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| The Cathedral Church of St. John |
July 06, 2003 |
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| Homily
The Cathedral Church of St. John
Albuquerque, New Mexico
It’s a pleasure to be with you today, among so many friends.
I attended the Episcopal Church as a child – St. James Episcopal Church in Keene, New Hampshire – before my father died and my mother remarried a man not eligible for membership. Then I grew up and married a Methodist. We attend First Methodist just down the street.
When we were married, my husband explained to me the difference between the religions: Catholics know how to go to church, but don’t know how to pray; Methodists know how to pray, but don’t go to church; and Episcopalians dress well.
I’m very pleased to be able to spend this special day with you.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Powerful words that marked the beginning of an experiment in self-government that started 227 years ago this weekend.
We look back on the events of the American Revolution and think the outcome was pre-ordained. It wasn’t. At the time, many of the men involved thought that failure was more likely than success.
Who were these men and what did they believe? What compelled them to risk everything for the right to govern themselves?
The Continental Congress gathered in the city of Philadelphia in 1776. At the time, Philadelphia was the largest and wealthiest city in the British American colonies. It numbered 30,000 people. Thirty thousand. Roughly half the size of Rio Rancho. Perhaps the size of Los Lunas and its environs. The city was bigger than New York and twice as large as Boston. Imagine Boston about the size of Los Alamos.
And in that city there were 7 newspapers, 23 print shops, some 30 bookstores, and plenty of taverns too.
Philadelphia was a busy port with ships coming up the river with goods to trade from all over the world. It was a merchant center. Originally a Quaker town, the Pennsylvania colony was known for its religious tolerance and so, by the time the Continental Congress convened on that hot summer in 1776 the Presbyterians and Baptists actually outnumbered the Quakers.
The most prominent citizen of Philadelphia, and probably all of Pennsylvania, was Ben Franklin. Printer, publisher and scientist, he was the founder of the American Philosophical Society and a delegate to the Continental Congress. Franklin was a well respected member of the group – a grandfather among fathers – and able, therefore to give advice to others, including Jefferson, without giving offense.
Virginia was well represented, reflecting its importance among the colonies. In all of Virginia at the time there were only 30,000 people. Virginia gave the nation Jefferson and Madison and Washington – remarkable men, even more remarkable because they were contemporaries from that small community of souls.
Of course, Washington was not there in Philadelphia. He had been called upon to lead the Continental Army. Those of you who like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow know that the delegates to the Continental Congress gathered at a time of great peril to consider the question of Independence:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
It was April of 1775 when Paul Revere saw two lamps hanging in the North Church tower and rode through the night warning every farm and town on the road to Lexington and Concord that the British were coming. The shot heard ‘round the world was fired more than a year before men gathered in Philadelphia to consider a motion for independence.
It was a dangerous time. On July 3rd, 1776 nine thousand troops landed on Staten Island led by General William Howe and by mid-August some 32,000 Hessian and British troops would be on that island threatening the city of New York. The Americans, woefully outnumbered on land had no Navy at all, and on July 12th, before a copy of the Declaration of Independence even reached the northern colonies, the British sent two men-of-war up the Hudson River to New York as a show of force.
One of the most important men at this gathering in Philadelphia was John Adams, a farmer and lawyer from Braintree, Massachusetts. He was a firebrand, a great orator, and a man passionate for independence.
Of the First continental Congress in 1774, Adams wrote, “We were about one third Tories, and [one] third timid, and one third true blue.”
While Adams described himself as obnoxious and disliked, his peers seemed to respect him. He was a tireless worker and committeeman, with a deep sense of integrity.
And Adams married well. Abigail Adams was a remarkable woman. Had she been born in a later century, she might have, herself, been part of a Congress. She was probably the most prolific female writer of her century. But her writing was all in private letters, not only to her husband, but also to others including Jefferson and Franklin who admired her greatly. Her father was a minister and she never attended school, although she was obviously very well read and influential with her husband and others.
Fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence. They were a remarkable group. Nearly half were lawyers – sad to say that is still true of the Congress. Most were college educated. Imagine how unusual that was in a time when very few people had formal schooling at all.
Some were men of wealth, but not all. John Hancock of Massachusetts, one of the richest men in America, already had a price of 500 pounds on his head. He reportedly signed his name on the Declaration in enormous letters so that the King could read his name without glasses and double the reward.
These were prominent leaders of their communities. But what did they believe?
Gradually, over a period of some two years since the convening of the First Continental Congress, they came to believe that there was no alternative to independence from the tyrant, King George III. They believed there was no alternative in spite of the fact that many believed they would not succeed.
They were inhabitants of sparsely populated farflung colonies and were traitorously defying the will of one of the greatest powers then in the world.
And yet, in spite of the likely grim outcome of their endeavor, in June of 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia put forth a motion of Independence. A committee was formed to work through the month of June in the stultifying heat of Philadelphia to draft the document. The committee included Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Roger Sherman – a cobbler from Connecticut, and Robert Livingston from New York.
Jefferson wrote the draft in his second floor room in a boarding house listening to the street noises of a bustling city. He would draft those lines we now know so well:
We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable. . .
Not quite right, is it? It was Franklin or Adams who made a small change to the second paragraph of the Declaration:
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.
One of the most powerful sentences in the history of political philosophy.
But, why “self-evident” and not “sacred”?
Certainly the sentence is simpler and stronger the way Franklin or Adams edited it. That’s an English teacher’s explanation and I think there is more to it than that. These were men of the Enlightenment. I think they wanted to emphasize that reason brought them to this view even if faith was its foundation.
The rights which we enjoy are not given by Kings or governments. They are unalienable rights. They cannot be given away or taken away by any man, because they are given to us by He who created us.
These rights may be defended by men, but they are given by God.
These were faithful men. But they were also, certainly, tolerant men.
Benjamin Franklin donated to the building funds of every church in Philadelphia. Not just his own church, but every church – Quaker, Presbyterians, Baptists, even a synagogue. It has been said that if there was a mosque, he would have given to that too.
It’s hard for us to imagine that, in our own time. Many of us give to our own church. Imagine for a moment giving to other churches and other faiths so that they might prosper and grow.
At Franklin’s funeral, every preacher from every congregation in Philadelphia was there. He had helped them all. Franklin knew the importance of faith in a civil society. And he also knew the importance of tolerance of other faiths in a civil society. So, he supported them all.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Our lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Of the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence, each one had more to lose than to gain by it. These were the prominent, respected, educated, powerful, in some cases wealthy men with families and reasonably comfortable lives. What happened to them?
Of the fifty-six, nine died of wounds during the war.
Five were captured and imprisoned by the British and brutally treated.
Several lost wives, sons and entire families in the American Revolution.
One lost all 13 of his children.
All were wanted men – traitors. All were driven at some time from their homes and 12 had their homes burned to the ground.
Seventeen lost everything they owned.
Perhaps one of the most remarkable stories was of a little known signer of the Declaration – Thomas Nelson of Virginia.
My husband and I took our children to Yorktown last summer. It’s only a few hours drive south of Washington, D.C. Nelson was from Yorktown and, during the Revolution, he was elected Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Near the climax of the Revolutionary War, Washington surrounded Cornwallis at Yorktown and was bombarding him with artillery. Nelson came to the American lines and, knowing that he was from the town, the soldiers asked him what building Nelson thought Cornwallis would be using for a headquarters so that they could aim their guns at it. Nelson pointed to a prominent brick building in the center of the town. When asked why he thought so, Nelson told the men that it was his home and he believed Cornwallis would be there. The artillerymen were reluctant to fire on the home of the Governor of Virginia until Nelson offered a reward for the first man to hit it.
Imagine giving a reward to soldiers to destroy your own home.
Our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, and the tide for independence turned.
These fifty-six men lost their homes and their families. Some were killed and others imprisoned and tortured. But not one of them, not one, renounced the Declaration to which they had pledged their sacred honor.
David McCullough, the great writer and historian came to speak a few years ago to the Congress. He is a wonderful storyteller in person and on the written page. I commend his biography of John Adams to you. It is a wonderful book.
Something he said that day to us stuck with me. He said that the hardest thing about teaching history is that it doesn’t happen in the past. History does not happen in the past.
The ideas, feelings, words, decisions and risks taken are all taken in the present, with no certain knowledge of what the future will bring.
I think it is fitting, from time to time, to reflect on how much this great experiment was worth to those who started it. And to ask ourselves what we are willing to risk to keep it.
On July 1, 1776, just before the debate on the draft Declaration of Independence was to begin in Philadelphia, John Adams wrote a letter to a former delegate to the Continental Congress, Archibald Bulluch:
The object is great which we have in view, and we must expect a great expense of blood to obtain it. But we should always remember that a free constitution of civil government cannot be purchased at too dear a rate, as there is nothing on this side of Jerusalem of equal importance to mankind.
“Nothing on this side of Jerusalem. . . . ” The only thing more important than liberty, was faith.
History is a woven figure. The acts we take today are connected by an unbroken thread through web and weft to the acts of men 227 years ago. Gradually, over time, the color and texture and pattern of the piece may change. But we are bound to those who we honor today and we always will be.
Evidence of this unbroken thread was here, in this congregation today in the hymn we sang together when the service began.
We sing it every week at First Methodist, but only the fourth verse. It always makes me smile a little when we do, because some 227 years after declaring our independence from King George III, we are still, every week, professing our faith and poking a finger in his eye by changing the words to “God save the King”:
Our Father’s God to thee,
Author of Liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright,
With freedom’s holy light,
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God our King.
God bless you all, and God bless the United States of America. |
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