America did not merely declare independence on July 4, 1776. It conceived itself – us – as a whole new nation. Before the Continental Congress there had been no nation-like community waiting for the chance to throw off an alien ruler. There were only uncoordinated, even competing, British colonies. In declaring independence the signers announced a new “People,” identifying itself only as “we” who hold “self evident” truths: that all persons have unalienable rights and that government exists to secure them.
The creed gives us a type of identity that no one had ever chosen before, committing us in writing to principles that had never defined any nation. Rights had always been privileges granted by rulers, not baked-in features of every human; peoples had always been identified by race or religion or tradition, not by holding an abstract creed. This new nation conceived itself, in a body of thirteen disparate colonies, as a vessel of principle, a new idea in human experience.
This national definition has always faced a problem that any identity faces. Identity is a matter of the soul, and souls live in bodies. The body of colonies that declared itself a nation resided on conquered territory and practiced slavery. Bodies live in the sinful world, and America, like any nation, has sins to answer for. Many of ours, present and past, date from before we chose who we intend to be. But our particular choice commits us to address those particular sins.
The commitment can be taken at face value. Though many signers were slave owners, who cut Jefferson’s denunciation of slavery out of the document, they did not alter “all Men are created equal.” Some of them did alter that expression in their particular regions’ subsequent resolutions, saying ‘all free men” or some such. But they knew what they signed in Philadelphia, and we can hold them to that creed.
We must. Some call slavery and racism America’s original sin. But that term carries a sense of something that you can’t undo without negating your bodily existence, like our physical origins in our parents’ act of conception. We cannot allow such indelible status to slavery’s legacy; it would accept old habits originating from before our declaration, dating from times of ignorance and material want. We reject those habits for our existence and must not give racism that status. We can outgrow this, and if you look, we are trying. Hopefully everyone can work together to keep growing together; if not, we’re giving up on what we intend to be.
More difficult is what really does look like an original sin, the fact that the body of this country rests on conquered land. America does not take its soul identity from its territory, but a nation cannot live without it. Semi-consciously we do see the need to reconcile the injustices with the physical needs of national existence. Our conscience pangs show in the various programs and technical sovereignties and other measures that various Native American groups can tap. But no comprehensive settlement has been fashioned, and until then a shadow will hang over the question of our physical legitimacy. We need to commit to find one.
An identity housed in a body, for a nation just as for a person, is always a work in progress. It’s always stressful, always pulling in different directions, always forcing us to reckon with ugly traumas and legacies, rarely comfortable. But if we are beings with unalienable rights, we have the right to choose to live right, and we have open skies above, with no earthly power allowed to box us in. Our government is what we choose, and our pursuits are whatever we want them to be, as long as we respect our mutual interest in everyone’s rights. We can achieve an awful lot, and we have. And we can right our wrongs – everyone has wrongs to right.
A writer in London was quoted a few years back saying current racial unrest lays bare our hypocrisy. Yet he followed by saying – it is because “America holds itself to a higher standard” that people care what we do. That higher standard is not something anyone told us to follow. It is our commitment, signed in 1776 as national self-definition. Whether or not we intend it, we are leaders in this striving to meet an exceptional standard that we have set for ourselves.
We should remember that the work is difficult, and especially, if any of us feel the answers are obvious, that the creed gives no one a claim on righteousness. If you believe you have an answer, your job is to sell it to the others, not to override, or condescend to them. This creed on which we are founded is common ground, not to be misused as partisan political claim. Body and soul do not reconcile by arguing.
The “Star Spangled Banner” makes for an interesting reflection in this light. It was written by a slave owner, and some language after the first verse is downright hateful. But that first verse, if you actually read it, is a single question. In one sense it simply asks if the flag is still up. As we know though, it asks if the flag still waves “o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Forget about the rockets and bombs. Whether this is the land of the free and the home of the brave is a question we should always ask. We commit to keep the answer “yes,” but should always check ourselves. Checking ourselves can be even harder than singing the notes under “land of the free.” Striving to live up to our chosen identity is never easy, and the ideals that we choose would not mean anything if it was. But we have chosen unalienable rights of all persons as our defining commitment, and that’s worth it all.
Common Conviction 