The extraordinary meaning of July 4th for America and the world

From Christian Post.com (June 30):

As we gather as a people to celebrate the 247th anniversary of our birth as a nation, we should all pause to ponder and expend some mental, emotional and spiritual capital meditating on the magnificent magnitude of what it is we collectively celebrate with fireworks, parades and speeches every Fourth of July.

Well, in the providence of God as I believe, or alternatively, as a consequence of extraordinary, perhaps unprecedented, fortuitous circumstances, a dazzling, critical mass of political and philosophical talent coalesced on the eastern seaboard of the North American continent in the middle and latter third of the 18th century.

This uniquely extraordinary group of men produced a truly revolutionary new belief:

“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—”

Having pledged their allegiance to this truly revolutionary concept, they then assert that government (far from monarchs ruling by “divine right”) exists among men “to secure these rights” and that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

It is probably not possible for inhabitants of the 21st century to comprehend the full revolutionary power of these concepts to the 18th century mind.

As men of the 18th century, they are residents of their time and place (as we are men and women of our time and place), but in proclaiming the equality and equal worth of every human being, they were unleashing an ultimate and comprehensive truth which would turn their world upside down. The appeal to the Creator makes this a moral and theological concept rather than merely a biological one. So, this equality is not based on merit, talent, performance, or even potential, but rather on equal value spiritually, each one of us bearing the image and imprint of the Creator (the “imago Dei”).

Each and every human being, by virtue of being a human being, is from conception to natural death, and everywhere in between, of equal value and worth to the Creator, and thus should be to us.

It was this commitment to imago Dei in man that created the culture of life in Christendom. It is the modern world’s embrace of man as merely a uniquely sophisticated finite mammal, courtesy of Nietzsche and his modern acolyte Peter Singer that gave us the morally bereft “culture of death.”

On the Fourth of July, we celebrate first and foremost the declaration of the dignity and immeasurable worth of every human being and the tremendous blessings for humanity across the globe that have ensued.

By 1776, a distinct English-speaking civilization had developed in what was to become the United States of America. Extraordinary as they were, the founders were well aware of many of those limitations of being limited by the customs and values of their time and place.

And they knew it. George Washington, the “father” of our country and the nation’s first president, declared: “There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery.” America’s third president and the prime author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, declared, “There is nothing I would not sacrifice to a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and political depravity.”

The nation’s fourth president and one of the chief architects of the Constitution, James Madison, spoke of “the magnitude of this evil” concerning slavery. Jefferson sadly concluded, however, concerning slavery, “We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.”

Slavery and the racism it required has undeniably significantly impacted America and Americans, black Americans most of all, and it still impacts us.

However, slavery was not at the center of the American project. America, from the Declaration onward, has been striving to evermore fully live out, and up to, the full implications of the seminal truths of the Declaration. Indeed, well over 300,000 young American men sacrificed all their tomorrows to end the evil of slavery. [read more]

Happy Birthday, America! Other articles about the 4th:

• These 18 Photos Show America’s Long History of Celebrating the Fourth
• Independence Forever: Why America Celebrates the Fourth of July
• For the 4th of July, Reflections on the Meaning of American Citizenship
• 'This changes absolutely everything': Glenn reads rediscovered ORIGINAL draft of the Declaration of Independence [video]