Is the collect for Independence Day racist?
Lord God Almighty, in whose Name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord - the collect for Independence Day, TEC BCP 1979.
It is with some reserve that laudable Practice enters into the debate surrounding the TEC collect for Independence Day. I am, after all, a loyal subject of Her Majesty the Queen. I am an admirer of the Loyalist parsons Jonathan Boucher, Charles Inglis, and Samuel Seabury. And "every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies or rites of the Church ordained only by man's authority, so that all things be done to edifying": this, in other words, is a matter for Protestant Episcopalians in the United States of America.
There are, however, wider and significant theological issues at stake in this debate. The liturgical observance of civic and national events has a long history within Anglicanism, rooted in a theological vision of a gathering up of all life in Christ, including civic and national life. Civic and national life is a gift from God, a means of human flourishing, fostering solidarity, and rightly ordering communal life. It is right, therefore, that this is given liturgical expression.
One of the consequences of Original Sin is that all polities share in its disordering of communal life, in the injustices that scar and pervert every polity. To give thanks for civic and national life is not to ignore such sins. It is, in fact, to point to them, for when we give thanks for those aspects of a polity which are rightly ordered, which give expression to the vocation to order its affairs in justice, we also expose the injustices, the evils, the failures in the life of the polity.
The very contradiction inherent in giving thanks that "our fathers won their liberties of old" exposes the sin of slavery and the vile legacy of segregation and racism, while also recalling the American Republic to a renewed and deepened understanding of those "liberties". That these "liberties" have a deeper and more profound meaning and application than perceived by the Founders is not only historically unsurprising, for Christians it is an obvious outworking of the Original Sin which obscures and wounds our reason. They can, then, be understood as they were by Frederick Douglass in his searing 1852 speech, 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?":
drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions.
We might suggest that the 1928 collect is rather superior at this point to 1979. The reference to "our fathers" can be read as rather more inclusive than "the founders". "Our fathers" can be taken to include Absalom Jones and Frederick Douglass, those African-American Union soldiers who fought against the slave power, those who over generations challenged the evils of segregation, and those who led and shared in the struggles of the Civil Rights movement. It is possible, of course, to similarly interpret "the founders" in the 1979 collect to include those who re-founded the Republic after the Civil War and again with the deconstruction of segregation.
The petition "may have grace to maintain these [1979: "our"] liberties in righteousness and peace" has been interpreted by some as giving licence to white supremacy, as if this petition equates to a desire to maintain the order of 1787 with its injustices. But this cannot be. The petition opens with the Christocentric "grace" and concludes with the great prophetic phrase "righteousness and peace". It is in this context that the "liberties" of the American Republic are understood by the collect: the "grace" of God which cannot be limited or restrained without heresy or blasphemy, the "righteousness and peace" which finds expression in "every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid".
Criticism of the Independence Day collect too often begins by accepting as legitimate a racist reading of the collect. Too often "our fathers" and "we" are read according to the false beliefs of ethnic nationalism, rather than according to the Scriptural norms which overthrow the false power of race by declaring that Abraham "is the father of us all". Too often "maintain these liberties" is read with the slavers and the segregationists, rather than from within the tradition of Christian humanism and its affirmation of the God-given dignity of all people. Such an interpretation is akin to accepting the definition of France given by the Vichy regime and its Integralist supporters, rather than that represented by De Gaulle, La Résistance, Jean Daniélou, and Henri de Lubac.
What is more, the Scripture readings provided for Independence Day provide a means of rightly interpreting the collect. The 1928 reading for the Epistle (and 1979's Old Testament reading), Deuteronomy 10:17ff, evokes themes superbly explored in Marilynne Robinson's essay 'Open Thy Hand Wide: Moses and the Origins of American Liberalism', that the good and just polity is characterised by "a recurrent, passionate insistence on bounty or liberality, mercy and liberality, on being kind and liberal, liberal and bountiful". 1979's Epistle, Hebrews 11:8-16, is a reminder that the earthly city must always look towards - and is judged by - "the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God". As for the Gospel reading, Matthew 5:43ff, its closing words are the profoundest of challenges to any polity: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect". These appointed readings ensure that any notion of a racist reading of the collect for Independence Day is confronted, judged, and refuted by Holy Scripture, ministered from the lectern and pulpit.
The PECUSA/TEC collect for Independence Day stands in the best tradition of Anglican liturgical observance of civic and national events. It - together with the appointed readings - offers a means of rightly ordering the natural love of country, mindful that grace does not destroy but perfects nature. A resentful, negative commemoration of Independence Day would further banish Episcopalianism/Anglicanism in the United States into an even greater cultural irrelevance precisely because it would be a failure to recognise the natural love of country, and a refusal of the Church's mission to seek to rightly order this natural love after God's goodness, justice, and righteousness. In doing so, it would contribute to the perception in the public square that Christianity can only offer either an Anabaptist enthusiasm which refuses to recognise and sustain the good of civic and national life (contrary to Articles 37, 38, and 39) or the grotesque, irrational enthusiasm of a Christian nationalism which characterises 'Freedom Sunday'. At a time when the American Republic needs a thoughtful, reasoned Christian account of civic and national life, the Independence Day collect should be used and cherished as a means of praying for and seeking after a more perfect Union.
Comments
Post a Comment