The
Great Seal of the United States was approved by Congress on June 20,
1782. It was a project on which Congress worked for six years. After
all, in 1782 there was nothing better to do. There were many proposals
and much bickering along the way. Some things never change.
We
are all very familiar with the product. The seal is dominated by a
bald eagle with spread wings bearing a shield with thirteen red and
white stripes bound together by a blue field on its breast and bearing
arrows in its left claw and an olive branch in its right, which the
eagle is facing. In its beak it carries a scroll on which is written
the original motto of the United States:
E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one.
Here
is the interesting part. E Pluribus Unum is no longer the motto of the
United States. It was replaced in 1956 by “In God We Trust,” which
entered our national life as an expression, memorialized on the newly
minted two cent coin, in 1864. It became our official motto 92 years
later. And do you know why? 1956. It was the height of the Cold War.
“In God We Trust” was a reaction to the threat we perceived from
Communism, which is officially atheistic. In the face of what we
perceived as a threat, we as a country opted for a religious expression
instead of one that was perceived to be secular. It was at
the same time, by the way, that we added the words “under God” to the
Pledge of Allegiance and the phrase “so help me God” to the standard
form of the oath taken by federal judges. Paper money began including
the motto “In God We Trust” about the same time, in 1957.
It
is not surprising to me that when Congress decided to discard something
“secular” in favor of something “religious,” it would have no idea what
it was doing. In truth, there is nothing more religious than
E Pluribus Unum. It is the epitome of what we celebrate today,
Trinity Sunday, the only Sunday in the church year devoted to a doctrine
instead of an event in the life of Christ. Our understanding of the
Trinity is that important. We must not lose it, as we are sorely
tempted to do when we let our fears get the better of us.
In
the midst of the Civil War, the phrase “In God we Trust” first entered
our national consciousness on a coin. In the mist of the Cold War, we
traded away something very important, the reality that there is no real
unity, at least not what the Gospel means by unity, in uniformity
altogether. It was at least as serious a threat to the ideal of the
United States as what we so feared at the moment. Leave it to Congress.
Unity
has everything to do with the tension between the concept of the many
and the concept of the one, the tension at the very core of the concept
of the Trinity. The fundamental tension that was present from the very
beginning of the life of the Christian community was, as it has always
been, the tension between individuality and togetherness. It was the
very same tension at the very beginning of our life as a country. The
Founding Fathers (I wish I could say the Founding Mothers and Fathers,
but the truth is pretty much otherwise) held these two realities
together. The anti-Communist anxiety of the 1950s pushed us toward
abandoning that, toward
leaning one way rather than the other. Trinity Sunday, and the Sunday
of Pentecost, which immediately precedes it, leads us in another
direction, the recognition that the importance of the togetherness, the
one, must, must be balanced against the importance of the individuality
of the parts. The orthodox Christian understanding, in fact, is that
the unity of the whole depends equally on the individuality of the
parts. It is an admitted paradox, as truth often is.
It
is exactly the same thing St. Paul speaks about in the first letter to
the Corinthians, right before the famous passage in which he speaks
about the meaning of love. He says: “Now there are varieties of
services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but
it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is
given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is
given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the
utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by
the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to
another the working of miracles, to
another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another
various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All
these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one
individually—individually—just
as the Spirit chooses.” Later in the same chapter of 1 Corinthians,
Paul wraps up his argument about unity and diversity by again
emphasizing the foundational importance of individuality. “Now you are
the body of Christ and individually—individually—
But
in a world that is as anxious and fearful as ours is, the greater
danger is to the importance of the individuality than it is to unity, to
the forces of togetherness that are counterfeit relievers of what makes
us vaguely uncomfortable or just downright afraid, whether that be evil
empires abroad, or phantoms in the mountains of Afghanistan, or things
that go bump in the night. The spiritual danger we face, and the
spiritual danger our country faces, is in sacrificing our individuality
to the idol of uniformity.
It
is no wonder at all that all over America on September 12, 2001 the
slogan that appeared everywhere was “United we Stand.” And I will be
the first to tell you what a comforting affirmation it seemed. And as
good as it made me feel at a time when I felt like I might never feel
good again, I realize that it was not comfort in the true sense of the
word, which means to fill with strength. Huddling together in fear is
quite a different thing than to fill with strength. What I wonder about
sometimes is where we would be if, in the face of that horrible time in
our national life we not created the Department of Homeland Security
but instead
created the Department of Homeland Adventure.
Unity
is not in opposition to difference. And safety, it turns out, is only
an illusion. The orthodox paradox is that it is our unity depends on
the precondition of difference and our salvation much more in the our
adventure than in our safety.
E Pluribus Unum.
Peace,
+Stacy
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