7/4/54

Scripture: (Read Hebrews 11: 1-16; 23-30; 32-34; 39-40; 12: 1-2)

On a holiday of deep significance to our nation, it is not amiss to recall attention to the fact that our country has a deep spiritual foundation. In the main, its colonies were made up of people who sought religious liberty, and who took on the recognized responsibility which that liberty involved. Colonies varied, one from another, in form of belief and in practice. But religion was the basis of the way of life they worked out in a new land. The early settlers were not hypocrites. They may seem stern to many of our far-too-easygoing contemporaries. But they lived in earnest, a life of faith and citizenship, based directly upon their manner of belief in God.

When revolt against tyrannical aspects of the rule they had endured from the old world resulted in their political liberty, the colonies recognized the necessity of getting together, in practical unity, to form a nation strong enough to withstand the pressures certain to come from without and within. For a long time the delegates to the Constitutional Convention studied, worked, wrangled and argued, without getting the necessary agreement as to an instrument by which all might live in the new nation. It was found necessary and workable, to disassociate the church and state from each other in such a manner that neither was to control the other. Congress was to pass no law respecting an establishment of religion. That is, there was to be no State church in this new Republic. But the churches were to function freely, without let or hindrance, so long as church folk, like all citizens, observed the law of the land.

The importance of religion, as the basis of morality in the citizen, was recognized with unanimity, when practical old Ben Franklin proposed that the Constitutional Convention open each of its remaining sessions with prayer, and that a minister be invited in to lead the delegates at prayer. Those men, who bowed in prayer at the beginning of each day’s work, thereupon successfully finished work on the constitution, in agreement that they had not been able to find before they looked to Almighty God for guidance.

It has since been the custom to have a clergyman as chaplain in the US Senate and in many of the state legislatures. Though no church directs our nation, religion is the foundation of our government. The presidents, from George Washington, through Abraham Lincoln, on to and including Dwight Eisenhower, have freely recognized the religious nature of our country’s makeup. In some of them, reliance upon the guidance of God has been very deep indeed.

In one of his speeches during his term of office, President Eisenhower recalled our attention to the spiritual conception of our nation’s government, to the fact that “our nation had a spiritual foundation, so announced by the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Do you remember,” said the President, “what they said? ‘We hold that all men are endowed by their creator with certain rights.’ That,” says Mr. Eisenhower, “is a spiritual conception. It’s the explanation of our form of government that our founding fathers decided upon. And now, today, that spiritual strength is just as great in its requirements as it has ever been in our whole history. By this I mean it is very important that you and I value the spiritual things that they had in mind when they founded this country.”

Then the President went on the cite as an example “the things that announce the rights that every single individual has in this country; (1) his equality before the law; (2) his right to worship as he pleases, think as he pleases and talk as he pleases just so long as he does not trespass on the rights of others. And the other part of the spiritual strength we need today,” said President Eisenhower, “is the same stamina and courage and gallantry that our forefathers had in defending those rights.”

As Christians, we have a stake in America, and all America has a stake in us. So also with the Jews. So also with all other others who acknowledge and worship God Almighty. [One nation “under God.”]

It seems to be a fact that society reflects what people within the society believe about themselves. To understand our way of life we need to understand what individual Americans believe. A political scientist [George Kennan] says that “The behavior of governments is ---- a matter of the behavior of individual man in the political context.” He adds further, “Let those students who want to prepare themselves for work in the international field read their Bible and their Shakespeare, their Plutarch and their Gibbon.” These, he suggests, reveal to us what modern man believes about himself. Society will be this belief in action.

Travelers in the East are struck by the abject poverty among the Near Eastern masses. Many Arabs toil with tools of the medieval era. Their diet barely keeps them alive. Preventable disease runs rampant. They have what would seem to be multiple reasons for revolt against their tyrannical overlords. But they quietly submit to near sub-human conditions. A basic reason for their submission is their Islamic faith -- their utter submission to the will of Allah. Whatever happens is to them the will of God, and man cannot but accept it. The concept of human freedom under God is lacking. And their despotic Arabian society rises from this religious belief of the people.

The totalitarian government of Soviet Russia rises from the pseudo-religious belief of the communists in the Marxist doctrine of economic determinism; the belief that man exists for the state. The state becomes the idol of the citizen, who has few individual rights. In Soviet court trials, men and women confess the “sin” of holding beliefs at variance with the orthodox position of the government. But that totalitarian government cannot exist unless the people believe in the right of the state to control their lives.

If anyone wishes to understand our way of life in the United States of America, he must know what Americans believe about themselves. This means that we must come to grips with Christian faith which is the groundwork of our society. Our faith is reflected in our government. As Christians, we believe that man is a child of God, born with a reminder of God within him. We have a conscience to be developed. As a child of God, the individual person is more important that any social institution, though many of our social institutions are necessary to enhance the value of the individual. “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” [Mark 2: 27]. And since the Sabbath is necessary for man’s well-being and development, it ought to be accepted and observed as a day for worship, and rest, and renewal of spiritual strength. I, for one, question that the honking of a carnival contributes much to a constructive use of the Sabbath and I wish that its patrons would use other parts of their holiday for its excitements.

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Individuals know the meaning and worth of life under God. And governments are formed to protect the freedom and integrity of the individual. The insight of Jeremiah is repeated in Hebrews: “I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts.” God puts His laws into the minds and hearts of individual men and women, not into the supposed collective “mind” of the state. The individual is to be taken seriously, for he is a soul in the image of God, and has God’s law within his consciousness.

Jesus Christ lived and died, not for some great “cause,” nor for an announced “principle,” but for people. God so loved us -- not our government or our civilization, but you and me and every other individual person --- that He sent his Son into the world so that we might not perish, but have eternal life. [John 3: 16]. Christian faith is a personal matter.

In a moment of religious perception, in a conversion, or an awakening, the individual --- you and I and every other personal seeker -- comes face to face with the truth that Christ died for his salvation (yours and mine). Out of this belief in the ultimate importance of the individual rises a particular kind of society. It shapes the kind of home which sees the image of God in a child; a home in which parents help to develop the child’s good inner nature. It shapes the kind of government in which the individual is not a “cog,” nor a “slave,” nor a “subject,” but a citizen, building his government by his own vision and effort -- a government of people, by people, and for people. [Abraham Lincoln]. So we have to protect each man and woman so that he or she can reveal to us what has been given by God.

When Russians took over some of the smaller countries of Europe after World War II, they brought into the cities art exhibits to show local artists what was expected of them as proletarian painters. In our country, we consider it a denial of the dignity and integrity of the artist to tell him what he must copy and what themes he must develop. We believe that the individual has something to say to us -- something given him by God --- and we want to hear it. We see government as a way of protecting his right to express God’s truth in his writing, his music or his painting.

Thomas Jefferson announced: “This blessed country of free inquiry and belief -- has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests --- The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us.” Elsewhere he wrote: “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.”

Our national Constitution, with its bill of rights, reflects the Christian faith of the Americans who wrote it. God put His laws not in some corporate entity, not in the state, but in the individual lives of those men who formed and framed the Constitution. He still puts his laws in the citizens and not in some governmental body or building. This puts a direct burden of responsibility upon the citizen. We are not naive about human nature. We know, as Christians, that freedom gives to the individual opportunity to decide against the laws of God and to become a menace to himself and to others.

The Christian faith deals with the whole of man’s personality - the unpleasant, the erroneous and the evil, as well as the holy and righteous. We know that mankind -- all and each of us -- is prone to sin. The blindness in government that sees no sin in a “Leader” or a “Party” or a monarch or a president or a legislator always leads people to tragedy.

Our Christian faith recognizes man’s weakness and his proneness to wrong. It is for this reason that our American society is made up of checks and balances. We have a president, a Congress, and a Supreme Court (executive, legislative, and judicial branches) in our government. When one department gains more power than the other two, there is always alarm in the country until a new balance is achieved.

A few years ago we were concerned that the presidential power had become too great. Then we were anxious lest congressional committees have too much power. We believe in balance of those powers --- because we know human frailty and sin! What we believe about ourselves, we believe of others -- even our enemies --- both as to their God-given individual nature and as to their susceptibility to sin. But they, too, are children of God. One of our greatest contributions to the whole world is this open-eyed view of the nature of man and of man’s governments.

But Christian faith is not given to governments. It is given to people -- to individuals. To preserve our way of life and to offer its benefits to the world, let each one of us open the door to Christ, let him enter our lives and make us new creatures, and constantly re-make us! Out of new creatures will come a new civilization. What you and I believe and become helps mightily to determine the future society of mankind. The Christian society can result only from personal Christian faith. This faith is reflected deeply in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of our nation. Let it be the basis of our present citizenship.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, July 4, 1954 (Union Service).

Also in Wisconsin Rapids, July 3, 1960 (Union Service).

[for the 1960 sermon, the title was changed to “Our Independence Under God,” the Scripture was changed to Galatians 5: 1-14, and the following was added at the end:

A student from abroad, citizen of another nation, studying here in our country for a while, was asked if she would like to remain in America. To this question, she gave this reply: “America is indeed a wonderful land in which to live. I should like the advantages of your way of living, but I’m afraid I am not a big enough person to live in such liberty.”

Neither are we American citizens big enough persons to live in political liberty, until we see it based upon our faith in God, and live it responsibly by that light.]