July 4, 2005
Rev. Dr. Frank Carpenter,
D.Min.
St. John's Unitarian Universalist Church, Cincinnati, OH
Tomorrow, July 4, 2005, is the 229 anniversary of the passage of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress. We hear once again the language:
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles [LINK]
While equality and democracy were lifted up, perhaps some realized then that such language excluded – either explicitly or implicitly – various groups such as women, poor people, African Americans and indigenous nations. Acknowledging the need, however perceived, “to form a more perfect union,” the Constitution was approved by the Congress in 1787. The Northwest Ordinance had made clear the westward course of empire and that the Ohio River would be the boundary between slave and free states. (Alfred W. Blumrosen & Ruth G. Blumrosen, SLAVE NATION, Naperville, IL, 2005)
July 4th is a national birthday party. As a significant event, calling for more than ballons, cake and ice cream, it is similar to a religious celebration. In the Christian tradition, the Eucharist, or communion service is the central ritual. One of the great splits in the Christian church is the meaning of ‘the Lord’s Supper.” Some consider communion a remembrance of the ministry and values of Jesus. It is a time to hold up the teachings of Jesus and call for recommitment to his work. The other understanding is called transubstantiation: worshipers partake of the literal flesh and blood of divinity. Identification with divinity can be quite inspiring as a mystical practice. However, when identification with divinity is literal, political: mundane differences are aggravated.
So it seems we may consider our national birthday as either a time to recall the values of the founders of our nation, or we can see it as a time when our nation renews its identification with divinity. It seems to me that the great danger facing our nation today is that we are forgetting the values of founders, and indulging in identification with divinity. This identification with divinity by Americans is called, “American exceptionalism.’ It is this American exceptionalism, American identification with divinity, which calls for our attention this morning of July 3rd, 2005.
There is nothing exceptional about Exceptionalism. Most groups, - nations, tribes, races, and ethnicities, appear to consider themselves god’s chosen people. As for us as Unitarian Universalists, I like to think of us not as a chosen people, but as a choosing people.
American Exceptionalism proclaims this nation is chosen of God. But who doesn’t? When a group of us from St. John’s were in Transylvania during this past April, it was quite clear that Unitarianism in Transylvania is an aspect of their group identity. An article in the most recent Journal of UU History on the Edict of Torda by the Unitarian king of Transylvania in the 16th century, complains that an obstacle to understanding Unitarianism in Hungary is its identification with Hungarian nationalism.
There is nothing exceptional about Exceptionalism. Team pride, patriotism and religion are easily confused and go awry under the specter of exceptionalism.
A group considers itself the chosen people to buy into certain energies and privileges. Whether it was Pharaoh or Caesar, emperors where gods on earth. It is the greatest irony of history that the one religion which sought to expose this foolishness, the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, ended up the justification for the Roman Empire. How Christianity got from the non-violent rabbi Jesus to the militant Emperor Constantine has never been adequately explained. But one thing clearly had to happen along the way. Unitarianism, the concept that Jesus was not identical with god, was anathematized, and still is in most churches to this day. Exceptionalism is an equal opportunity fantasy.
There is nothing exceptional
about exceptionalism. Today, American exceptionalism is having a hey day. It
is interesting to note what gives rise to this teaching. Is it possible that
the Emperor Constantine had no clothes, the ancient gods of the Roman Republic
no longer covered him? So he needed some new ideology? Was the adoption of Christianity
a sign that the Roman Empire was in decline, that it had once risen and by his
time was falling?
When does American exceptionalism become prominent?
Consider when Billy Graham made his great arrival on the American scene. He had already pitched a large tent for a revival meeting in Los Angeles, and it began, coincidentally, a few days after President Truman's announcement about Moscow's development of an atomic bomb. Just then, on Oct. 1, the Communists officially took over China, news that hit Americans like a thudding second shoe of the apocalypse. People flocked to Graham's sermons as they never had before. Los Angeles attendance ultimately numbered well over 300,000. A star was born, and so was a crusade, as James Carrol recenlty has written in the BOSTON GLOBE. [LINK]
Consider a more recent threat to our national identity, 9/11: Jerry Falwell and among others, said it was God’s judgement on America for harboring gays, abortionists.
It seems to me that American
exceptionalism raises it voice when people fear we are losing our influence,
when America is becoming weak, when people fear that our national covenant with
divinity, our national identification with god, is unraveling. After all, if
we are
god’s chosen people, nothing bad will happen to us. Bad things happening
to our nation mean that god is displeased with America. American exceptionalism.
There is nothing exceptional in it. Nothing about American values in it. It’s
about America being wrapped in immortality, immune to the same forces all peoples
everywhere are. For if we are the chosen people, bad things will not happen
to us.
This insight, that American exceptionalism, this sense that America is god’s chosen country, that this is a Christian nation as the Dominionists who seek theocracy claim, these things are reactions to decline, of national decline – about group identity, not about spirituality.
I came to this insight as I was reading Immanuel Wallerstein’s book, the second paragraph “I believe that the United States has been wrestling for over thirty years with the problem of its relative decline in the world-system.” (ALTERNATIVES, Boulder, Paradigm, 2004). A light when on for me and I had to buy the book and read it.
The operative word appears to be decline, but more so is the phrase ‘relative decline.” For the 25 years following the Second World War, our nation pretty much had its way. Our incomes went up, civil rights were passed, corporations offered benefits such as pension plans and health insurance; the federal government provided Social Security and welfare for poor parents; Japan and Europe followed in our wake. By the late 1960's, the Viet Nam war, things were changing. Europe was becoming an economic power in its own right, so was Japan. Whatever our greater strength, the United States was no long the only economic power on the planet. At some deep level, fears of many Americans increased; fears of job loss, fears of increasing competition for the consumer products we have become addicted to.
And for many a nameless sense of American decline lead to a search for the cosmic source of all things, the divine. Not a willingness to ask what were basic American values of equality and democracy calling for us to do, but a search of reassurance that the pursuit of happiness meant the pursuit of prosperity.
There has been a great deal about of the phrase “American empire” of late. The time of America’s greatest influence, form 1945 until the 1970's or so, is gone. But in those days we did not hear of empire and imperialism was a bad word for all. Why now, this talk of empire? Is it another symptom of decline, an attempt to convince ourselves we yet have what we have lost?
The first Gulf War under President Herbert Walker Bush was a sign of American decline. Saddam Hussein had the gall to challenge our military power. Secondly, other nations had to pay the bill for that war, Germany, Japan. And Bush and his military advisors did not dare go to Bagdad for fear of getting bogged down in the kind of quagmire we see today.
Is America losing influence in the world? The rise of China, its recent bid
for an American oil company makes clear that we are no longer alone on the planet.
Tension over energy resources are threatening to rise to violent dimensions
in the conflict between Japan and China over energy beneath the East China Sea,
now called the “sea of conflict.” [LINK]
If America is an empire, has it already risen and now on the fall? Perhaps it is an empire without much clothes, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and others being the little boys in the street shouting our lack of apparel.
Not that there has not been an attempt to dress up the American Empire in might and glory. Consider a recent official document, dated 2002, entitled “The National Security Strategy of the United States," There it reads, that the government “has no intention of allowing any foreign power to catch up with the huge lead the United States has opened since the fall of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago." [LINK]
This antiquated view of military superpower is based on the notion that the boy with the most toys wins. Surely we have more nuclear missile than anyone else. So? If 9/11 should have taught us anything, it isn’t how many toys you have that counts. The terrorists boarded the planes that fateful day with little in the way of weapons, other than their minds. We can spend a billion dollars for a stealth bomber, but a suicide bomber’s stealth vehicle of choice is a wreck that looks like most every car on a Bagdad street.
The use of the phrase America Empire, talk of having more weapons than anyone else indicate we have come to the point of decline that denial looks better than reality. Our dealings with our relative decline vis a vis China, Europe, seem counter productive.
Consider the Patriot Act? How does that make us a great nation? We deprive people of justice, snoop into their library records, denying people knowledge. How does the Patriot Act make us a great nation?
Consider the debate over stem cell research. Americans are a chosen people, we do not do stem cell research. Let the south Koreans do it? Will the Koreans make America a great nation?
Consider the debate over mother’s milk. Breast feeding has been shown to be healthier for children than industrial baby formula. “[A]ll of the studies show that in very many different areas, things like obesity, I.Q., diabetes, ear infections, all of these different areas, that if women breastfeed, the child is much less likely to suffer from that.” However, this is not what the manufacturers of infant formula want customers to hear, so we don’t. [LINK]
If one were really interested in American national interest, they seem to be acting counterproductively, in the name of so many things; but finally perhaps, the underlying motive is to preserve the reputation of American power and hegemony. Immanuel Wallerstein seems to be alone in arguing that one of the main reasons for the present Iraq war is hegemonic. Most recently he has written that the hope for the war “was the reassertion of an uncontested hegemony of the United States in the world arena.” [LINK]
Perhaps this counterproductive effort to reassert American superpower should be understood as the model of most current efforts: they all seem to be counterproductive. American Exceptionalism, those who fear most American decline, who assert that America is a Christian nation, seek American dominion over the earth, are precisely the group eviscerating American science, what was once our principle advantage on the world. How long can American medicine, pharmacy, and control of disease stand up to efforts to deny the basic concepts of modern biology? Ye the attack is on. Across the river a museum has opened up claiming evolution is wrong. Evolution wrong? Can we understand disease today without the insights of evolution and genetics? As evidence of the faults of evolution, the museum displays statues of dinosaurs with saddles on them. What can be said about this other than somebody has been watching to many Fred Flintstone movies?
Is Fred Flintstone astride his mount the best symbol of American Exceptionalism today? The best image of America’s counterproductive attempts to be God’s chosen people?
It is a principle of Unitarian Universalism that anyone who claims to be better than anyone else, that some group is privileged over another has already trespassed on the divine order. Has not Universalism always called for the salvation of all souls? Not just American, but Chinese? Not just African but Iraqi? Not just Sunni but Shia and Buddhist and Hindu and Taoist? Rich and poor; male and female, gay and straight.
In our Opening Words this morning, we read about Abraham Lincoln’s idea of democracy. Rather than identifying ourselves in some sort of transubstantiation with divinity, we reminded ourselves what is at stake in our day as it was in his. What is that? The faith that right makes might, not might right. It is the self-understanding that “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.” Once again we hear the promise and hope of equality and democracy, values which have informed the vision of our nation. Let us go forth in that hope, not trusting in the number of toys we have, not relying in the condemnation of our fellow human beings.
On this anniversary of our national agenda, let us trust in the spirit of Lincoln. Let us trust in the hope of equality. Let us hope in the spirit of democracy. Not in the creation of privilege, but in the increase of equality lies the human hope, the American dream.