What does it mean to be an American? Where do we find an answer?

Our ancestors' revolution created today's American identity. To G. K.
Chesterton we are "a nation with the soul of a church."

It is clear what did not goad the colonials to revolt.  Not language, the
common law, the established religion, ethnicity and not culture.

--(1) Americans did not rebel to speak Cherokee or German instead of English.

--(2) Americans retained the common law.

--(3) In 1775, some scholars estimate, fewer than ten percent of Americans belonged to any organized church. But the Anglican and Congrgationalist establishments were not why people took up arms.

--(4) The dominant political and economic class in the colonies was British
both ethnically and in its values and thinking.

--(5) The colonials had not "gone native." They were not trying to replace
British lifestyles with Canadian or Spanish or Creek ways.

So why did Americans revolt? Why did they create an independent American nation? They wanted a new kind of freedom under law.

The 1776 Declaration of Independence laid out truths which Americans held then and hold today. Later (1787) they made a Constitution: a covenant based on "newly" explicit values and truths going beyond traditional bonds of national unity such as a common language and religion.

Our forefathers consciously chose to be Americans. Today most of us are
born American. Generations have covenanted to reverence the 1787
Constitution.

There is something almost religious about our love for the Constitution.
For example, the Constitution and later statute laws require millions of
office-holders and passport seekers to swear oaths (acts of religion) or
solemn affirmations to support the Constitution.

Some say that we are in danger of giving away our nation. For we are losing respect for our Constitution. If we are to remain one nation, we must recommit ourselves every single day to the Constitution, as we do to our family, our marriage and to our faith community .

In religion Jews, Christians, Muslims and others have given special
constituent status to sacred writings. America's well nigh sacred text is
the Constitution. But like any revered, constitutive text, our document is
disputed. Did the nation make the Constitution or did the Constitution make the nation? Is the only thing that matters the text, the words of the
printed document?  Who is to interpret our holy book: every citizen for
herself? Or a learned "clergy" (i.e.,  non-elected judges)?  Is there an
ultimate authority unquestioned by any? There is not.

Some scholars argue that America worships secular ideals within a civic religion called  constitutionalism. Just as there are Catholic and Protestant
conceptions of Scripture, so there are  conservative and liberal views
about the Constitution. Liberal thinking currently dominates elitist views
of  our organic law. That thinking is sceptical, post-modern,
deconstructionist and denies any values higher than the words of the law.
On that liberal view, the constitution means whatever the majority of
judges interprets it to mean.

More anon.

-OOO-

for INDEPENDENT TORCH

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[NOTE: In considerable depth Professor Levinson points to analogies between Judaeo-Christian religion and ethics, our marriage vows, our friendships and our secular devotion to the U.S. constitution. Levinson's CONSTITUTIONAL FAITH , drawn on above, can make for tough reading. I tried to simplify. I gave Levinson his dues in follow-on essays.  06/02/2001]
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