"They desire a better country": On "Independence Day" as a Holy Day (A Polemic)

Christ Pantocrator icon. St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai (6th c., Egypt)

When the bishops, clergy and laity of the Episcopal Church, in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, established “Independence Day” as a Major Feast and adopted what I will not dignify with the name of “collect” for the same, they showed some residue of wisdom in choosing propers that expose the theological incoherence of making a civic holiday a Holy Day of the church. —As for what is claimed in the “collect”, its historical falsity is patently obvious: it is simply not true that “the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us” in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (as its grammar suggests).  And the claim that the founders “lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn” is not only an ill-conceived flight of rhetorical fancy, but also a display of such willful blindness to contradictory aspects of the history of the United States (I need only mention slavery) that it looks like self-deception at best, and, at worst, a blatant lie.— Now, because I am preparing “to engage to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of The Episcopal Church,” it seems to me a matter of obedience that I submit to the church’s decision to observe “Independence Day,” for to refuse altogether to do so would be to display a prideful contempt for the authority of the church.  Happily, by confining myself to the appointed propers from Holy Scripture I can both observe the day and seek to clarify what is confused by its very observance as a Major Feast.

What is confused by observing the day “these American states became independent with respect to civil government”* as a Major Feast (i.e., a Holy Day whose observance is not optional)?  Simply put, it confuses the distinction between the people of the United States and the people of God to place “Independence Day”—the feast of the founders of the United States—on the same footing as the feasts of the Apostles and Evangelists, of Saint Joseph and Saint Mary the Virgin, of Saint Stephen and the Holy Innocents.  It threatens to confuse the liberties granted (unevenly and belatedly) to (some) people of this land with “the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21), to obfuscate the difference between the freedom for which “Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1)—the perfect freedom of serving the Lord of all—with the sham freedom proffered by the state, which “looks like freedom, but feels like death.”**

Now to the appointed lessons from Scripture.  The psalm displays the proper activity of the people of God, the people who confess God as King, who sing together, “I will exalt you, O God my God,” simply because the Lord is great “and greatly to be praised” (Ps. 145:1, 3).  They praise God in his “faithful servants” whose lives have shown forth the glory of God’s “everlasting kingdom” (vv. 10–12), but they say nothing of those who pledge allegiance to any of the kingdoms of this world.

Accordingly, the epistle remembers God’s faithful servant Abraham, who obeyed God’s call because he considered God faithful.  Abraham lived in tents because “he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God,” the city prepared by God for those who “confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth” since they “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:10, 13, 16).  Those who, like Abraham, are assured of God’s faithfulness endure sufferings for the sake of the better country, the kingdom of God.  The author of the letter to the Hebrews exhorts them to gain confidence above all from the example of Jesus, “who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (12:3); indeed, the knowledge that they “possessed something better and more lasting” has already enabled them to endure persecution, to have “compassion on those who were in prison,” and to cheerfully accept the loss of their possessions (10:32–34).  Living in the freedom of faith, they go to Jesus and share in his sufferings, offering through him praise to God and sharing what they have with others, “for here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (13:13–16).  Only in that city is there true liberty and justice for all.

All those who “belong to Christ” (Gal. 2:29)—both Jew and Gentile—are citizens of that city, heirs of the kingdom.  As such, all those who belong to Christ share in the vocation of Israel, described so concisely in the passage from Deuteronomy.  Chosen by God’s love “out of all the peoples,” the people of Israel are to demonstrate that everything in creation belongs to the Lord precisely by giving themselves entirely to the Lord (Dt. 10:14–15).  They are called to imitate the Lord their God who brought them out of Egypt:  

“the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.  You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Dt. 10:17–19)

'Tsar of Glory' icon. 14th cent. Bulgarian. (Tretyakov Gallery). 

Israel exists to love and serve the Lord with their whole being, to praise the Lord “who has done for you these great and awesome things” (v. 21) in bringing Israel out of Egypt.  God takes a people for his possession so that they might “proclaim the mighty acts of him who called [them] out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pt. 2:9); those mighty acts, that is, made known to us in creation, in Israel, and, above all, in Christ Jesus.  These acts are constitutive of the identity of the people of God, including that part found in the Episcopal Church; these are the “wondrous acts” (Ps. 145:6) of the Lord the church is called to proclaim—not the independence of the United States (although even this did not happen apart from God’s providence).

The church is the people who acknowledge Jesus as the Lord, and who pray “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”  The church lives in obedience to her Lord, who says “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  The Lord of the church commands, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” and calls her to imitate God’s perfection (Mt. 5:44, 48).  The church is to become like Christ Jesus, who “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death” (Phil. 2:8) and in whom is her unity (Gal. 3:28).  How then can it not be detrimental to her identity to observe as a Holy Day the civic holiday of the nation that idolatrously claims to make one out of many (E pluribus unum)?

* Preface to the BCP.

** A lyric from Leonard Cohen’s song, “Closing Time.”