A love letter to & a challenge for America.

Friday, July 4, 2025

It’s the Fourth of July! Independence Day! And you know what? I think we should celebrate. I’ve always been someone who loves a cookout and fireworks and big band patriotic tunes. I love America!

As James Baldwin said:

I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

American history is Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, Dorothy Day and Mother Jones, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, John Lewis and Dolly Parton—people who made America more just, more welcoming, more free.

People risk their lives to travel to the United States. Yes, we must commit every day to being a nation that welcomes them when they arrive and is worthy of the promise and trust they have given our nation, but the idea of America is worth celebrating and working towards.

America should not be our idol. There is no America First in the Kingdom of God. Instead, when John gets his vision of the throne of God in Revelation, he sees “every nation and tribe and people and language.” If we take seriously the poem engraved on the Statue of Liberty, maybe we can usher in a bit of that vision of the coming Kingdom today:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus - November 2, 1883

Loving America means wanting her to be better for everyone.