This July 4th, Let’s Celebrate Inter-dependence Day! [cross-post]

This July 4th, Let’s Celebrate Inter-dependence Day!

by Shane Claiborne Monday, July 4th, 2011

Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of us all being bound up in an “inescapable web of mutuality.” He talked of how we have encountered half the world by the time we have put on our clothes, brushed our teeth, drunk our coffee and eaten our breakfast, as there are invisible faces that make our lives possible every day. That’s why I’ve always struggled with “Independence Day.”

Patriotism can be a dangerous thing if it leads to amnesia about the dark patches of our nation’s history. And it can leave us shortsighted if our nationalism prevents us from seeing pain or hope beyond our borders.

As an American, and especially as a Christian, I am convinced that a love for our own people is not a bad thing, but love doesn’t stop at borders. Love is infinitely boundless and all about holy trespassing and offensive friendships.

We are taught to celebrate independence. But independence and individualism have come at a great price. In the wealthy and industrialized countries we have become the richest people in the world, but we also have some of the highest rates of loneliness, depression, and suicide. We are rich, sad, and lonely. We are living into patterns that not only leave much of the world hungry for bread and starved for justice but also leave us longing for the good life and for meaning and purpose beyond ourselves.

The good news is that we are not alone in the world.

This year, let’s celebrate Interdependence Day — recognizing the fact that we are part of a global neighborhood. Let’s appreciate all the invisible people in our lives, and let’s lament the fact that the human family is terribly dysfunctional.

It’s not about being anti-American but about being pro-world. It’s a beautiful thing to realize that we need each other and that we are not alone in the world. So, I’ve worked with some friends to brainstorm great ways to celebrate “Interdependence Day” this Fourth of July. Here’s what we came up with:

1. Track down old teachers and mentors. Let them know the influence they have had in your life.

2. Babysit for someone for free, especially someone that might really need a night off and not be able to afford a sitter.

3. Try to go a whole week without spending any money. If you have to, barter or beg a little to make it through.

4. Hold a baby goods exchange where parents can bring toys and clothing their kids have outgrown and trade them.

5. Attempt to repair something that is broken. Appreciate the people who repair things for you on a regular basis.

6. Look through your clothes. Learn about one of the countries where they are manufactured. Do some research to discover the working conditions and commit to doing one thing to improve the lives of people who live there.

7. Look for everything you have two of, and give one away.

8. Dig up a bucket of soil and look through it to see the elements and organisms that make our daily meals possible.

9. Spend the Fourth of July baking cookies or bread. Give them away to the person who delivers your mail or picks up your trash the next time you see him or her.

10. Host a rain-barrel party and teach neighbors how to make and use rain-barrels to recycle water.

11. Spend a day hiking in the woods. Consider how God cares for the lilies and sparrows — and you.

12. Gather some neighbors, and plant a tree in your neighborhood together.

13. Hold a knowledge exchange where you gather friends or neighbors to share skills or something they are learning.

14. Track to its source one item of food you eat regularly. Then, each time you eat that food, remember the folks who made it possible for you to it it.

15. Become a pen-pal with someone in prison.

16. Try recycling water from the washer or sink to flush your toilet. Remember the 1.2 billion folks who don’t have clean water.

17. Leave a random tip for someone cleaning the streets or the public restroom.

18. Write one CEO every month this year. Affirm or critique the ethics of their companies. (You may need to do a little research first.) Consider starting with BP.

19. Wash your clothes by hand and dry them on a line. Remember the 1.6 billion people who do not have electricity.

20. Learn to sew. Try making your own clothes for a year.

21. Eat only a bowl of rice a day for a week (take a multi-vitamin). And remember the 25,000 people who die of malnutrition and starvation each day.

22. Begin a scholarship fund so that for every one of your own children you send to college, you can create a scholarship for an at-risk youth. Get to know his or her family and learn from each other.

23. Visit a worship service where you will be a minority. Invite someone to dinner at your house, or have dinner with someone there if they invite you.

24. Confess something you have done wrong to someone and ask forgiveness.

25. Serve in a homeless shelter. For extra credit, go back to that shelter and eat or sleep there and allow yourself to be served.

26. Go through a local thrift store and drop $1 bills in random pockets of clothing being sold.

27. Experiment in creation-care by going fuel-free for a week — bike, carpool or walk.

28. Go to an elderly home and get a list of folks who don’t get any visitors. Visit them each week and tell stories, read together, or play board games.

29. Laugh at advertisements, especially ones that teach you that you can buy happiness.

30. Go down a line of parked cars and pay for the meters that are expired. Leave a little note of niceness.

31. Connect with a group of migrant workers or farmers who grow your food. Visit their farm. Maybe even pick some veggies with them. Ask what they get paid.

32. Mow your neighbor’s grass.

33. Ask the next person who asks you for change to join you for dinner.

34. Invest money in a micro-lending bank.

35. Start setting aside 10 percent of your income to give away to folks in need.

36. Write paper letters (by hand) for a month. Try writing someone who needs encouragement or whom you should say “I’m sorry” to.

37. Contact your local crisis pregnancy center and invite a pregnant woman to live with your family.

38. Go without food for one day to remember the two billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.

Add yours to the list.

May we celebrate Interdependence Day today and everyday. It is a gift to be part of this inescapable web of mutuality.

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Shane Claiborne is a prominent author, speaker, activist, and founding member of the Simple Way.  He is one of the compilers of Common Prayer, a new resource to unite people in prayer and action. Shane is also helping develop a network called Friends Without Borders which creates opportunities for folks to come together and work together for justice from around the world

Just Jesus and an Unjust July 4: [cross-post]

Just Jesus and an Unjust July 4: Why I Don’t Celebrate Independence Day

by Kurt Willems 07-01-2011

photo © 2009 Ed Yourdon | more info(via: Wylio)My friends and I can be stupid. Add explosives to the equation and the idiocy quotient increases exponentially. Such was the case every 4th of Julyduring high school. A group of about 20 of my friends and I would get together to barbecue and play with illegal fireworks. At any unsuspected moment while taking a bite out of a burger, an M-80 could be lit under your seat, a sparkler thrown at your  chest like a dart, or a mortar could be shot like a bazooka, catching bushes on fire. These chaotically stupid memories simultaneously serve as some of the most fun I can recall experiencing.  So for me, Independence Day equals fun.

However, there’s a deeper reality to this holiday. Only about three years ago did I realize that in celebrating Independence Day, I’m also glorifying the roots on which this nation was founded: an unjust war. The “rockets red glare” and “the bombs bursting in air” remind us not of the day God liberated the colonies, but of the moment in history when our forefathers stole the rhetoric of God from authentic Christianity to justify killing fellow Christians. There’s two reasons I’m convinced that celebrating Independence Day celebrates an unjust war.

First, nonviolence was normative prior to Constantine. However, even if you believe that there are moments when violence is justifiable by classical “just war” criteria, the Revolutionary War does not meet those standards. [1] Consider this summary: “Wars, to be just, must be fought under established governments, they must restore justice or preserve peace, they must be a last resort after exhausting peaceful means to solve a conflict, and they must be fought with the minimum of violence necessary and with proper safeguards for noncombatants.” [2]

The Declaration states that “when a long train of abuses and usurpations … design to reduce them under absolute despotism…” it’s right to “throw off such a government.” [3] The document goes on to list about 20 grievances, including frustrations with taxation, troops quartered, ignoring murder, lack of Parliamentary representation, and more. Most historians would agree with Alvin Robushka that the Revolution was a “tax revolt, first and foremost.” [4]

In regards to taxes, the mantra “no taxation without representation” rings in our social studies texts.  The question to ask is the nature of the taxes leading up to the war. These taxes are connected to another war: the French and Indian War (1754-1763). When the colonists were threatened in conflict, who came to save the day? The British! So much, that the debt of England had increased by £130,000,000 during the war.

To alleviate the heavy burden, Parliament passed the Stamp Act. Later, the Tea tax was added to help the importer who was facing financial difficulties. Oddly enough, even during the events leading up to the Revolution taxes were significantly lower and tea cheaper in the Colonies than in England! “The tax burden of the nearly two million colonists was per capita only one twenty-fifth of the roughly 8.5 million residents of Britain.” [5] Does that change your view of taxation and the Revolution? [6]

Unfortunately, the reality that Parliament could impose taxes, led the colonists to fear that further controls would be taken. This led the famous Boston Tea Party, which then led England sending troops to regulate the lawlessness. [7] Sadly, as history shows, some colonists believed that this was all part of some conspiracy to eventually eliminate all liberty, so they took up arms and fired the first shot at Lexington. No such thing was ever discussed by Parliament. Not only so, but the relationship between the Colonies and England were no different than modern U.S. policy in Puerto Rico — who get taxed without representation.

The second reason that the Revolution clearly doesn’t fit the category of “just war” is hypocrisy. Instead of going into details, let’s go to one of the most credible Christian voices in history, John Wesley:

Look into America … see that Negro, fainting under the load, bleeding under the lash! He is a slave. And is there “no difference” between him and his master? Yes; the one is screaming “Murder! Slavery!” the other silently bleeds and dies!

“But wherein then consists the difference between liberty and slavery?” Herein: You and I, and the English in general, go where we will, and enjoy the fruits of our labours: This is liberty. The Negro does not: This is slavery. Is not then all this outcry about liberty and slavery mere rant, and playing upon words? [8]

The very men that worried about becoming the slaves of ol’ King George, perpetuated the worst system of slavery in the world! Consider the words of historian, Mark Noll:

Only one population in the colonies clearly was justified by classical Christian reasoning in taking up arms to defend itself—the half-million or so enslaved African Americans who were held in bondage as the result of armed attacks upon peaceful noncombatants. [9]

However, if ever there was a situation that called for “just war,” it was the first century. The Roman Empire oppressed and killed people in Israel. There was no liberty for the Jewish people. Yet, Jesus taught the exact opposite of revolution — “But I say to you: don’t use violence to resist evil!” (Matthew 5:39, Kingdom New Testament). [10] Even if one holds to the possibility of a “just war,” historically, the victory we celebrate as Americans every 4th of July, does not count. May we quit appealing to pseudo “just war” theories and start appealing to just Jesus, because the only Independence Day worth celebrating is Easter — which reminds us that violence doesn’t win because the tomb is empty!

Kurt Willems is a pastor in the Mennonite Brethren movement and a seminary student at Fresno Pacific University. He blogs at Groans From Within.

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Footnotes:

[1] 1) Just Cause: War is allowed only “to protect innocent life, to preserve conditions necessary for decent human existence, and basic human rights.” 2) Proportionate Cause: Damage inflicted must be proportionate to the good of the outcome.  3) Right Intention: “Requires the pursuit of peace and reconciliation.” 4) Competent Authority: War is “declared by those with responsibility for public order, not by private groups or individuals.” 5) Probability of Success: “Serious prospects of success” that violence will be worth it. 6) Last Resort: “All peaceful alternatives must [be] exhausted.” 7) Comparative Justice: “No state should act on the basis that it has absolute justice on its side.”

[2] The Search For Christian America by Mark A. Noll, Nathan O. Hatch, and George M. Marsden, 95.

[3] All facts come from the following source or the previous one: America’s War for Independence: Just or Unjust? by John Keown of Georgetown University.

[4] Keown, 288.

[5] Keown, 285.

[6] Interestingly, taxes went up by nearly 300 percent shortly after the close of the War. (see: Keown, 286).

[7] It’s worth noting that England could have been better at diplomacy.  The confusion caused by their poor response certainly added to the conspiracy theories.

[8] Keown, 292.

[9] Direction: Was the Revolutionary War Justified? (Christianity Today, 1999), Mark Noll.

[10] For more on this passage and nonviolence in general, go here.