In Nantucket, there is an interesting conflict between churches after the Nantucket Unitarian Universalists (NUU) canceled its traditional celebration. In a letter from the church and the Rev. Erin Splaine of the Second Congregational Meeting House Society, residents were told the traditional reading of the Declaration of Independence would be canceled to better focus on the “on-going process within the congregation to better understand our own whiteness.”
Across the country, July 4th celebrations are being canceled, and protests are planned for the nation’s 250th anniversary. MS NOW anchor Ali Velshi declared this week, “I feel a deep unease about the celebrations to which I am invited to mark the 250th anniversary of our so-called democracy.” The comment mirrors a recent poll showing that 85% of Democrats describe the U.S. in negative terms, and only 10% said they view it positively.
For 25 years, the historic Nantucket Unitarian Meeting House has hosted a public reading of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
The letter announcing the cancellation from Splaine and the NUU Nantucket church is full of the usual virtue-signaling jingoism that has become common on the left:
“Our cancelling the 4th of July celebration this year reflects … an on-going process within the congregation to better understand our own whiteness.
…For those of us who are white the experience of the Rights and Privileges conferred by the Declaration of Independence, The Bill of Rights, and the Constitution of the United States have, for centuries, been tragically, often violently, and unequally applied to fellow citizens who are not white.”
This type of pandering and postering has become the norm today. In a time when the American flag is denounced as a divisive and “triggering” symbol, a refusal to celebrate our Independence is yet another way of proving one’s bona fides to the perpetually enraged.
Splaine and the church stressed that she would not “engage” with critics on social media because “Social media is not the place for important, tender conversations.”
For some of us who believe that the Declaration of Independence embodies natural rights that ultimately prevailed in a more perfect union, the letter is maddening.
As I discuss in Rage and the Republic, the continuation of slavery was recognized at the time as a fundamental betrayal of those values. However, we created a system that would ultimately reject slavery and then later segregation. It was indeed a stain on our history and a sin of our founders to continue slavery. Yet, despite those imperfections, we rallied behind the founding values that define us as a people.
Thomas Paine, who (like other founding figures) was vehemently against slavery, still celebrated the founding of a new nation and a new people: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again . . . The birth-day of a new world is at hand.”
John Adams represented Massachusetts, including Nantucket, at the Continental Congress and fought to end slavery, but still understood that they had created a country based on freedoms that would ultimately prevail for everyone. He wrote his wife Abigail to predict that Independence Day would be:
“celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”
Rather than Adams, Massachusetts now has figures like Rev. Splaine who focus not on the natural rights that bind us to those ongoing conflicts that divide us. This is a holiday that allows us to take one day of the year to celebrate our shared values. In an age of rage, it is a respite from the anger and hate that consumes so many in this country.
Yet, there remain some in Massachusetts who still understand what Adams was describing 250 years ago. Another church has stepped forward to take up the celebration. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church announced it would read the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. St. Paul’s Rev. Max Wolf declared, “We may not be there yet but we felt it was important to gather together and try to live up to the promises our country has made. Those documents are aspirational.”
Amen, Reverend, Amen.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Professor you know what is interesting, none of this nonsense existed in 1976 and we had a historically unpopular President. I believe the age of rage changed everything….
The pastor of this benighted church seems to have forgotten his state’s history and their long standing fight to end slavery. Since he is resident on Nantucket then he must be intimately away of the Bilge that he is preaching.
False virtue and pride are sins he must know. The fact that the Episcopal Church has taken over the reading is humorous in being an offshoot (since separated) of the Church of England, adding some irony to the story.
Jonathan, your selective defense of free speech is on full display here. For years, you have used your platform to argue that the First Amendment protects the right of private individuals and organizations to refuse to speak, decline to participate in rituals, and express dissent from the majority. You have championed bakeries, web designers, and private clubs that stood up against social conformity. Yet, the moment a private church exercises its constitutional autonomy to alter its own voluntary holiday programming, you abandon your free speech absolutism and reduce their expressive choice to ‘pandering’ and ‘virtue-signaling.’
A church has the absolute, unchecked right to decide what texts are read from its pulpit. If the Nantucket Unitarian Universalists believe that reflecting on historical inequalities is more aligned with their current mission than a traditional reading, that is a protected exercise of both religious freedom and free expression. Your appeal to ‘natural rights’ is equally contradictory; the very essence of natural rights includes the freedom to dissent from state-sanctioned nationalism. You cannot claim to be a champion of the right to decline speech while simultaneously writing scolding columns when a private group actually chooses to exercise it.
As an observer of America from a perch directly north of your nation, I am gravely concerned about the virulent rejection of all that has made your country a beacon for freedom and opportunity. My sincerest wish is for a return of the America that has been so important as a world leader.
What those Unitarians in Nantucket are doing not reflecting on their whiteness, they are celebrating their purity from racism. It’s a disgusting display of white conceit, “tender conversations” notwithstanding.
Here’s an idea. Make July 4th about the next 250 years. Only converse with those who can earnestly, authentically express what aspects of American life should be preserved and found intact over the next quarter millennium. Celebrate with realistic optimists, not dispirited utopians.
Maybe I am missing something, but it seems to me the standard these churches are using to condemn America is the very standard they are now refusing to read. The Declaration and the Bill of Rights are supposed to be our civic guideposts. If we have drifted from those principles or applied them unequally, that is not the Declaration’s fault, it is the culture’s.
When Rev. Splaine and others decry discrimination and inequality, they are at least measuring those wrongs against the Declaration’s claim that all are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights and that government exists to secure those rights, whether they acknowledge that or not. They are judging our badness by the goodness of the founding principles while acting as though the principles themselves are the problem.
That is why cancelling a public reading of the Declaration in order to “better understand our whiteness” is exactly backward. The Declaration is not the problem; it is the mirror. Our task is to keep holding that mirror up to ourselves, to read those words aloud, and to teach each new generation what they mean, then judge the culture by how far it falls short, not discard the document that allows coherent moral judgment in the first place.
Your “mirror” analogy is an excellent way to frame this, but it actually highlights why the church’s decision makes sense. A mirror is only useful if you are willing to stop, stand still, and critically look at what is being reflected—including the flaws. For 25 years, this church held up that mirror through a public reading. This year, they didn’t throw the mirror away; they simply paused the celebratory ritual to examine why the reflection has been distorted for so many Americans throughout history.
There is a fundamental difference between discarding a document and acknowledging the historical pain of its unequal application. When the Declaration was written, its promise of “unalienable rights” explicitly excluded enslaved people, Indigenous populations, and women. Acknowledging that reality isn’t “condemning America”—it is practicing historical honesty.True civic engagement doesn’t require us to mindlessly recite a text every single year on a specific day. Sometimes, the most profound way to honor an aspirational principle is to step back from the “pomp and parade” and do the quiet, uncomfortable work of figure out how to actually live up to it. The church exercised its freedom to reflect rather than just perform, which is exactly what a free society allows.
These people disgust me. Their behavior is fatuous, pointless, and absurd. Their world view is a pathetic disgrace.
and they are insincere about all their positions because they are only meant to destroy America.
Meanwhile, Rev. White Splaine refuses to allow unhoused homeless people of color to live rent-free in her church. Why? Because White Splaine is a bigot and racist, by her own standards. If White Splaine really cared about BIPOC, she would open the church doors, welcome anyone and everyone inside, and let them live forever. Rev. White Splaine’s racism is on display for all to see. Maybe White Splaine should step down and turn over her job to a person of color, and actually live by the standards she sets for America.
It may be a “church” building, but it is filled with too many holier-than-thou folks. What a disgrace to the parishoners of the past! Now … nothing more than a group who pander to the religion of victimology and DEI.
This Massachusetts Church needs to quit attacking and discriminating against albino people.
I don’t know a single white person (albino). People of European descent have melanin in their skin so are not white.
Biologically their skin contains melanin, so descriptors like “pale,” “fair,” “light,” “ivory,” or “beige”