Last year, I admitted to a young woman who asked me, “Should we really be celebrating the Fourth of the July where people rebelled against legitimate rulers?”, that for years I had planed my vacation so as not to have to preach on or about the Fourth. I told her that I had once preached a sermon based on the “hymn” written for all those women living in sin and think they’re heading for marriage. “Two out of Three Ain’t Bad”. The chorus tells the sad tale: “And all I can do is keep on telling youI want you (I want you)I need you (I need you)There ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love youNow don’t be sad (don’t be sad ’cause)‘Cause two out of three ain’t bad” [More on this in a future blog.]
In my sermon I quoted Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address which memorably said: “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” I said, inspired by Meat Loaf: Well, 1 out of 3 isn’t bad. Government is not of the people or ultimately by the people but based on Romans 13 it is for the people.
Here’s some thoughts on the subject from Warren Sweet’s 1950 edition of The Story of Religion in America. It contrasts the Lutheran’s hesitancy relative to the Revolution with the Congregationalists 150 years of support leading to it.
No church in America colonies had so much influence on Revolution as the Congregational. At the time of Revolution, New England clergy were American trained from Harvard or Yale. In 1633 Massachusetts and then in 1674 Connecticut, they began practice of preaching sermons on the election. The 1928 book New England Clergy and the American Revolution studied these sermons teaching the doctrines of civil liberty of Sidney, Locke, and Milton. Yes, Civil government was of divine origin; rulers were God’s delegates. However, they derived their power through Him not directly but through the people. “There are certain great rights given us by nature and nature’s God and no ruler may violate these rights. …Thus the Congregational ministers ‘gave to the cause of the colonies all that they could give of the sanction of religion.’” “The New England ministers, to quote Miss Baldwin, ‘With a vocabulary enriched by the Bible …made resistance and at last independence and war a holy cause,’ and through their influence, perhaps more than any other, New England and the Congregationalists particularly, gave to the Revolution overwhelming support” (Religion in America, Sweet, 176-7).
Henry M. Muhlenberg, the patriarch of colonial Lutheranism, could not give his outright support to the Revolution because he had scruples against violating his oaths to George III. His sons were active, however, in the cause, and few Lutherans were out and out Tories. “…at the opening of hostilities [the elder Muhlenberg] moved from Philadelphia to the country, where he maintained a cautious neutrality. To him war was unspeakable sin and to sing the Te Deum after a military victory was like doing so after a man had committed adultery without being caught” (Religion in America, Sweet, 182).
Perhaps we should at least be more like the elder Muhlenberg than his sons. Or as one of my son-in-laws caused me to recall. Perhaps we should be less like Springsteen’s 1984 “Born in the USA” and more like CCR’s 1969 “Fortunate Son”. Or split the difference with Tom Paxton’s 1977 song “Born on the Fourth of July”.
