A special 4th of July-themed episode of the No More Silos podcast.
This week, we are taking a look at the silos of history and cultural Christianity around the 4th of July holiday.
We often take for granted that we are simply celebrating American independence without really considering the layers of historical perspective around it.
For example, Frederick Douglass notes this discrepancy famously in his 1852 speech: “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him,
“your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”
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Resources:
I discuss Jefferson’s Bible in Season 1/ Episode 5
Frederick Douglass – What is the 4th of July to the Slave?
The Slave Bible – https://www.museumofthebible.org/exhibits/slave-bible