A Declaration Revisited

One of the ever-present sights this bicentennial year has been the Declaration of Independence. Although the document is the pride of the United States, many Americans have rejected it, charging that they don’t see in our nation much of what the declaration promises. And so they say the document is a lie.

I’m convinced that those who reject the Declaration of Independence do so because of a simple misunderstanding. For some reason, they think the document guarantees life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Well, it does not. It simply states that all are entitled to the freedom to pursue these rights. All it guarantees is the struggle to make these rights real.

Christians should have no difficulty with this, since we know that the only guaranteed life, liberty, and happiness is through a relationship with Jesus Christ. We are in a position of unique response to the Declaration of Independence, for some of the things it speaks of are similar to Christian principles, but only in terms of struggling for them.

Speaking of the faithful of old, the writer of the book of Hebrews says, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them (promises) and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and ‘pilgrims in the land” (Hebrews 11:13). Why don’t we as Christians take this country’s promises (which we know are not reality, but yet are noble and eternal hopes) at their word and give them meaning? Why don't we take our roles as a pilgrim people, a people with a stranger's perspective, yet a people able to live with a meaningful hope?

Many Americans, including some "radical" Christians, reject the Declaration of Independence because they see many areas in this society where people are denied the freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. But this rejection might be part of a popular, anti-patriotic fad that the world is now experiencing. I don't think we should blame the declaration for this society’s failures. The eternal truths it speaks of still hold. It is Americans who have failed to implement those truths. Sin in our lives has created various forms of prejudice and oppression -- economic, racial, religious -- thereby interfering with the realization of these God-given rights.

Christians may be the only ones with the potential to live out the promises of the declaration. The body of Christ is to be a model through which the problems of prejudice and oppression can be resolved: “Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man. But Christ is all, and in all (Colossians 3:11). If we lay hold of this model -- thereby giving profound meaning to the words of the declaration -- it could have deep evangelistic implications among those who truly yearn for national healing.

The experience of black people in this country best illustrates the point I’m trying to make -- that the Declaration of Independence does not guarantee our rights, but rather urges us to struggle for those rights. Throughout our nation’s history blacks have been among those who, in one form or another, have been denied the freedom to secure the rights of life. Blacks of my generation and those of earlier generations were taught to believe that America was a land of “liberty and justice for all.” We believed the Pledge of Allegiance, which states that America is a country where liberty and justice for all is a reality now. We may have gone too far and believed a lie.

But the younger generation of blacks know that America is not a land of liberty and justice for all, that many of the things we were taught as reality are in fact not. They know that America is not a land of equal opportunity, that getting an education might not give them the same chance as white Americans. They are convinced that in order to have equal opportunity with a white, a black has to be a superstar, to be much better than his white counterpart.

The tragedy in this knowledge is that many young blacks have lost the capacity to believe. And without belief, there is no struggle. I consider it a blessing that we older blacks believed what we did. Even believing what the Pledge of Allegiance says (which is clearly not reality) enabled us, when faced with the fact that things might not change, to believe in the Declaration of Independence as a hope instead of rejecting it. That misplaced belief brought the realization that the American documents are referring to ideals that can be achieved only if one struggles to achieve them.

One thing needs to be born in mind as we struggle for these rights: God has endowed these unalienable rights on all humanity. Any selfish pursuit of these rights will achieve nothing. No one can truly achieve these rights by denying them to other people; no one can be truly free until all are free.

Today I see many whites enslaved by the pursuit of selfish liberty. I think of a small predominantly white town in Mississippi. The economic status of white residents in this town is low enough that they can’t afford private schools. Yet they do have private schools at a high cost to themselves. The residents of that town think they are pursuing their freedom by not sending their kids to integrated schools. Instead, they are pursuing a false freedom, which is no freedom at all.

Unselfish freedom is what Christianity is all about. If we stand for it, struggle for it, and redefine these American promises in Christian terms, we may allow white folks like these (and blacks too) to see that it is not only wrong to be racist, but also unnecessary and foolish. I believe all of Christ’s teachings could be summed up thus: “I am the liberator. I can empower you; and with my power acting through you, and thus in the body of believers, life can be made better for you and those around you. There can be liberty and justice in your community.”

When this article appeared, John Perkins was a contributing editor to Sojourners and president of Voice of Calvary in Mendenhall and Jackson, Mississippi.