted to remember the thirst for justice that makes them rebel against wrong. On account of that alliance, the proud, superior few could be trusted to remember the reliance upon justice that allows them to be justly celebrated as part of an honorable community. Neither resentment nor vainglory will be satisfied with this balance between the many and the few, the individual and the whole. But the many will know decent peace, and the dignity of rights respected. The achievers will know decent adulation and the satisfaction of honorably recognized worth.

It’s a sad comment on human history that such a fair to middling way of life has not been the reliable norm. But as we bask in the afterglow of our Independence Day, can’t we be encouraged by the thought that if, in this generation, we too can be successful in our fight to preserve these blessings of liberty, we will have done our bit to affirm that it is a reliable hope, and what is more, the reliable intention of the God who made us free.

Related posts:

1. America seeks liberty and justice for all, not “ascendancy” over them
2. To save America, first vote out all the Democrats

Tagged as: Declaration of Independence, John Adams, July 4, Thomas Jefferson