Some things are timeless. Family gatherings, backyard barbecues, (pass the arrachera please), and trips to the park with iced watermelon in a cooler in the trunk.  These are some of my favorite Independence Day things.  In honor of our nation’s 248^th birthday, I decided to consume some “vintage” and timeless 4^th of July fare: The Declaration of Independence and A Declaration of Dependence. Food for the mind, yes, and zero calories. 
 
I slowly made my way through the text of the Declaration of Independence.  I’d forgotten how short that document was. From the start, the Founding Fathers assert their right to sever ties with Great Britain based on their God given dignity.    Men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” it reads.

In the famous document, colonial leaders unequivocally pronounce their break from what had become an evil and tyrannical power. They provided an impressive list of Great Britain’s sins to prove their point.  Revolution had already broken out and in the end, knowing the full fury of Great Britain was about to rain down on their heads, they closed the document with a statement of faith; “…with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” 
  
The fruits of the young nation’s fight for independence from tyranny, ripened as our nation’s other founding documents, the Constitution of the United States in 1787, and the Bill of Rights in 1789.  The first president, George Washington famously wrote in a letter in 1790, “The establishment of our new Government seemed to be the last great experiment, for promoting human happiness, by reasonable compact, in civil Society.” In 1798, John Adams penned a letter noting, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”   So, what happens to a nation when a people reject the God of morality, virtue, and religion?

Eighty-three years ago, Archbishop Fulton Sheen addressed that conundrum in his book, A Declaration of Dependence: Trusting God Amidst Totalitarianism, Paganism, and War.  Published on July 4, 1941, at the cusp of the United States’ entrance into World War II, the timeless work contains Bishop Sheen’s sharp observations about war and the rejection of God by many people in the United States, in the name of “progress”.   This rejection of God leads to an evil spirit of rebellion which touches every aspect of human life, from relationships between a men and women in marriage, to dealings between the leaders of countries.  Sheen points out that the soul that rebels against God, rejects the very thing that can save it and bring it peace.

Referencing the forces that lead to war, the archbishop characterizes these as irrational, violent, and atheistic. Archbishop Sheen writes that the rebellion against God has spread into every major institution and branches of government.

“Shall we go on with our godless education, our shattered family life, our class wars, our political intrigues, and our undisciplined and uncircumcised hearts, because we foolishly believe the only enemy we have is across the sea? How are we to save ourselves from our propensity to self-destruction?” Obviously only by the intervention of something beyond man and beyond history,” Sheen wrote (p. 26)
 
 Reflecting on the Declaration of Independence, the archbishop notes that for a group of “fellow citizens” the Declaration it is nothing more than a document giving people independence of authority, law, and order, which is the complete opposite of what the document actually proposes. “The Declaration of Independence asserts a double dependence on God, and dependence on law as derived from God,” Sheen writes (Page 103) Removing God from the picture, leaves only man himself as the arbiter of his own actions.   If this is so, people can only count on the State or the Dictator to create rights.   “But if the State or dictator is the creator of rights, then the State or the dictator can dispossess men of their rights. That is why in those countries where God is most denied, man is most tyrannized, and where religion is most persecuted, man is most enslaved.” (p. 104)

 “Freedom is a moral power, not a physical power; not the right to do what you please but the right to do what you ought. But ought implies law, and law implies order, and order implies justice, and justice implies God." (p. 45)

I have a humble proposition for those of us who love God, and want peace, in our world, and in our families, let’s make Independence Day, the 4^th of July, not only an occasion to have beer and grill burgers, let’s make it a National Holy Day in which we declare, in a loud and unified voice a return to our Creator, a return to the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.  

“America must return to God humbly and penitently, for if we continue to forsake God, God will forsake us. He is not only the God of mercy but the God of justice.  Archbishop Fulton Sheen , A Declaration of Dependence (p. 35)