I’m feeling a bit punchy today, and not (I must confess) very inclined to work. Perhaps this is because I get a four-day weekend for 4th of July, but I think it has more to do with the fact that David is coming to visit me! That’s right, tonight I will be blissfully reunited with my longsuffering husband (who, I must point out, is currently declaring that he hates all Presbyterians minus yours truly. You’ll have to forgive him if he’s holding a grudge right now).

After batting around with a variety of topics, my comment about Independence Day reminded me that it is time for another random holiday post. July 4, in day-off holiday time, is really our only pit stop between Memorial Day and Labor Day (no, Flag Day in June doesn’t count). There aren’t even any religious holidays we get during this period—it is Ordinary Time in the liturgical calendar for us Presbyterians, and even our Jewish, Orthodox, and Islamic friends don’t have any reason to celebrate.

Now, I know that I don’t need to spend time talking about the Independence Day celebration itself. You all know that the holiday celebrates the day the Continental Congress of 13 British colonies in the Americas adopted the final draft of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. You also know that celebrations usually involve picnics and fireworks.

You may not know that July 4 did not become an official holiday until 1783, when the Revolutionary War ended. You also may not know that the US Virgin Islands actually celebrate the holiday a week prior to July 4, or that Bristol, Rhode Island boasts the country’s longest continuous Independence Day celebration. And, happily for us Presbyterians, the only active minister to sign the Declaration of Independence was Presbyterian John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University).

Independence Day, though, is mostly a civic holiday that has nothing to do with the church. As a history major, I’ve always found it a bit funny that people point back to the “Founding Fathers” as model Christians infusing our society with orthodox Christianity. While the 18th century was a period of intense religious activism in American society (American Evangelicalism traces its roots to the Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s), some leading citizens of the day were influenced by the more secular Enlightenment. A few of our most respected American founders were actually deists—those who believed in the Bible as a good moral book but denied the parts that seemed contrary to reason, such as the Incarnation or the divinity of Christ. Two men considered leaders in this movement, according to a Library of Congress website I was on today, were none other than national heroes John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

There is no doubt that the framers of this nation were influenced by a largely Judeo-Christian set of ethics. Presbyterians like to brag that the US Constitution was modeled after OUR form of government. And hey, the distrust of human nature inherent in the Constitution’s system of checks and balances could have come from none other than a Calvinist. But figures like Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and others were also shaped by the great rationalist thinkers of their day as well—John Locke, Adam Smith, etc.

As a Christian, what I would be most apt to celebrate this 4th of July from a faith standpoint is the fact that we’re a nation founded on the principle of religious freedom. We’re a place where over 200 years ago, a group of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Anglicans, Baptists, Quakers, deists, and even maybe a few Jews could come together and agree that our right to disagree was worth protecting. Moreover, they could find enough common ground to move forward together. Sure, they fell short at times. But it was a starting place.

Perhaps this is the legacy we should reflect on this Independence Day.

“For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another.” --Romans 12:4-5

Kelsey