Faces on Faith: Ours is a blessed republic
Right after our Declaration of Independence was adopted in Philadelphia, the mayor’s wife asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?” He replied: “A republic — if you can keep it.”
That noble task began immediately; and, as fellow citizens, we are now into our 246th year of grateful living and shared efforts in our work toward what our Constitution calls “a more perfect union.”
America at its founding was republican (in the sense of having no monarch), democratic (grounding all political power ultimately in the consent of the people), liberal (the classic definition of a concern to protect the individual rights of the people), and constitutional (political power and individual rights recorded in a written instrument binding on the state). While none of these ideas was new to history, what is absolutely unique was the attempt of “we the people,” between the presidencies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, to form a society using all four concepts at the same time.
None of this would have been imaginable and nothing about our United States would be exceptional without the profound insight of Biblical faith (sourced in the Judeo-Christian tradition) that each human being has eternal dignity because we are created in the image of the Holy (not in our body, but in our mind). We have been “minted” as persons of priceless value which makes the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” inalienable — no one can take them away because they are given by the creator (not by a human ruler or the state or a religious hierarchy).
Thus, our first president in his farewell address (Dec. 15, 1791) took care to remind us: “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle … religion and morality are indispensable supports of our political prosperity.”
So, ours is a blessed republic; and it is our responsibility to “keep it.” It is as if God is saying what appears on a billboard alongside an Arizona highway: DON’T MAKE ME COME DOWN THERE! Or, as President John F. Kennedy put it in the last sentence of his eloquent inaugural address (Jan. 20, 1961): ” … let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking his blessing and his help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
The Rev. Dr. Ran Niehoff is the pastor emeritus at Sanibel Congregational United Church of Christ.