The Declaration of Independence, revolutionary ideas, and changing systems (op-ed)

Last year was the 400^th anniversary of African slaves arriving at Virginia’s Jamestown colony in 1619. The New York Times commemorated this event with a collection of essays called the 1619 Project.  The 1619 Project proclaimed that 1619 was the year America was founded and not 1776.  The senior editor justified this controversial narrative by explaining that the ideas in The Declaration of Independence were false because slavery still existed after the document was signed. 

This year, another black man was killed by a white police officer.  The tragedy brought worldwide protest, the destruction of Confederate monuments, national awareness of Juneteenth, debates about the historical hypocrisy of Independence Day, and whether or not July 4^th represented white supremacy.  Now, rejecting the 4^th of July because The Declaration of Independence stated “all men are created equal” but black people were still enslaved is an understandable position. 

The only problem is its hindsight and the revolutionary idea gets lost. Unfortunately, that happens to most revolutionary ideas.  Let’s take Christianity, for example.  For contemporary Christians the revolutionary idea behind the faith is God’s son died and resurrected to redeem humanity from original sin.  But that wasn’t the revolutionary idea in antiquity.  There were other myths about deities returning from the dead, so another resurrection story wouldn’t have been novel or even interesting. 

The revolutionary idea the early Christians introduced to the world was that the believer’s body was the temple of God.  To modern churchgoers the phrase “your body is a temple” isn’t taken seriously because they’re centuries removed from its original meaning.  In ancient times the ritual of forgiveness for sins was to sacrifice an animal at the temple.  That was done because they believed God actually lived inside the temple.  The early Christians abolished this ritual by proclaiming Christ was the sacrifice and God lived in every believer.  The profoundness of this revolutionary idea can only be appreciated through its historical context.

The profoundness of the revolutionary idea inside The Declaration of Independence has suffered from the same lack of historical context.   The contemporary concern about inequality in America has made many, including the essayist of the 1619 Project, place all emphasis on The Declaration’s claim that all individuals are created equal.  But that wasn’t the revolutionary idea.  The revolutionary idea was “unalienable rights endowed by the Creator”.   

The Declaration of Independence announced American sovereignty by challenging the divine right of kings.  The divine-right theory stated kings derived their authority from God and could not be held accountable by parliament or any other earthly authority.  The revolutionary ideas of unalienable rights stated every individual was born with rights granted to them by the Creator, it was the government’s responsibility to protect these rights, and the king had no divine right to rule.

Changing century old systems require revolutionary ideas, not recycled rhetoric by those that believe the legacy of slavery gives them a divine right to be destructive.

First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 7/8/2020