The United States will soon commemorate its 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
It’s a date more worthy of humble reflection than triumphant celebration.
The 56 men who signed the Declaration were signing their own death warrants — if the war was lost, they would hang.
A sobering reminder.
Which leaders today would sign such a document?
The opening sentence of the Declaration should give us pause.
“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…”
Today…
- to what, and
- from whom
have our political bands have become so disconnected?
We need only look at the state of our world to answer that question.
The entire world has grown sour on a nation so self-obsessed.
How could it be otherwise when parochial passions run so hot and selfish interests so dominate our daily discourse?
Something has changed in America —
- leaders don’t lead
- citizens don’t sacrifice
- the wealthy don’t share
Moreover, who, exactly, does the American government serve?
But this crisis of faith is not new.
Travel back in time with me to 1838 and the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois where a young Abraham Lincoln set forth his own declaration on the great crisis of his time — slavery — which was tearing the country apart in a toxic fury.
Lincoln wrote:
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?
By what means shall we fortify against it?
Expect it from across the ocean?
Never!
All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined…could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?
I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
As a nation we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
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Indeed, suicide nearly came to the nation in a bloody civil war in which 650,000 countrymen perished.
Keeping faith can be a deadly business.
Another hard day of reckoning came 80 years later, this time in the form of nationwide economic collapse.
On March 4, 1933 Franklin Roosevelt stepped forth in his first Inaugural address to rekindle faith in America:
This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.
Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.
So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
He went on to attack the “rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods” and the “unscrupulous money changers,” asserting that they had “fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.” By identifying a clear cause for the misery, he gave the public a reason to have faith rather than wallow in defeat.
The address lasted only about twenty minutes,
But its impact was immediate.
- leaders led
- citizens sacrificed
- wealth was shared
A nation reclaimed its faith and was soon called upon to fight a war on behalf of all humanity.
Now as we face a reckoning every bit as challenging and are faced with the same questions:
- Will leaders lead?
- Will people sacrifice?
- Will the nation rise up?
Let Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg rekindle our faith.
It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
That we here highly resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government
- of the people,
- by the people,
- for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.”
Just a thought…
Pat
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Mark Pearson has a message for us on keeping faith after 250 years.
“My faith in the spirit of song and singing remains simple and strong. On October 15, 1969, along with hundreds of thousands of others, I marched around the White House singing “We Shall Overcome” believing if we sang loud enough, walked far enough, and had faith strong enough that peace would surely come. All these years later I no longer sing in hopes of moving mountains but in the faith that if love fills the spirit of our songs and singing when we go into those mountains, we shall be moved.”