Sermon by Elisabeth Hathaway, MA, PhD on July 6, 2003

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people
to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,
and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal
station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a
decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to
secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any
Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of
the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness….
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America…by
Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and
declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free
and Independent States….
-The Declaration of Independence

This is from the text of a unanimous declaration adopted by the Second
Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, marking the ultimate goal of the
American Revolution and the establishment of the great American experiment
of democracy. It was signed by the representatives of the thirteen states,
among them its primary authors, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and
Samuel Adams. July Fourth, Independence Day, has been the foundational
patriotic holiday celebrated in our country ever since. It seems fitting
on its anniversary week to look a bit at the history, to wonder about the
central focus it holds on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and
to see how these affect us today as Unitarians-political citizens and
spiritual fellows both.

Americans, represented by the Whigs-the Patriots, the rebels-were at war
with England at the time, determined to become independent, separate and
equal. The Loyalists, the Tories, represented the ties to the British
empire, and urged a reasonable reconciliation, a resumption of the status
quo. The focus of the justification for separation from the British
presented in the Declaration underscored that the citizens in the colonies
felt oppressed by British rule, recorded that they had duly petitioned for
redress in the most humble terms, making repeated petitions, answered only
by repeated injury. They declared: “A Prince whose character is thus
marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of
a free people.” Freedom-life and the pursuit of happiness-they considered
their Natural Rights, the protection and safety of which they declared was
the responsibility of government, but the rights themselves were granted
by a higher authority, natural law, safeguarded by God. The Declaration
was a political document, a political act, grounded in a spiritually based
certitude.

What did the Patriots mean exactly by these term-Life, Liberty and Pursuit
of Happiness-that they used as the guiding principle of effective and
palatable government in the Declaration? And how do they relate to one
another? Life, according to the Patriots seemed to mean, on one level,
literally breathing, not being killed by the British, not being denounced
as traitors when espousing their rights as equal citizens. When Jefferson
hesitated with the final decision to declare Independence he is reported
to have agreed for the sake of being united, saying, “yes, we must hang
together.” Franklin is said to have replied, “We must indeed all hang
together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Many had
already died. But Life also meant access to growth, livelihood,
self-determination. Britain was sometimes referred to as the Parent
country, with paternal control over its colonies, not allowing them to
develop the abilities and strengths needed to manage themselves. The final
paragraph details the acts a separate and equal nation must be able to
engage in to exist, to Live, successfully as a political entity. Life then
is intricately intertwined with Liberty, Independence, which meant, for
the authors of the Declaration, a Continental government, the
establishment of the United States as a distinct political entity. This
legitimately separate political body would then, in the words of Thomas
Paine, the author of the pivotal Common Sense that was published that same
year, put them on their way to “material eminence as a nation,” insisting
that “Independence is the only bond that can tie and keep us together.”
Those wrestling with these vital concerns and doing the hard work of
creating a viable government were astounding, really, in their capacity to
address the substance of designing an entity that would actually do what
they thought a government ought to do. The Declaration was followed
quickly by the Articles of Confederation, and in 1787 by the Constitution,
which together crafted the substance of the government, and then in 1791,
came the Bill of Rights, in Amendments to the Constitution. These
documents identified the murky issues and strove to clarify them, most
significantly the assertion of a religious foundation, and the
corresponding necessity of the separation of church from state. The first
amendment, as we know, establishes that the government can make no laws
“respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof,” nor “abridging the freedom of free speech or of the press,”
peaceable assembly, or petitioning the government for redress of
grievances. This right of free speech and worship was after all one of the
principle reasons many emigrants left England for the New World. They were
escaping religious persecution, seeking an environment which would allow
them choice in how to think and worship, which would allow them
unrestricted expression of ideas and not deny them livelihood, rights or
community because of who they were as identified by these choices.
In the delicate balance of power and protection constantly in play between
an individual citizen and a sovereign government, the founders recognized
the inherent tension between a government designed to establish and
maintain a protected state, and the infringement of that state upon the
rights and freedoms of its individual citizens. They assumed a higher
authority than the king in their justification for independence, yet
insisted on a system contained in the worldly relationships of men. Paine
clarified this in Common Sense: in these new United States King is not
God, but God is not King either, Law is King. This central emphasis on the
legal system addressed the need to represent and protect individual
citizens, however natural their rights may be in the ideal. Law in fact is
meant to safeguard our freedom. As unwieldy, unjust and corrupt as the
legal system can seem at times, perhaps this was the only truly democratic
option: Law is hard to change or effect, but not quite so hard as King or
God.

What has the effect of all of this been in our world, on us as
individuals? The example and symbolism of this bold and decisive
Declaration has reverberated throughout the global community ever since.
On the one hand it was considered successful, admired by many, sparking
other similar revolutions and an era of cataclysmic change, and in fact is
the foundation of the icon of the American hero. Echoes of this heroic
assertion continue to this day, illustrated in our international role as
political and financial superpower, enacted in conflicts like those with
Iraq and Afghanistan, in the brilliance and practices of companies like
Ford, Coca Cola, and Microsoft, in figures like Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt, John Wayne and Jacqueline Onassis….This is the story of
America, the land of plenty, the land of power, ingenuity, wealth and
success, the melting pot immigrants from all over the world will suffer to
reach or die trying. Our standard of living is high, our language
universal, from a certain perspective cultural restrictions are relatively
few, education and aspiration, the myth goes, are available to those who
work hard enough to get to them. On the other hand, a more critical or
cynical view might suggest that while the revolution presented a
rhetorical morality and ostensible democratic values of all men created
equal, the participants, mostly wealthy and privileged themselves, were
perhaps motivated by other powerful agendas. Some men, to paraphrase
Orwell, are more equal than others. This is America, the land of
opportunity for those who have the wherewithal, where tycoons and CEOs
seize the day while their opponent is down. This is the land of the
Patriot Act declaring an axis of evil flowing on a river of oil, of elders
and children with no health care or heat, of illegal immigrants working
migrant jobs, of double wage-earner households able to rent but not own,
and of Hollywood or sports stars of the week giving away Humvees as party
favors.

We must ask, are we as citizens of this country, free? It is hard to feel
freedom tangibly. The Patriots, the rebels, felt their political and
economic subjugation deeply. But for those of us raised and nurtured in
relative freedom, its appreciation is often more fleeting. Freedom follows
enslavement, the feeling of liberty is most clearly felt as a lack during
its absence, or as a liberation and epiphany after its absence has abated.
However, even for those of us who have not lived through revolution or
civil war or genocide, think of the more subtle, personal issues of
freedom, independence, separation, and control that we come into contact
with on a regular basis. For some, this has directly to do with laws and
government. The huge news story this week was of course the landmark and
astonishing Supreme Court decision overturning the Texas sodomy law as
unconstitutional because it violated the privacy of gay individuals.
Justice Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion that homosexuals “may choose
to enter upon this relationship in the confines of their homes and their
own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons.” Of
course this ruling has been criticized scathingly in the uproar of
conservative tumult, being called “silly” and dismissed as a social or
political interest group agenda rather than a ruling that protects the
rights of free citizens. Justice Scalia, when denouncing it in the
dissenting opinion, said the decision “effectively decrees the end all
morals legislation,” as if that were a bad thing. Again, the eternal and
thorny problem of the division of church and state. Very few would argue
that morality should not be at the heart of the rules and laws which guide
and govern us. A culture must be spiritually grounded to effectively hold
the interests of the whole and the individual in balance. So how does this
work? Which religion will provide for the happiest citizens, the freest
world? From my perspective this is a problem that Paine, with his emphasis
on inclusivity, and, I need to say, the Unitarians, with their emphasis on
non-dogmatic universal wisdom teachings, have deftly addressed. As persons
we follow our own beliefs, as citizens we are guided by and mindful of our
collective laws and actions. I can see how literalists want to choose
their religion and endorse it as right, their religion supports their
sense of their justness as personal entities. But what of political
entities, respecting other personal entities? The trick is to uphold
values with enough specificity to be believable but not so much that
principles become constricting, rigid, dogmatic and literal. The flip side
of this dilemma is how to offer freedom without having it become a
free-for-all of permissiveness and chaos. I hope Scalia is correct, that
morality legislation is on the decline. I don’t call laws that dictate to
me my personal choices “moral” I call them dictatorial, restricting, and
against my personal values…I guess immoral.

The wild card in this polarization between politics and religion is of
course economics. The American rebels were outraged by taxes that were
being levied, they were upset that American lands were being given away to
loyalists in Great Britain, or annexed to Canada to take them from the
rebels. They were, for the most part, land owners, slave owners too,
themselves, with savvy understanding of their own interests, and the
financial interests of the nascent country, with all its vast and enticing
resources. They wanted their fair share, and more perhaps, of the pie, and
felt the crown was taking more than it ought, given the paltry return in
protection and support it was affording the colonies. This was part and
parcel of imperialism as far as England was concerned, and the nerve of
the colonists to challenge the economic balance was considered
inconceivable. The fact is a political entity is also an economic one.
Money was a major issue. Perhaps more major than philosophical principles
such as freedom and democracy, which can be espoused but not so easily
counted as gold, or crates of tea, or barrels of oil. Was money the real
unspoken God, supreme even to Law? And what is the substance of political
efficacy today, the core around which political success revolves now? This
week there was a story on NPR describing the flock of fledgling democratic
hopefuls for the upcoming presidential campaigns, saying we are now at a
decisive point in the process. Determinations of long-term success will
likely be made at this juncture. What could this vital time be? A pivotal
panel debate on energy policy or health care? A straw poll on the relative
strengths of the potential candidates? Well, sort of. This week marked the
end of the financial quarter. Candidates will be considered viable
dependent on how much they have in their contribution coffers. The
incumbent President is reported to have amassed 30 million dollars thus
far, more than all the democrats combined. What would Jefferson and
Franklin say? Have the ideals of democracy become perversely bastardized
into a plutocracy-which is a government by the wealthy, rule by people who
have power and influence due to wealth, or at best, perhaps a
plutodemocracy, in which control is held by people of wealth rather than
the common man. Do we really have one person one vote, with all persons
being equal, all persons voting? And is that what was really intended?
Freedom, as it is expressed in our political arena these days is more a
power than a right, exercised by an increasingly entitled, privileged and
small group of people. There is an inscrutable complacency in the American
public which makes democracy a difficult and unwieldy system. Is it apathy
or disenfranchisement?
Which leads us to the final element to consider: happiness. Did Jefferson
and Franklin and Adams mean to imply that if the values and ideals of the
Declaration were upheld all people could or would be happy, as well as, or
because of, being free? Certainly they meant that without these natural
rights it is difficult to pursue being happy. Our democratic cum
capitalistic culture has come to equate access and thus money, financial
power, with happiness. But does money buy happiness? Certainly we pursue
it as if it could. A recent New York Times article on the subject cites
that the battleground of happiness is a “constant chase that both animates
American’s daily lives and ties them in knots,” and that the resulting
culture wars and ravenous consumer culture underlie our great unhappiness.
The article quotes Emerson, writing far before the current soaring
increase in American depression, as saying “our people are surrounded with
greater external prosperity and general well-being than the Indians or the
Saxons yet we are sad but they are not.” Sadness, depression,
hopelessness, leads to apathy and withdrawal, which can be seen as
complacency; certainly to reap the benefits of a democracy one has to be
willing to participate, and American citizens have astonishingly low
political participation rates. But to participate implies hope as to the
outcome.
Psychologist Martin Seligman, has written extensively on happiness. He
asserts that the problem with happiness is that “we want to feel entitled
to our positive feelings.” Imagining happiness is a god given right, and
should thus be easy, we seek shortcuts to this sought after
feeling-examples he provides are drugs, chocolate, loveless sex, shopping,
masturbation, and television-imagining they will satisfy us but they do
not. He writes:
The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness, joy, rapture,
comfort, and ecstasy, rather than be entitled to these feelings by the
exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads to legions of people
who in the middle of great wealth are starving spiritually. Positive
emotion alienated from the exercise of character leads to emptiness, to
inauthenticity, to depression, and, as we age, to the gnawing
realization that we are fidgeting until we die.
Again the hazy separation of morality from happiness, happiness from
politics and spirituality. Seligman has studied happiness across cultures
and countries, and has found that perceived happiness is only minimally
affected by identifiable external circumstances, such as country of
origin, money, social context, health, religion, gender, education, and
climate. At most these external factors can only correlate with about 8 to
15% of variance in happiness. Living in a wealthy democracy, not an
impoverished dictatorship, was the single most influential external
factor. This would be gratifying for the founders, and is not a big
surprise. Participating in a religious practice, we will all be happy to
hear, also has a moderate correlation with happiness, as does being
socially active and in good marriage or a positive committed relationship.
More money, once the gross national product exceeds $8000 per person, has
no correlation with increased happiness or life satisfaction. Nor do good
health, getting lots of education, being a different race or gender, or
living a different place. So if external circumstances can at most only
moderately affect our perceived level of life satisfaction, what can
affect our happiness significantly is what we think and what we do. We
will be happier, healthier and more successful, he found, to the extent
that we can have satisfaction about the past, hope about the future, and
optimism in the present. We can increase optimism through practices of
awareness, gratitude and forgiveness, developing our strengths and
virtues, and ultimately on developing an embodied experience of
authenticity in our lives. The details of what he has to say about each of
these aspects are fascinating, and I recommend reading his recent book. He
ends with almost an addendum, perhaps an apology given his identified
persona as a scientist, on the vital importance of meaning, and being
connected with a larger reality than our own singular existence. The
Patriots, writing the Declaration, fit well with this research: they were
working from their strengths, grounded in virtue, on something vitally
meaningful, with commitment to the present and optimism for the future.
This perhaps was they way in which their political vision provided their
happiness.

What can all this mean for us as individuals now? Beyond an historical
event or document, or theory about happiness, I am interested in the
meaning the Declaration of Independence holds for each of us. What is its
personal impact. Here is where the questionnaires come in-I want to thank
all of you who responded to the e-mail, and addressed your experience of
freedom and happiness.
So. What did we all say? There was loose consensus on what “freedom” means
to us. Generally, we related it to being able to take responsible and
reasonable action, including having thoughts and feelings, without
unnecessary, undue or interfering constraint, internally or externally. In
terms of specific political, financial, and emotional freedoms, there is
much to say but to summarize here, overall on average we feel most free
spiritually (average 8 of 10), which says a lot I would think for the
freedoms allowed in our culture, and perhaps for the experience of
Unitarian Universalism, as well as for the positive impact of our
fellowship here. Interestingly, there is a relatively low feeling of
freedom politically among us (average 5 of 10), given that we live in the
“freest” country in the world. I imagine the founders would be dismayed by
these findings. Emotionally, a similar level of moderate freedom is felt
(6 of 10). All but one person said their happiness directly correlates to
these questions about freedom, meaning the freer they feel the happier
they are. I offer, and Seligman might as well, that while this suggests a
considerable amount of felt pain and constriction among us, it also leaves
room for hope, as the emotional is the realm most accessible to our
conscious control. The responses showed that we are a very psychological
group! Which means that while we tend toward pessimism, as do most
Unitarians according to Seligman, we have a combination of an enhanced
objective grasp on reality, as well as positive potential for increased
awareness, which can lead to increased happiness and efficacy, even in the
political realm.

The responses from the questionnaires underscore that beyond the ways in
which our political freedom may be limited, we struggle on a personal
level to be free in many regards. Developmentally we struggle to be free
of the eventual necessary burdensome control of our parents or family, we
often struggle for freedom of thought, freedom to act, freedom from the
structures of a formative religious experience. As mature adults we can
struggle to be free of a restricted socioeconomic place in the world, an
abusive or dissatisfying relationship or living situation, the tethers of
our history of origin, traumas we have suffered, our own seemingly
unattainable desires, the bondage of our own expectations and judgments.
As we get older we usually struggle to be free of our angers, grudges,
fears and hurts, our internal limitations, the restrictions of the inner
despot. This is personal, as well as cultural. The dynamics of the
American revolution can be held as an example of a symbolic separation
from a sort of parental over-control. Indeed, America has often been
criticized as an adolescent nation, formed in rebellion and troubled
separation, never fully maturing, acting reactively with high hubris. Can
we as citizens mature beyond our country’s image? I believe so. And in so
doing we can assist in the maturing of our country. Further, I would
submit that to the extent that we are unable to do so, we are limited in
our ability to increase our own life satisfaction, as well as in our
ability to positively influence our country’s political character,
domestically and internationally.

The Founders ended their Declaration with the powerful sentence “And for
the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of
divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our
Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” This is freedom-the clear statement of our
considered Truth, the assurance of a just cause, the confidence in a
larger righteousness, the support and constraint of a principled
community, the assurance of a shared risk of life and fortune, and the
reassurance of a personal commitment to one another. May we as independent
citizens honor their work, follow their optimistic examples, and take
satisfaction from continuing their efforts.