An Immigrant’s Fourth of July
The first Fourth of July I ever spent in America, back in the early 1990s, I stood in a public park in New Jersey and watched fireworks bloom over a country that was not yet mine. I had come from South Asia carrying a different set of memories about nationhood, and the celebration felt both dazzling and slightly foreign. Decades later, as the United States marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, which now popularly called as America 250, I still find myself less drawn to the fireworks than to a quieter question: what is God doing with this nation in these latter days?
A Nation Under Providence
Scripture states that God “made from one man every nation of mankind, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” (Acts 17:26). If that was true of Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome, it is true of America. No nation is the Kingdom of God, yet every nation stands within His purposes. America’s founding, its expansion, and now its reckoning at 250 all sit under a sovereignty larger than any founder imagined.
The “last days” language of the New Testament (Acts 2:17) is not primarily about doom. It names the era of the Spirit’s outpouring “on all flesh,” reaching every tribe, tongue, and people. Whatever its failures, America has been one of the great crossroads of that outpouring, a place where the gospel has been received, taught, practiced, and sent to the ends of the earth.
Shaped by Scripture and Enlightenment
America’s moral architecture is unmistakably shaped by both the biblical tradition and the Enlightenment, and four themes stand out:
The imago Dei: The claim that “all men are created equal” makes little sense apart from Genesis 1:27, which teaches that every person bears the image of God. Human dignity was drawn from Scripture long before it was written into founding documents.
Covenant and law: The idea of a people bound by a shared moral order and answerable to a higher law owes as much to Sinai as to the Enlightenment.
Liberty of conscience: The refusal to coerce belief grew out of Protestant dissent and the conviction that faith must be free to be genuine.
Justice for the vulnerable: The prophetic call to defend the widow, the orphan, and the stranger has repeatedly powered American reform, from abolition to civil rights.
An Honest Accounting
America has given rare gifts: a religious liberty where many faith traditions, including of immigrant like mine, can flourish; a culture of charity and civil society remarkable in scale; an openness that welcomed diaspora communities and gave us room to build, worship, and belong; and a capacity to be judged by its own founding ideals. But love does not flatter. The nation proclaimed equality while sustaining slavery and segregation, its ideals biblical yet its practice falling short. And unchecked individualism can wear down the very virtues that keep freedom alive, because freedom needs shared commitments to last. Remove them, and freedom shrinks into pure self-interest.
A View from the Diaspora
For those of us who arrived from the East, America is neither promised land nor empire. We notice its generosity and its restlessness at the same moment. The honor-and-shame instincts of our home cultures make us sensitive to American individualism, while our experience of pluralism makes us grateful for its protections. We are living proof of Acts 17: God appoints the times and places of peoples, and some of us He has appointed here, in this hour.
A Prayer for the Next 250
If there is a prayer for the semiquincentennial, it is not merely “God bless America” but also “God govern America.” May this young nation, still an experiment, order its liberty toward justice, its abundance toward generosity, and its power toward humility. The last days are the days of the Spirit. May America yet be a threshold through which that Spirit passes to the nations.
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” (Psalm 33:12).
~ Sunny
Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).
Thank you, Sunny. I may have overreacted. Perhaps because there are many people in this country that would like for me to feel guilty for being white and I am sick of it. Not you, mind you, your article was sensitive and eloquent, as was your response to me. My point was not to critlcize but to make your readers aware that ALL of America didn't have slaves. That's all. I am thankful we can speak freely. God bless you, too!
Hello Sunny.
I enjoyed your perspective on America. I believe the founders of our country wrote the Declaration under Divine guidance. Despite all her flaws, Ameeica has impacted the world with the principles you describe.
One part of your discourse disturbed me a little, though, since I am from Pennsylvania. Northern states did not have slaves, so all of America did not support slavery. In fact, many people from the North died to abolish it altogether, and many others from both the North and South risked their lives to free slaves by running the Underground Railroad. Of course many Southerners died trying to keep slavery and even wanted to break away from the U.S. forming an independent Confederency. The North won this war, however, so slavery should not be a stain on the flag of the Union. The Confederate flag has been reduced to a sad joke. So, I wince when people try to judge America for having slaves. People who hate America are always bringing slavery up, trying to guilt us into giving up our identity, but America, as a whole, does not need to feel guilty.
I think you may have been influenced by the rhetoric. Maybe.