Amid turbulence, a free nation endures and grows
When President Obama sang “Amazing Grace” at a Charleston memorial service for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, he was of course recognizing the minister and eight others slain in a historic black church in what appears to be an act of sheer hate. But the president might as well have been singing for his country, our country.
For on this Independence Day, because of recent days of tragedy and triumph, we see that this tumultuous, troubled, glorious, triumphant, divided, unified, properous and deprived country has been blessed with amazing grace.
The Charleston shooting was a horrific moment of deadly hatred. And then, when families of those church members slain at Bible study expressed their forgiveness for the killer, there was a moment of spectacular love. Stunning, it was, no less.
This is our country, a place of hate and love and clarity and confusion and cantankerous division marked on occasion by togetherness.
Today, by riversides and in campgrounds and sometimes just at a large family table, those in families with great personal and political differences will pray together and sing together and salute America’s flag on the anniversary of their nation’s independence.
Today, gay couples will celebrate their own freedom to marry, just affirmed by a U.S. Supreme Court, a court that not that long ago would not have recognized the changing sentiments and laws in most states in the union.
Today, those who have enrolled in health care insurance programs through the Affordable Care Act, programs that may one day save their lives or their children, will celebrate that freedom from worry that comes with having health insurance. And they, too, were supported by the Supreme Court, which for the second time reinforced the ACA.
Freedom from tyranny was the objective that was declared by the Founding Fathers on this day those two-plus centuries ago. The tyranny of taxation by the British, the narrow definitions of freedom imposed on the colonies, the inhibitions of speech and press and to some degree religion were too much for patriots to bear, and so they brought revolution under Gen. George Washington and then shaped a democracy, in ways that survive to this day, under President George Washington.
Presidents from those days forward have steadfastly echoed this nation’s early demands for freedom in countries around the world. President Reagan demanded the end of the Berlin Wall. Presidents Eisenhower and Truman sought freedoms from tyranny in Korea. President Kennedy stared nuclear war in the face against the Soviet Union during the Cuban missle crisis and preserved the world.
Tumult abroad and tumult at home will forever be with us. But triumphs over hate in a Charleston church, or over those things that divide us in a courtroom or triumphs over terrorism and the ongoing battle against it remind us, on this, our Independence Day, that amazing grace is with us still, and that America, through it all, is still standing, in freedom.
This story was originally published July 3, 2015 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Amid turbulence, a free nation endures and grows."