Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-20-26

“American Exceptionalism” is one of those concepts that is viewed by many citizens with a perception somewhere between ignorance and disdain. I am referring to American citizens themselves, which makes my assessment especially damning.

Otherwise it should be something for which we should thank God and our civic ancestors for; yet so recent a celebrity as Barak Obbama displayed abysmal ignorance of it. American Exceptionalism does not mean that if you wake up as an American citizen with a pulse, you are superior – relatively “exceptional,” that is – compared to other humans across the globe. It does mean that American citizens have an exceptional patrimony; that our rights are better defined, more broadly asserted, and holding greater promise for advancement than are available to many other people of the world.

“Inalienable,” the Founding Fathers called those rights. The “Framers” of our Declaration and Constitution defined the set of rights that they were willing to assert, protect, and die for. Letters, proclamations, petitions – basically lists of complaints – had been sent by Colonial leaders and legislators to the king and parliament and were received with varying degrees of sympathy. However, the Mother Country ignored colonists’ more substantial grievances and answered those with half-hearted assent or annoyed dismissals. Some British officials, for instance Edmund Burke, were eloquent in defense of colonists’ complaints, but little changed.

Leaders in the New World sensed there was something different about the American Experiment: Something New in the New World. We (yes, we can all say “we,” despite in my own case my family’s arrival here only around 1900 – which is an exceptional aspect of being an American) we inherited English Common Law and the Teutonic Germ Theory of democracy, but on American soil, more things took root: a democratic ethos; a sense of justice; Christian principles actually put into practice.

Exceptionalism. An exceptional people, aware of their exceptional inheritance and limitless possibilities. Exceptional opportunities to correct institutional mistakes, seize the moments, and forge a new future. Exceptional men – truly, a blessed group of responsible thinkers and actors – who did exceptional things. And these men knew the risks! Previously, they had sent suggestions to England, but with the Declaration of Independence, they committed treason. They pledged their “lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor,”

Pay attention to the order of those words. Their priorities!

Words matter. Exceptionalism, despite being misunderstood or misapplied. Sacred honor. And, to the point of my thoughts here, words so important to the Framers: Freedom and Liberty. It struck me, during 250’s inevitable but empty parades and fireworks, that those words have become empty and abstract; misapplied and misunderstood.

Without running to a dictionary, I ask you: what is the difference between Freedom and Liberty?

We, most of us, use the words interchangeably these days. To the extent that is so, it is more than a crime against grammar; it is a crime against self-respecting principles once regarded as nearly sacred. Basically – that is to say, precisely – freedom is the ability to do what one desires to do, or think or speak. Liberty is exercising those freedoms while respecting restrictions, rules, and consequences. To violate either “right” is to invite anarchy, license, and repression. They are the type of standards, especially respecting their distinctions, that Americans should embrace and not ignore.

What does this have to do with America’s “birthday”? The same thing that finds its relevance in God’s word – as with all matters of action and integrity. The Founders and Framers, for all of today’s prattle about their “Deism” and such, knew the Bible well; they relied upon it as a blueprint for inventing a nation; and they frequently beseeched God for wisdom and guidance.

Therefore we can ask the same question in 2026 as they asked in 1776: What is the difference between Freedom and Liberty? The Founders and Framers knew the difference, and would confuse the principles to their peril. And citizens were informed too.

Today we ask ourselves the same question and, I am afraid, do not answer correctly. In our day, Americans – and Christian especially – have confused the two principles. Even the churches have come to regard Freedom as meaning the ability to do as one pleases, rather than be free from mistakes, sin, guilt. And that is a license to be corrupt. Freedom to self-destruct. American Christianity is trending toward defining freedom as liberty, and defining liberty precisely as ignoring consequences of sin, resisting God’s commands, and disobeying Christ’s teachings.

We are free to disobey God, of course. I believe He has given us free will. But defying the rules and responsibilities that are implied by Liberty, and His manifold commands, has led every time and in every land and dispensation in history, to God’s inevitable Justice.

We are to welcome God’s just treatment of our actions. “Covered in the Blood of Jesus,” we trust His provision and promises. Once upon a time we Americans respected the liberty embedded in the phrase Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. But contemporary American Christianity has opted for a very loose re-interpretation of the word. Not respecting the distinctions and traditional meanings of these once inviolate words threatens the loss of life, of liberty itself, and happiness. That is happening now in America’s 250th.

And we are losing our freedoms too, as we see all around us. It is an exceptional tragedy.

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Click: O Freedom

6-16-14

The Pledge of Allegiance added the phrase “under God” in 1954, on Flag Day – 60 years ago this week. So Happy Birthday… not to God, but to the phrase. Its inclusion has been a matter of some discussion since it was appended.

Theodore Roosevelt was criticized during his presidency for wanting to take “In God We Trust” off American currency. This seems counterintuitive about the man I have elsewhere called possibly the most observant if not the most intensely Christian of our presidents. One of his missions was to reform and beautify American coinage, and his friend Augustus St-Gaudens in fact designed the most impressive coins in our history, the $20 “Double Eagle” gold piece, and the $10 “Indian Head” gold eagle.

Why did TR want “In God We Trust” off our coinage? In fact, he considered it irreverent, making a cheap slogan of a sacred matter. He said he was witness, in his rancher days in the Bad Lands, to cowboys in saloons citing it coarsely; “In God we trust – all others pay cash,” and so forth. “My own feeling in the matter is due to my very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins, or to use it in any kindred manner, not only does no good but does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege,” he wrote.

“It is a motto which it is indeed well to have inscribed on our great national monuments, in our temples of justice, in our legislative halls, and in buildings such as those at West Point and Annapolis – in short, wherever it will tend to arouse and inspire a lofty emotion in those who look thereon. But it seems to me eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins, just as it would be to cheapen it by use on postage stamps, or in advertisements.”

His view did not prevail; an aroused public and Congress overcame his objection. A similar groundswell of popular support added “under God” to the Pledge 60 years ago. Anent both matters, debates have not merely continued but intensified of late.

I am generally of the Theodore Roosevelt school regarding the nation’s confirmation of belief on public buildings, monuments, courtrooms, and legislative halls. It is a matter as much of tradition as of faith. Commonly, societies tend to codify their basic tenets by such means – dispositive acts like public prayers, and displays of the Decalogue in public squares. I understand TR’s disinclination to have a sacred concept coarsened – but I would take that chance, trusting to peoples’ eventual conviction. And simply asserting universal, foundational, shared beliefs. After all, dumb jokes are occasionally made about “e pluribus unum.”

Further, myself, I would proceed on such matters to avow in every pertinent manner that the United States were settled as Christian communities; that Founders and Framers alike cited biblical principles and reliance on God; that the Supreme Court formally declared the United States of America a “Christian country.” This is no knock on Jews or Muslims or atheists, who are guaranteed every legal right the majority enjoys. But if I moved to Israel, I would never think of agitating, say, to have the Star of David removed the nation’s flag because I would be “offended” as a minority. If I moved to an Islamic society I would be embarrassed to attempt to eliminate Muslim symbols, traditions, and observances, simply because I as a newcomer had a pulse and “feelings.”

But… genii are out of the bottles in America. So debates rage, Christians are on the defensive, and traditions are upended. I believe this is due as much to the moral lassitude of Christians as to the aggressive pursuits of rampaging lawyers. Shame on us.

It has become easier to insist on the retention of slogans on currency, phrases in pledges, and crosses in cemeteries, than to be bloodied in the dusty arena of ideas. Ultimately, the real, burning question for Christians in 2014 is this: what exactly are we defending in these debates? What in hell – I choose my words carefully – are we really supporting in contemporary America?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? Then why have we allowed a runaway government to be our primary source of security in life? Why not God? Why not each other? Why not ourselves?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? Then why have we, as a culture, turned from biblical ways of finding comfort in God, and bowed to drugs, drink, decadent entertainment, and false gods of pleasure?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? Then how has America suddenly transformed itself from a traditionalist society of manners and morals to a country awash in abortions, addictions, physical abuse, divorce, illegitimate births, and myriad sexually transmitted diseases?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? Then why have traditional expressions of faith been banished in favor of secular concepts and moral relativism? Legislators and judges sit in halls with “In God We Trust” on their walls, and open their sessions with prayer – yet day by day, now, they mock that very pledge. In hypocrisy we trust.

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? As a people? Then why do our movies, TV shows, pop-music lyrics, literature, graphic novels, political discourse, judicial decisions, and bureaucratic rules dedicate themselves to be, not “neutral,” but hostile, toward God and His Revealed Word?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? America is America – the essence of the misunderstood term “Exceptionalism” – because a diverse group of peoples came here through the centuries, disparate in uncountable ways, but spiritually unified, somehow: United, before the fact, in trusting God, being suspicious of authority, loving liberty, embracing tradition, reliant on selves, and therefore – yes, part of American Exceptionalism too – loving their neighbors.

Is the next chapter of the American story to be entitled, “In God We Once Trusted”?

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Since we are discussing traditions, our musical video for this message is “Nearer, My God, To Thee,” an old hymn sung here in Sacred Harp fashion. This is a purely American musical expression that took root centuries ago in rural areas and the South, where instruments and musical literacy alike were once scarce. The hymns were sung a capella; out of books with “shape notes”; often sung with the musical terms Do, Re Me Fa, So, La, Ti, Do corresponding to the notes; then followed by lyrics of the hymns; singers arranged in a square, with a leader in the “hollow”; forceful vocals (a euphemism for joyously loud!); emphasis on four-part harmony; arm gestures that emphasized the rhythm; often, strong foot-tapping to carry the beat; a large number of standard hymns in the songbooks, often identified by their numbers instead of titles or first lines.

These exuberant, evangelical, exhortations almost died out until recently. Now they are being revived in churches and – God works in mysterious ways – in secular shape-note and Sacred Harp groups in the North, in urban centers, among (not yet) religious singers, singing conventions, and in more than a few European communities too. Here, an amateur video at Mount Pisgah Primitive Baptist Church in Stroud, Alabama, few years ago.

Click: Nearer, My God, To Thee