This July 4, more U.S.-Americans than ever before will, or at least should, realize that there are multiple metanarratives of U.S. history. Last year’s quadricentennial of Africans being sold to Jamestown, Virginia settlers for tobacco labor highlighted African-American slavery and its ongoing aftermath. This year’s uprisings for racial equality - sparked by the image of white police officer Derek Chauvin’s brutal knee-on-neck murder of black George Floyd - have cast brighter light on long-standing systemic injustice in the United States. Disproportionate suffering of African-Americans from COVID-19 has been a particularly tragic manifestation of the ongoing injustice. Genocidal displacement of Native Americans over centuries and more recent struggles of Asians and Latin Americans have been brought to the fore as well.
As a typical middle-class white U.S.-American, I was hard-wired to celebrate the founding of the United States of America with fireworks, bar-b-q, flag-waving, and patriotic music. I grew up knowing only the controlling metanarrative of U.S. history: human freedom was finally realized when our colonial forefathers rejected the English King’s tyranny and proclaimed the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Making that declaration took courage and godly insight, but our forefathers’ sacrifice and fighting savvy finally won us full national independence. Ever since, U.S. military efforts have protected our freedoms as well as helped others around the world gain theirs.
Raised in white-U.S. Christian traditions, I joined others in believing that God’s special Providence had founded “America” for his special purposes. The Preamble of the Declaration of Independence plucked my patriotic heart-strings as much as anyone’s, especially its confession of divine creation of U.S. equality: “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.” Our currency’s declaration that “In God We Trust,” and our pledge of allegiance to the flag and our “One Nation Under God,” reinforced my sense that “America” is God’s specially created Christian nation.
Exposures to wider history and to different sorts of people, both outside and within the U.S., have changed my understanding. Those changes have often come slowly and painfully. It was about 25 years ago that it first dawned on me that the North American colonial rebellion against England resembled similar rebellions that have taken place throughout history and around the world. That idea felt treasonous, as it chipped away at my article of faith in U.S. exceptionalism.
Regarding the North American English colonies’ Declaration of Independence, it finally became evident that “all men" only meant Europeans, specifically the North American English colonists and their English countrymen. That is, the colonists were equal with their fellow Englishmen and had their own right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” - and to pursue those rights independently of the English crown’s control. Displaced Native Americans and African slave laborers were not included in “all men.” Our national forefathers’ Declaration of Independence was not a universal statement of human rights, as is often asserted and as I had assumed it to be. Racially based distinctions and economic profit are two of this country’s foundational values.
It is interesting to compare the earlier Virginia Declaration of Rights: “That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” Jefferson used his own colony’s wording as a template for the colonies’ collective declaration he was requested to compose. Note how the Virginia Declaration’s appeal to “natural” and “inherent” rights has been replaced, or upgraded, in the colonies’ collective declaration by an appeal to divine design: “all men are created equal [and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” The signers of the North American English colonies’ Declaration of Independence from England were claiming divine sanction and favor.
The Christian belief that God specially and uniquely founded the United States of America emphasizes the Christian faith of the U.S. Founding Fathers. That belief also affirms the Christian foundation and character of “America” by pointing to the clear confessions of faith on our currency, “In God We Trust,” and in our pledge of allegiance, “One Nation under God.”
A more historically informed viewpoint will note that these two additional affirmations also arose in particular moments and for motives beyond simple faith affirmations. Originally stamped on coins for a brief period during the 1800s, the phrase “In God We Trust” was resurrected in the 1950s to be stamped on all U.S. currency, and was approved as the first official U.S. motto, to distinguish ourselves from the atheistic Soviets (and, for some, from FDR’s socialist-leaning “New Deal”). “Under God” was added to the pledge of allegiance at the same time for the same reasons.
U.S. history has different strands interwoven into a complex history. There is no single foundation or pure metanarrative of faith and heroism. There has been courageous faith, but there has also been racist genocide and enslavement of fellow human beings. Bringing divine design, favor, or blessing into national declarations runs the risk of trying to co-opt God simply for self-justification, self-benefit, and glossing over wrong.
We can smile at opposing fans praying for their players to score or to stop a score. Within U.S. history, however, generations have either benefited or suffered - and God has by no means sanctioned either unjust gain or oppression of people he loves. God is God, and in his presence “the nations [including the United States of America] are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales” (Isaiah 40:15). God is the God of the whole world, not of any one country. We must recognize him as such, as well as see ourselves as white U.S.-Americans in his true light. Those of us who still doggedly hold onto the belief in an exceptional, divinely founded and blessed “America” must divest ourselves of such a faith that risks co-opting the one true and living God of the universe. Kyrie eleison.
