By James Wilson
Editor’s Note – It seemed good as we celebrate our nation’s
independence in 2014
that we think and pray about the grounding of that independence in
dependence
on the God who gives it as a gift – the gift of American
Exceptionalism. We re-print
the following in that spirit.
When
I was privileged to give a keynote address at the Fourth World Christian
Gathering on Indigenous People in Kiruna, Sweden, the MC – a convener of the event – gave a dramatic and
worldview changing response. I delivered
a message that worldwide revival would begin with the indigenous peoples, but
only if all of us chose repentance over redress of even justified
grievances. (I am white, but descended
from Scottish Highlanders.) I was coming
from the Biblical concept that none can look God in the eye without first
falling on their faces before Him. None
are without sin, according to Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God.” Arild Maso,
a Sami man, took the microphone when I finished my address and called for a
complete change of course in the assembly.
We had always concentrated on forgiving those who had harmed us; today
he required us to focus on seeking forgiveness from those we had harmed. The more than one hundred tribes and nations
represented spent the rest of the day in repentance.
In
making my appeal as I did I was expressing one of the primary tenets of what is
known as American Exceptionalism. That
tenet is that all we have in the United States is an undeserved gift
– for the uses of which we are both responsible and accountable. It comes from the Puritan playbook, along
with the kernels of every other institution we hold dear in this country.
American
Exceptionalism is the matrix of ideas summarized in the understanding that we
are a people bound together not by a common history or ethnicity, but by a
shared body of belief about who we are and what we are called to do. We reiterate this understanding each time we
say that we are a nation of immigrants, that we are uniquely gifted to bring
liberty and limited government to the world, or that we do what we do for the
good of mankind rather than for a self-serving agenda. When I offered my own apology to a Filipino
delegate named Pio Arce that afternoon in Sweden, I apologized for the
brutality and arrogance with which we blessed his nation, but not for the fact
that we are the only nation in history to conquer a land and work tirelessly to
set it free in less than a generation.
He agreed with me and we became friends that day. I was again expressing a primary tenet of
American Exceptionalism – we see ourselves not as masters but as servants to
the world.
Critics
will say that imperial powers throughout history have claimed the kind of
exceptionalism that animates Americans – from Rome
to Great Britain and from
Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union. It is true that Rome
saw herself as gifting the world with Pax Romana, while the British
Empire called it Pax Britannia – the peace and order of
civilization as those nations understood them.
Nazi Germany claimed to offer racial purity and the Soviets came
bringing so-called political purity. Rome and Great
Britain stumbled on their own arrogance and
sense of entitlement. Nazi Germany and
the Soviets were evil and corrupt out the gate; they fell of their own bloated
weight. Americans are unique – for
better or worse – in believing we are called by God to bless the world with
what we were given by Him – the first democratic republic in history and the
first nation constituted so as to have a limited government for the release of
maximum opportunity for all mankind. Of
the latter reality there can be no doubt; the record of history is clear; of
the former there can be no reasonable doubt when viewing the whole of our track
record.
Americans
as a people and culture are a flawed template for such an undertaking. We failed to make a constitution that
abolished slavery, although we expressed our disgust for it in the document and
the papers that facilitated its adoption, and we installed a mechanism in the
document for repairing its deficiencies by amendment. We treated the indigenous peoples we found
with brutality, although we address such issues with an open-ness that is
unprecedented in the world. When we
repent of our sins and excesses, as I did in Sweden
and later in the Philippines,
it constitutes not an about face but a return to our identity in Him who
creates us as a work in progress.
The next
installments of this series will examine our flaws and our rootedness in a
hope-filled future. As we approach our
Independence Day it seems the right thing to do.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living
As Ambassadors of Relationships and The
Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by
e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
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