From Independence To Interdependence

I hope you are enjoying this 4th of July holiday weekend. I had a great time at a backyard barbecue hosted by some of our new neighbors, and I'm looking forward to Newtown's fireworks tomorrow evening.

Independence Day was my dad's birthday. He would have been 72 this year. Amazingly, his brother, my Uncle Bob, was born on Flag Day. Now that's a patriotic family.

I dug through the barrel today to see if Dad ever preached about Independence Day. He did ... in 1976 during a service at Grace United Methodist Church  celebrating our nation's bicentennial. He talked about his admiration for our founders because they saw "the need to rise up and face the demands of the hour, the need to sacrifice oneself for an idea whose time has come." As Dad put it, "our forefathers felt impelled by Divine Providence to see to it that an idea whose time had come in America -- independence -- was made a reality on these shores. And for this they risked their lives, and many died. They realized, as the line of the old hymn puts it, that 'new occasions teach new duties.'" My father believed that "the supreme value for these great leaders of the past" was to "secure full life for persons" ("life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," as Jefferson put it), and, in 1776, independence "was the means to a full life for persons."

So, two hundred years later, in 1976, what new idea did my dad believe to be necessary to secure a full life for persons living in a new time? "If the cry of 1776 was for independence, the cry of 1976 must be for interdependence." With words that have only grown more appropriate now in 2014, Dad described why interdependence was an idea whose time had come in 1976: 

"Times are different.  We can no longer just stay at our own level in splendid isolation from the other people on the earth. Rising [nations], dwindling resources, the availability of transportation and communication, technology, nuclear weapons -- all of these things make us realize how closely intertwined our lives are today. The material standard of living I adopt affects someone living in India. Race relations in Rhodesia affect me in Millersville. This is truly a 'global village' we're living in today. We can no longer be concerned about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness just for ourselves alone. Given the 'global village,' if everyone doesn't have life, liberty, and the opportunity for happiness, no one has it. That's how closely our lives mesh today."  

Dad called on American Christians to be "wise and alert." Echoing John Wesley's famous declaration that "the world is my parish," Dad urged his parishioners to "become citizens of the world. ... Our witness is to counter prejudice, to advocate the simple life, to show absolute respect for every person, to help others face this new day of interdependence." As Dad saw it, "[t]he day has come to declare -- and more than declare -- to live our interdependence."

I thank God for our independence, and I pray that I will be more mindful now of our interdependence.  Happy 4th of July, everyone!

From "A Declaration of Interdependence"

July, 1976 - Grace UMC, Millersville, PA

Postscript: A few days after writing this post, I came across a copy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In it, Dr. King made this observation about our interdependence: "I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."