The Fourth of July has passed. The birthday is over. Our nation is officially 250 years old. I’m old enough to remember America’s last big birthday, the Bicentennial of 1976 when we celebrated 200 years. It was great. The mood was euphoric, a feeling of real patriotism.
Things were not perfect, of course. The War in Vietnam had just ended, and the scars and trauma went deep. Then too the nation had just gone through the crisis of Watergate which had ended with Richard Nixon, the sitting president, being forced from office.
All this was just behind us, but that was the point—it was behind us. We were ready to move on. The mood was one of cautious optimism. People were reaching out to each other. The future lay ahead of us. We looked forward to increasing hope, fuller freedom and true liberty for all at last.
That’s how it was then.
It’s not that way now. Now there is suspicion and division. Americans no longer trust one another. There is hatred. There are open attacks on Blacks, Jews, Muslims and other minorities. Democracy is under assault.
Politicians are working to limit voting rights. There is fear. Masked troopers walk our streets. There is a sense that we are losing all that we fought to achieve. The Supreme Court is handing down judgments that put the current president above the law.
There is a growing sense that America has lost its soul.
Americans have long believed that God had blessed America in a special way, and until recently it was easy to believe this to be true. There was widespread prosperity. Individual freedom was respected and liberty for all was a constant ideal, even when it was not always a reality.
It was easy to believe that America had a mission, that it was a light to the world, a “city on the hill” to use a quote from the Bible favored by the Pilgrims.
And yet, the truth is that God does not side with one nation over another. That’s not how God works. It was St. Peter who said it best: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:32).
That’s it. God favors those of any nation who do what is right. And what does it mean to do what is right? Very simple. Asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus went back to the Jewish scriptures he knew so well to quote Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.
He said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (Matt. 22:37-40). God is with those who live these commandments.
In other words, we Americans did not have freedom and liberty because God was with us. Rather, God was with us because we worked so hard to provide freedom and liberty for all our neighbors too.
Likewise, it wasn’t because God was with us that so many of the world’s needy sought out America as the land of hope. It was because so many in our nation worked to make America a land of hope open to all that God was with us.
And yet now many in our nation are pulling back from these ideals. Is it any wonder that America has lost its soul? Is it any wonder that so many are asking whether God is still with us?
Maybe it’s time to change all that. Maybe it’s time to return to hope, to reclaim our freedom, to reaffirm the ideal of liberty for all. Maybe it’s time for America to retrieve its soul. We need to become once more a people worthy of God’s blessing.
Rev. Dr. Ernest Boyer is Priest in Charge, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Gilroy, and an active member of the Interfaith Clergy Alliance of South County. He can be reached at bo**********@***il.com.
