Hilton Head Island, SC – April 22, 2012
The Chapel Without Walls
Joshua 6:15-21; Joshua 8:3-8,18-23
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout; for the Lord has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction.” – Joshua 6:16-17a (RSV)
A while back I got a new license plate for my car. To do that, one must go to the office of the Department of Motor Vehicles. This is always a daunting assignment, likely to produce night sweats, heart palpitations, and/or hives. Actually, the process went rather smoothly. But when it came time to get my new license, the woman brought out a new “In God We Trust” plate. I allowed as how I didn’t want an “In God We Trust” plate. “Why not?” she asked, utterly incredulous over why any red-blooded American, especially a South Carolinian, would reject proudly displaying proper political sentiments to everyone who had the privilege of following him on the road. Fortunately, the lady had an ordinary bronzish, blueish license with the palmetto tree and the rising crescent moon to identify the car as being attached to the Palmetto State. Implicitly, this sermon is devoted to a summary of why it is often dangerous for the citizens of any nation to proclaim far and wide that “In God We Trust.” If we truly did trust in God, we wouldn’t need to say it, and if we didn’t trust in God, saying it is so certainly wouldn’t make it so.
The national election of 2008, and the current election of 2012, have revolved around the issue of American exceptionalism, at least in part. The patriotism of anyone who refuses to support the notion of American exceptionalism is automatically suspect to millions of Americans.
In 2009, a journalist from the Financial Times asked President Obama whether he believes in this idea. He got into big trouble with his answer. He said he believes in American exceptionalism “just as I suspect Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” In that sense, of course every nation is exceptional, because no two nations are exactly alike. What else is like Upper Volta or the Maldive Islands, for example? The Maldives are located south of India in the Indian Ocean. On average, all the islands in the archipelago are about three feet above sea level. Climate change and the rise of sea level are rapidly rendering them uninhabitable. Any way you figure it, that reality is exceptionally exceptional.
But that isn’t what “exceptionalism” means to many Americans. It means that we are militarily unparalleled, morally above others, politically without peer, economically unassailable. To some of our citizens, it means we are “above all the others.” It means we probably know what is best for other nations even better than they know themselves. If they ask us, we’ll tell them. Even if they don’t ask, we may tell them anyway. Not to believe in American exceptionalism is almost treasonous to many Americans who flagrantly flaunt the notion.
Without question, there have been times when Americans have acted with exceptional grace and benevolence. Had Abraham Lincoln lived, the healing process after the Civil War would have gone far more smoothly than it did. Lincoln was an exceptional President who inspired exceptional attitudes towards former enemies. Under President Roosevelt, the New Deal made enormous strides in bringing our nation out of the Great Depression. Social Security alone revolutionized life for many older citizens. After World War II, the Marshall Plan provided huge assistance to European countries in danger of being swallowed up by the Iron Curtain. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society did much to erase racial and economic inequalities. From it came the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Medicaid, and Medicare, among many other things.
In the past dozen years or so, however, American exceptionalism has taken a decidedly nationalistic turn. We have made some exceptionally bad policy decisions. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were preeminently our wars, even though we had some reluctantly willing allies. Both wars have essentially been disasters, especially for the Iraqis and Afghans we supposedly were attempting to help. We have tried to force our will upon other nations, none of whom has the military or economic power to stand up to us. We tend to try to force our values on other nations which have quite different values from our own. We are one of few nations which refused to become signatories of the International Criminal Court, along with such stellar holdouts as North Korea, Somalia, China, Russia, and Syria. And why? - Because we don’t want any American soldiers or intelligence operatives to be brought to trial for crimes against humanity in an international jurisdiction which we choose not to recognize.
According to Osama Bin Laden’s brother-in-law, before he died the leader of Al Qaeda urged his children to go to universities in Europe or the USA. His brothers attended Harvard Law School, UCLA, and Tufts. That is an affirmation of American exceptionalism from a very surprising source. He also encouraged his children to seek peace rather than to follow his path.
But there are other examples of American exceptionalism which are not so admirable. We have more people in prison than the Soviet gulag at its height. We have 760 prisoners for every 100,000 Americans, which is 7 to 10 times more than all other developed nations. We represent 5% of the world’s population, but we have 25% of all the people in the world who are behind bars. Who can take pride in those statistics? Is that a worthy example of exceptionalism?
In The New York Times Review of Books, Michael Ignatieff wrote a review of a book by David Scheffer called All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals. Mr. Scheffer was an American diplomat who helped set up the International Criminal Court. It was established at that time to try military and political leaders of Serbia in the atrocities in Yugoslavia during the 1980s and 90s. The author had intelligence information which could have assisted the ICC in prosecuting the accused, but he was ordered not to hand over the material, for fear it might jeopardize our intelligence services or lead to the prosecution of Americans.
Michael Ignatieff began his review with these forthright words: “Affirming belief that America is an exceptional nation has become a test of patriotism in American politics. Standing up for America’s right to make its own rules and live its own unique destiny has become an obligatory part of campaign rhetoric….” Then he stated the political and legal realities regarding the ICC in stark terms. “International justice, above all, remains justice for criminals from defeated states or those too weak to deny jurisdiction. We will not have international justice in the true meaning of the term until one of the great powers allows one of its citizens to face judgment at The Hague.”
Ah, but surely when we were not the sole surviving superpower and didn’t have so many enormous responsibilities, we really were more exceptional - - - weren’t we? A while back I read an astonishing story in the newspaper about what were called “orphan trains.” In the first two decades of the 20th century, there were far more orphans than there are now. According to Judy Keen of USA Today, 200,000 children who had no parents were put on trains which went west from the East Coast. Along the way people removed some of the children at each station and took them into their homes. Some of these were noble adoptive parents, but others treated these orphans as unpaid servants or as virtual slaves. What a sad chapter that is in our history!
Charles Murray is a conservative observer of American society who has just published a book called Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010. He wrote very positively about what he described as the “creative minority” of educated, wealthy, mainly white people whom he believes are the natural leaders of the USA. Now they are degenerating into what he calls “the proletarianization of the dominant minority.” The current upper crust have stable marriages, but they are tolerant of the high divorce rate in the rest of society and the high percentage of babies born out of wedlock, especially among black and Latino women. His concern about some of our negative social trends is valid. Murray foresees an America that is coming unglued. So how to reverse this process? Here is his formula: “What it comes down to is that America’s new upper class must once again fall in love with what makes America different. The drift away from those qualities is going to be stopped only when we are all talking again about why America is exceptional and why it is so important that America remains exceptional. That requires once again seeing the American project for what it has been: a different way for people to live together, unique among the nations of the earth and immeasurably precious.”
Suppose you’re Canadian or British or German or French or Chinese or Japanese and you read that. What would you think? If you thought all Americans think like Charles Murray, you’d think we have a colossal nerve. What hubris! What revolting pride is represented by those words! That we should try to be exceptional no one should ever deny, but that we are in everything exceptional no one can honestly believe. It is impossible for a nation as powerful as ours to be genuinely morally or politically exceptional. You cannot be involved in as many issues around the world as the USA and maintain national purity. It simply cannot be done.
To be fair to him, Charles Murray thinks we were exceptional, but our ruling class has lost its influence. If “the right kind of people” (my words, not his) would just regain their natural superiority, all would be well. For most of our history we were exceptional, Murray says. Once the dominant minority becomes the creative minority again, our exceptionalism shall return, he says.
That kind of thinking promotes rigid class distinctions. Furthermore, it is dangerous, because it leads people with uncritical thinking to imagine that the US is indeed an exceptional nation. Exceptional in what way? Exceptional on whose terms? Exceptional by what guidelines?
We spend more on national defense than all other nations combined. Is that an exceptionalism of which we should be proud? We have 5% of the world’s population, and create over 20% of the carbon in the world’s atmosphere. We’re exceptional, all right! We have a greater gap between the very wealthy and everyone else than almost all other developed nations. Exceptional.
Why are Americans more than other nationalities likely to suppose themselves exceptional? Is it something inherent in the American character? We surely hope not. Rather it is because in our origins we believe we intended to create something unique in the history of the world, and we did this because God intended us to do it. John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts, said as much in 1620. The American colonies were to be a city set on a hill, a light to the nations, the new Israel. If you believe that, and countless early Americans did believe it, then what you do as a nation you do because you believe God approves it. Conquer and obliterate the native tribes already living here? Yes; God willed it. Initiate wars of aggression against Mexico and Spain, and gain millions of acres of land as a result? Manifest Destiny. God bless America. It is usually the nations which are the most powerful who fancy themselves the most exceptional. Nobody ever hears about Bolivian or Nepalese exceptionalism.
In parts of the Old Testament, purported history is recorded with solemn approval. You heard two examples of that in the readings this morning from the Book of Joshua. Supposedly God ordered the Israelites to kill everybody in Jericho except Rahab the harlot and her family, because she had assisted the invaders to capture the city, when the walls came a-tumblin’ down. Then God sternly ordered the invaders to kill every man, woman, and child in the city of Ai.
In the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, entire populations of Canaanite cities are reported to have been totally destroyed. The narrative is written as though God commanded it. What a theological travesty is that cockamamie concept! It was Israelite exceptionalism gone absolutely amok. Some of the Israelites truly believed God wanted ethnic cleansing, but they were wrong. Some Americans truly believe God has made America exceptional, but in the exceptionalism they so strongly support, they are dangerously wrong. In some positive respects the USA is exceptional; it really is. But we have more than enough negative exceptionalism in our national culture to prevent us from seriously patting ourselves on the back. When we should be humble, we show pride, and when we should feel shame, we display conceit. Exceptional power demands exceptional responsibility. Are we ever going to learn that crucial lesson?
Oliver Thomas is a minister who is a regular contributor of editorials to USA Today. He is quoted on today’s bulletin cover. Listen to some other words of the Rev. Mr. Thomas. “Even the ancient book of Genesis establishes this baseline principle when God speaks to the patriarch Abraham: ‘By your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.’…The path to greatness is never well-trod. It is, though, well marked. Discipline, courage, and sacrifice are what get you there, not fidelity to narrow partisan agendas. Can America live up to her lofty dream as a shining city on a hill? You decide.”
When the Israelites thought they were special because God loved them more than other peoples, they made some terrible decisions. The prophets made it their business to excoriate them for that. The prophets insisted Israel was specially called by God for special service, not for special honors. When Americans think we are special because God loves us more than other peoples, we literally do some of the damnedest things. When perverted religious thinking is attached to national policies, perverted actions are the inevitable result.
It says it on some of our license plates, and it says it on our coins: In God We Trust. How we conduct ourselves on the basis of those lofty words determines whether or not it accurately describes us. If we really trust in God, we should not and will not continue to do some of the things we have done since our national ancestors first arrived on these pristine shores four centuries ago. We, not God, shall illustrate whether or not we are truly exceptional. And you may be certain of this: God is closely watching our national behavior.