Today is the Fourth of July, the celebration of the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain, our national birthday. From the beginning, we have been a nation of contradictions. The Declaration of Independence speaks of liberty, but slavery was common. Our ancestors wanted freedom from British tyranny, but were quick to impose their own tyranny and even genocide upon the Native American tribes that got in the way of our Manifest Destiny.
Coming late to the rush for international colonies, we declared war on Spain and grabbed most of their colonies and waged a bloody and genocidal war against the people of Phillipines who expected us to honor our promise to grant them independence.
Meanwhile at home, Jim Crow and “Separate but Equal” (which was really separate and unequal) institutionalized racial prejudice.
But this isn’t all the story. Along the way we run into people like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Mother Jones, and the Rev. Martin Luther King who called us to rise as a nation to meet the challenge of our founding rhetoric. Great mass movements founded unions and established workers’ rights, ending child labor and eradicating many of the routine cruelties of the early 20th century workplace. Another mass movement ended Jim Crow segregation.
Going into the 21st century, we somehow seem to have lost our way. The energy and idealism of the mass movements of the 20th century have been dissipated. Divide and conquer have been the greatest weapon of the corrupt aristocracies of wealth and power that have always opposed every movement towards expanding the rights of all people and ending the looting of the wealth of the people by the people of power. They’ve been very successful, and this explains a lot about why our nation is presently on the fast track to the ash heap of history. We the people took our Prozac and went to sleep and stopped paying attention to what was going on and we see the results of our indifference all around us.
Absent divine intervention, the only thing that can save us from the ash heap of history is another mass movement that seriously challenges the aristocracy of wealth, and establishes structures of peace and justice. I think though that this mass movement will be different from those of the past. We won’t see big national leaders and it won’t be organized from the top down. It will grow — indeed, it IS growing “even as we speak” — organically, from the grassroots of our society.
Every time we refuse to listen to the lies of politicians and bankers, every time we plant an organic garden, every time we buy food directly from farmers, every time we pay off our debts, every time we turn to God in prayer, every time we stand in solidarity with the oppressed, every time we defend the defenseless, every time we do the works of mercy, justice, and peace, we move towards redeeming ourselves from the doom that awaits us.
Will it be enough? Who knows. That’s not our job to figure out. Our job is to disern our vocation in this movement of peace, justice, and the care of Creation, and then to fulfill that vocation as best we can. God calls us to faithfulness. How will we respond?
Cross-posted to On Pilgrimage in Oklahoma City.