Oh Freedom

A Sermon Offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church

On February 13, 2005

By Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Readings

Oh freedom,
Oh freedom,
Oh freedom over me, over me.
And before I'd be a slave,
I'd be buried in my grave,
And go home to my Lord and be free.

No more weeping,
No more weeping,
No more weeping over me.
And before I'd be a slave,
I'd be buried in my grave,
And go home to my Lord and be free.

There'll be singing,
There'll be singing,
There'll be singing over me.
And before I'd be a slave,
I'd be buried in my grave,
And go home to my Lord and be free.

Words of the historian Eric Foner

Rather than a fixed category or predetermined concept, freedom has always been a terrain of struggle.  Its definition has been constantly created and recreated, its meanings constructed not only in congressional debates and political treatises but on plantations and picket lines, in parlors and bedroom.  It has been invoked by those in power to legitimate their aims, and seized upon by others seeking to transform society.  In our own time, we have seen the putative division of the planet into free and non-free worlds invoked by our own government to justify violations of individual liberties at home and support for some highly repressive governments abroad.  Yet within my lifetime as well, the greatest mass movement of the century invigorated the language of freedom with its freedom rides, freedom songs, and the insistent cry “Freedom Now!”  The story of American freedom is, in other words, as contentious, as multidimensional, as American society itself. 

Sermon

Freedom – the word’s all around us – I’ve never seen so many bumper stickers proclaiming freedom!  The President used the word freedom more than 250 times in his second inaugural address.  Freedom is in fashion in our foreign policy.  At the Unitarian Universalist church we use the word freely, you might say.  Yet, I would ask you –

What is freedom?  There are different aspects of freedom – each with its own set attendant puzzles. There is freedom from and freedom to.  What is American Freedom?  Is it different from freedom in the rest of the world?  Every child knows to say – “it’s a free country.”  But what does that mean?  Is freedom merely a state of resistance and not a state of existence?  When I read Eric Foner saying: “freedom has always been a terrain of struggle.”  I felt relief – that’s why the word is so mysterious and contentious

Freedom is sewn into our national fabric and hangs out in uneven threads – it’s core to our national identity – and yet incredibly elusive.  Freedom is key to this faith and this time in history.  During black history month the question of freedom is highlighted.

In elementary school, the story I learned was that people came to America for religious freedom.  As a Jewish child I found myself wondering how that freedom only applied to certain religions and how, therefore, it meant anything at all.  As I got older I became more confused about this idea of freedom – it seemed like we were mighty attached to it – yet we’d destroyed the freedom of Native Americans to acquire land.  And we’d confiscated the freedom of Africans to cultivate wealth on that land.

Ours is the nation that sounded the trumpet cry of freedom from continent to continent – like a Pandora’s box of confusion that sounds might fine – is mighty murky.

Ours is the land of the free – that’s our brand name internationally.  This isn’t new.  Even before the American Revolution the European states – and Britain in particular – were advertising the American colonies as the land of opportunity, liberty, and freedom.  This representation of American served the interests of Europe in a few ways.  First, by representing the New World as a land of freedom they could forestall unrest at home as eager malcontents boarded ship, signed into indentured servitude, and went west.  Second, they provided an increased labor force to their imperial business ventures.  Third, they could offer the hope of religious freedom to those who’d caught the fire of enlightenment and reformation – even though the religious freedom of the colonies was far more fiction than fact.  Even after the Revolution laws which ensured religious intolerance were upheld.  In Georgia; a state law drafted in 1777 stated that "representatives shall be of the Protestant religion”.  Delaware state law Article 22 from 1776 stated that “Every person who shall be chosen or appointed to any office or place of trust shall profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and…acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration".  In Maryland a law from 1776 said "...All persons, professing the Christian religion, are equally entitled to protection of their religious liberty."  Well, that was religious freedom of a kind.

            Yet George Washington period had said: The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent & respectable Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights & privileges.  This was, indeed, a freedom of mixed messages and what might seem to be hypocrisies.  The New World was a land of enslavement – beginning – for those of you who weren’t able to tune into the PBS Broadcast of Slavery and the Making of America – in 1618 when the first African slaves were set onto American soil.  This unpaid labor was the basis of the great wealth that America and Europe amassed in the 17^th, 18^th, and, especially, the 19^th centuries, as slavery reached its height.

            The framers of our great document of freedom – the Constitution, were defenders of slavery.  The Constitution was a deeply flawed document – full of the best intentions, extreme greed, and naked self-interest.

            When the slaves of the British Empire were freed in the British colonies on August 1, 1833 – that date became a black 4^th of July – a celebration of freedom even to those enslaved in free America.  The matter of freedom became so tangled that people drew an ironic distinction between monarchial liberty and republican slavery. 

            In June of 1854 the fugitive slave Anthony Burns was kidnapped from freedom against the protests of Boston’s citizenry and dragged back to slavery.  A month later at the annual 4^th of July picnic and rabble rousing of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society the publisher of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator – William Lloyd Garrison – made a visible statement about freedom.  He took a copy of the odious Fugitive Slave Law and burned it before the crowd.  Then he said that he was going to burn a copy of what he called “the parent of all other atrocities…a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell."  He then set fire to a copy of the Constitution. 

            He was questioning whether the new United States could lay claim to being a more perfect union and to securing the blessings of liberty for all.  Susan B. Anthony abolitionist and suffragist said: “It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union.”  While William Lloyd Garrison, Susan B. Anthony and the abolitionists questioned the myth of the land of the free – in the rest of the world there was widespread acceptance of the idea that America was, indeed, a beacon of liberty.  Abraham Lincoln was aware of this reputation and the American desire to retain it when he said that slavery weakened the American mission by exposing the country to the charge of hypocrisy from the “enemies of free institutions abroad.”  Much as I admire Lincoln it’s hard not to wonder what he thought about the enemies of free institutions at home. 

            In slaveholding states the rhetoric of freedom was often used to defend slavery as a form of freedom of ownership and commerce.  How did – how do people balance freedom and license?  How do we balance our own desires and a larger sense of justice? 

            What is freedom?  Is it simply the ability to do as you wish?  Common dictionary definitions: a state in which somebody is able to act and live as he or she chooses, not being subject to any, undue, restraints and restrictions; release from captivity or slavery: release from being physically bound, enslaved, captured, or imprisoned; a country’s right to rule itself without interference from or domination by another country or power; the right to speak or act without restriction, interference, or fear; the state of being unaffected by, or not subject to, something unpleasant or unwanted; the ability to move without being limited by something such as tight clothing or lack of space; right to occupy a place and treat it as your own; openness and friendliness in speech or behavior; or excessive confidence or familiarity; a lack of proper restraint or decorum; the ability to exercise free will and make choices independently of external determining force.

These definitions incorporate freedom from and freedom to.  The key that draws these definitions together is freedom as a lack of certain restraints.  Yet, acting without restraint – seems to create monstrosities.  In post modern times we are often lamenting the kind of individualism that leads to pure self-interest and the denial of the freedoms of others.  A simple example: the freedom to smoke in public includes the right to subject others to secondhand smoke or deprive them of the freedom to breathe clear air.  Free speech without restraint is essential and yet that freedom can become a license to march hate through a neighborhood and to reduce the discourse of our society to slogans and sound bytes.  Some restraints are internal and some external – but freedom without restraint…We live in a world of causes and effects.

 Clarence Darrow said: “You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom.  You can only be free if I am free.”  We create more freedom for ourselves by enlarging the freedom of others. For example, if I’m a legislator and I set a law allowing freedom of religion I assure myself that if I’m no longer in power and another religion rises I’ll be free to observe my faith and others may respect my freedom of belief as I’ve respected theirs.  No guarantees.  Yet enlarging freedom encourages peace and harmony rather than conflict and isolation among diverse people.

            Freedom begets freedom and our freedoms are dependent upon one another’s.  But that’s a careful balance – it depends not on creating more freedom for ourselves – but actually on granting freedom to one another – a sort of social contract.  Rabbi Hillel said “If I am not for myself, who is for me But if I am for my own self only, what am I?”

Stepping off this continent for a moment – a tragic conflict of freedoms has consumed the Middle East for generations.  After centuries of persecution, crusades, and pogroms, culminating in the Holocaust a group of global powers gave the land of Israel to the Jews – ones who’d been living there for more than half a century and ones who’d only just escaped from Europe.  For the first time in 2000 years the Jewish people had a land of religious and political freedom and the home for which they had prayed and longed.  But there was a problem – there was a people already living there.  People who belonged to the land and yearned for freedom no less than these newly returned Israelites.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke in 1941 of Four Essential Human Freedoms: The first is freedom of expression. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. The third is freedom from want-- a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants.  The fourth is freedom from fear-- reduction of armaments to a point that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of aggression against any neighbor.  Two peoples yearning to inhabit the same land – different religions, customs, peoples – the same freedoms and one land.  Today, after generations of bloodshed it’s still hard to settle the matter of how these two groups may exercise their freedoms in the same place.  The longer that their conflict has endured the less and less freedom there has been on both sides.  But this week – tentatively these peoples reached out to one another in hope – amid doubts and protests – reached out in hope that they might restrain some freedoms of action in exchange for greater freedom of life.  I’m afraid to hope and unable not to hope for this peace. 

Back to our nation – after the Civil War – after Emancipation the slaves were free – free from -- free from bondage.  But they were far from free to – far from free to obtain good work,  to move freely, to go to school, to create lives of peace and plenty,

On one level freedom is external – it’s about what you can do where you can move when no one else controls your movements.  But John Dewey warned that “The commonest mistake made about freedom is to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity.”  On a deeper level if you’ve never learned to exercise freedom or imagine different choices you’re as unfree as if you were shackled.  This wasn’t the case for freed slaves.  Somehow, their spirits had remained free through centuries of enslavement.  They’d been watching, learning about freedom for so long -- they could envision and pursue it – but they couldn’t always beat the odds. 

On the other hand, my cousin Sophia lived all her life in the Soviet Union and came here in her 50’s.  It was utterly mysterious to her how to survive without someone controlling her choices.  It’s taken years for her to get used to our sort of freedom.

In slavery people couldn’t choose their own names, learn to read, keep their children, earn a living… all of those restraints were intended to shrink the inner world of the slave – to restrict the inner freedom of the slaves as well as the exterior. 

Slaves delved deep into their souls for inner freedom.  Out of that the music of the spiritual arose.  That was echoed in the spiritual we sang earlier.  Jean Paul Sartre said: “Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.”  What I didn’t share was that it was an existential song of defiance.  “Oh Freedom, before I be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave And go home to my Lord and be free.”  The slaves came off the boat and then they turned around and, singing that song, went back into the water and drowned.  They used that song to declare their last, inner freedom, it was an act of self-determination.  

Freedom is a dance between inner and outer worlds – not simply freedom to or freedom from – it’s truly what you do with what you are dealt.  Freedom is at base, a spiritual state.  In First Corinthians Paul said: he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord… he who was free when called is a slave of Christ (maybe that’s just more of the same confusion – but that’d be another sermon.)  But in second Corinthians Paul said: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  While you or I may not think of the lord as Paul did or the slave who sang out did -- there’s a deeper freedom that we can make for ourselves than anyone else can make for us.

It’s a freedom in how we think – to ensure that our thoughts are as free as the wind o’er the ocean.  This is the sort of freedom that allowed Michael Servetus to question Catholic dogma.  The sort of freedom that Thoreau found in the woods.  It is the freedom of Harriet Tubman – the Moses of her people.  The freedom of Sojourner Truth who demanded to be strong and free.  The freedom of Viktor Frankl who wrote: We who lived in concentration camps remember those who walked through the huts comforting others.  They may have been few, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.”  It is the freedom of Martin Luther King, Jr. who had a dream in spite of generations of living nightmares – a dream that had seldom been spoken aloud since Reconstruction had been denied.  It is the freedom of all those who struggle for freedom and recognize the inherent freedoms, the worth and dignity of their opponents and act to honor that at lunch counters or prayer vigils.  It is the freedom to find not the dead rebellions of the past – but the new frontiers of the future.

            It is the freedom to gather – each of us one our individual searches yet knowing that we are on a shared path of spiritual and intellectual adventure.  It is the freedom to create a space which goes deeper than the worship of coffee and conversation and goes to the heart of the life and death mission that human beings are on – the mission to find and make meaning in freedom and community.  Here to plant those seeds of freedom which grow to wider freedoms.  We open our doors, our minds, our hearts in a freedom to which we are heir, but which we also create for the future. 

            The deepest freedom is found in the mind, the spirit, the heart that is awakened – free from inner chains.  Oh Freedom!