7 ^ Catty @&n,t&ticu€ By VANCE HAVNER
O n e of the institutions which has disappeared from American life is the old-fashioned Fourth-of-July celebration with its lemonade, fire crackers and patriotic oratory. Some of us remember the long-winded speeches about our national heritage, extolling the virtues of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and other heroes of our illustrious past. All that is gone now. Instead millions of week-enders jam crowded highways watching the rear bumper of the car just ahead or piling up accident records in holiday slaughter. But the worst of it all is that, al most unnoticed, something very pre cious has slipped away along with the lemonade, the firecrackers and the oratory. It has been a long time since I have heard an old-fashioned American speech on the Fourth of July or any other day. For years our national heroes have been debunked, their reputations riddled by mud- slinging, muckraking smear cam paigns. Our school children no longer regard them with admiration but rather with cynicism. Subtle inter nationalist influences have encour aged reducing these giants of our past to insignificance. Of course they had their faults but any generation that has made as big a mess of everything as we have done had better keep its dunce cap for itself. Strangely enough, these old-timers are quite up-to-date. If you will substitute Communism for George III in Patrick Henry’s immor tal speech, it will sound like today’s newspaper! j We need a good dose of old-fash ioned Americanism in these days when the U.S. is subordinated to the U.N. and when another flag threatens to fly above our own. Recently I read “ The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill.” It took me back to a period now strangely remote. I grew up in a Southern Democrat home, but Teddy Roosevelt was my boyhood hero. He preached the strenuous life and his emphasis was upon rugged American ism. Years ago he said: “ The pro fessed internationalist usually sneers at nationalism, patriotism, what we call Americanism. He bids us for swear love of country in the name of
nation.” We are a set-apart nation and we are in danger of losing our national characteristics. I am an American and a Christian and I am concerned both for my country and my church. Indeed, both are set forth in this same First Epistle of Peter: “Honour all men. Love the brother hood. Fear God. Honour the king” (2:17). America is not “ the chosen nation” but a favored nation, a melt ing-pot of all nations, a sort of inter national nation. But there is grave danger that we shall lose our nation alism in an internationalism that sounds forth from its glass house in Manhattan. Just as America is in danger, so is the church. Just as we are in a day of One-worlders, so we are in a day of World-churchers. We must beware of entangling alliances, losing our identity as God’s holy na tion in a religious hodge-podge. I am afraid of all kinds of hash. I do not like hash away from home because I don’t know what it is made of. I heard of a man who had eaten hash for dinner. When asked how he felt, he said he felt like everything! A glorified hash today would mix all religious bodies. Putting three feeble denominations together to make one strong body proceeds on the general principle that by putting three sick babies into one bed you secure one well baby. “ Algie went for a walk. Algie met a bear. I am afraid of becoming a bulge in any unification bear prowling the woods these days. We shall be accused of having no ecumenical spirit. There The bear was bulgy. The bulge was Algie.”
the world at large. We nationalists answer, he has begun at the wrong end. As the world now is, only the man who ardently loves his country first can help any country at all.” Theodore Roosevelt proved that in his own life. He was honored as a world citizen because he was a great Ameri can. A man is a better member of the human family if his first loyalty is to his own family and he is a better member of the family of nations if he is true first to his native land. We do not hear much of that any more. I did hear a late reaffirmation of it some time ago when General Douglas MacArthur said, on his sev enty-fifth birthday, “ Seductive mur murs are arising . . . that we are pro vincial and immature, or reactionary and stupid, when we idealize our own country; that there is a higher destiny for us under another more general flag. Repudiate them in the market place, from the platform, from the pulpit.” We need to recover our American nationalism. I do not mean isolation ism for we should always be ready to cooperate with other nations for the common good. But it must not be amalgamation at the cost of our na tional sovereignty and those charac teristics which have made us great. God save us from the booby traps of One-worlders and World-staters! But I am thinking of another kind of nationalism which is set forth in our text. America is not a Christian nation. There is only one Christian nation, God’s people, the church of Jesus Christ. Israel was a chosen peo ple. We are a “ peculiar people,” a people of His own. We are not to be queer but different. And yet it would be strange if this world did not think of us as queer. In fact Phillips puts it this way: “ Indeed your former com panions may think it QUEER that you no longer join with them in their riotous excesses and accordingly say all sorts of unpleasant things about you” (1 Peter 4:4). We hear a lot today about colonial ism and nationalism. Christians are colonials for we are a colony of heav en, our citizenship is there (Phil. 3: 20), and we are nationals, “ an holy
Dr. Havner's helpful a rtic le s appear from time to time in the page s of "The King's Business". Regular readers will be glad to learn that other stimulating mes sages are sched uled for release in future issues.
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THE KIN G 'S BUSINESS
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