Celebrating Interdependence Day

Dominant American culture asks us to celebrate the fact that white European colonists, who felt “enslaved,” as their leaders often said, by the oppressive British Empire, rebelled, fought, and achieved their independence. It is true that in doing so they showed courage and determination that are hard not to admire. The trouble is that even if they freed themselves in some important way, they rejected neither slavery nor empire as means to their own ends. Instead they continued to enslave Africans (and some Indians) and conducted wars of conquest against numerous Indian nations. The United States came to stretch from sea to shining sea only through genocide. The question arises: is independence to be celebrated no matter how that independence is used?

Interdependence, as many wise thinkers have pointed out, is a higher stage of human development than independence. Interdependence has as its primary values reciprocity, mutual respect, community, the equal valuation of all people. These are the values that must prevail if the USA is truly to become the land of the free. These are the values that must prevail if the USA is to exercise true moral leadership in the world. These are the values that would prevail in the Beloved Community that we at the Church in Ocean Park hope for, pray for, and work towards.

Today let us reject the dangerous idolatry that is American Nationalism. Let us resist the standing order and declare our own independence. And let us use that independence as a foundation for interdependence. Today therefore, here at the Church in Ocean Park, let us celebrate Interdependence Day!