All People, Created Equal
Each year our nation celebrates Independence Day to mark the signing of a document in 1776 that many regard as the day when our country was born. It was a moment of idealism and struggle and an assertion of a polity based not upon tribe or culture but rather on fundamental – and divinely ordained – human rights. Though we know that there were some major blind spots, we can still look to that as a moment when something new was born.
Of course, other narratives have emerged to offer a deeper explanation of when our nation was born, most notably The 1619 Project. That work by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones asserts that a more honest beginning came in the year when slave ships arrived from Africa, thus marking the beginning of a nation that emerged as much out of an original sin as from a lofty set of ideals.
Yet other narratives of America’s birth tell a more nuanced, and even hopeful, story. At a conference this fall I heard John Meacham, presidential historian and Canon Historian of Washington National Cathedral, propose a different birthdate. He suggested that America – the American that we live in today – was really born in 1965, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, when our nation truly became the pluralistic country that it claimed to be. This was the culmination of great struggle and can perhaps be seen as the source of much of our conflict today: it suggests that we are really a very young nation struggling mightily with the work of reconciling our ideals to realities.
That struggle today is painful and exhausting, yet it can also point towards a greater hope: that we can still grow into these ideals. It is hard work to get there; as Christians, we recognize the gifts and challenges of justice and reconciliation work. But we also know that it is necessary work, for when we recognize that all people are created equal, we see a glimpse of what God intended for us all.