GUEST POST: Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor by By Chandra DeNap Whetstine
What the founders can teach us about working across divides.
This guest post is by Chandra DeNap Whetstine, COO, One America Movement.
I suspect that most Americans did not wake up on the morning of January 1st thinking, “Wow, it’s going to be a big year! It’s America’s Semiquincentennial!” Most Americans probably don’t even know what to call the 250th anniversary of our independence. To be honest, I sure didn’t until I looked it up.
While you might not have woken up on January 1st thinking about this major milestone for our country, I bet you did wake up thinking about something in your life that is impacted by the current state of our nation. Whether it is hope or dread around immigration, the economy, military action, or so many other hot-button issues, how we shape our common life together is on most of our minds right now. And for so many of us, that common life appears to be coming apart at the seams.
We are increasingly mistrustful of our fellow citizens and institutions. We argue with strangers online about politics, calling them ignorant or arrogant, deplorables or snowflakes. We cut ties with friends or family over the very same hot-button issues that we woke up thinking about this New Year. And instead of our self-righteousness making us happier, more productive, or more content, we are increasingly isolated, depressed, and afraid.
Is this what the founders of our country had in mind?
When they set down on paper the words which would forever sever their connection to England, when they risked their lives for liberty, were they looking forward to a future where their descendants would snipe at each other online? Or worse yet, in real life? I doubt it.
The founders of our country had their fair share of disagreements, and the process toward independence was slow and fraught. When Thomas Jefferson submitted the draft of the Declaration of Independence for review by the full Continental Congress, it was hotly debated, and much of the document was removed, including a section about the ills of slavery.1 Despite being a largely homogenous group of European, land-owning men, the founders of our country still had much to disagree over. They argued about systems of government, the economy, taxes, and, of course, slavery. And yet…and yet, they were able to find enough common ground that they could launch the American Experiment.
The final sentence of the Declaration of Independence reads, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”2 Two things strike me about this final sentence. First, not only did these men agree to the declaration, but they also pledged themselves to one another in support of it. They didn’t pledge themselves to the declaration but instead to the fellows who penned their names to it. They recognized that they were bound to one another even amid difference. And second, they knew none of this could work without the protection of God, the One who is greater than any human endeavor.
Perhaps this sentence can be our guiding principle in these divided times. As our country enters our semiquincentennial, can we, too, pledge ourselves to one another even amid our differences? Can people of faith make that pledge knowing that the balance of successful peacemaking in America rests in the hands of God?
At the One America Movement, we believe the crisis of toxic polarization in our country is, at its heart, a spiritual crisis. When polarization convinces us that people across our divides are evil, that they have to be stopped at all costs, it harms us from the inside out. Our faith traditions teach us to love our neighbors and welcome strangers, to care for one another and recognize the fundamental human dignity in everyone we meet. But we can’t do that when we are beguiled by polarized politics.
That’s why initiatives like faith250 are so important. Our faith must guide us to transcend our partisan divides. When we come together across our differences to discuss the very nature of what it means to be American, we can trust the wisdom of our faith traditions to help us stay in those difficult conversations. And as we build new relationships across those divides, we can reweave the fraying fabric of our shared common life.
America is difficult and messy, and it certainly isn’t perfect. It wasn’t in 1776 and it isn’t in 2026. But as we pass this major milestone for our country, it is worthwhile to reflect on how far we’ve come and what holds us together. By celebrating our 250th anniversary alongside those who are racially, religiously and politically different, we affirm that while we find much to disagree about, we know this American Experiment will not thrive if we allow polarization to tear us apart.
In this moment when so much about our politics is fraught and broken, it isn’t enough to just pledge our allegiance to a flag or swear an oath to the constitution. We must let our faith guide us to see the value and dignity of every person, even those we disagree with. Only then can we, like the founders so long ago, pledge to one another our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/adams-declaration-independence/#:~:text=Nearly%20a%20quarter%20of%20the,from%20the%20drivers%20of%20Negroes?%22&text=On%20July%204%2C%20only%20John,on%20the%20fourth%20of%20July
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
As even portrayed in "1776" (the musical) the founders had differences about whether to declare independence immediately much less why it was imperative to declare independence! But once they had decided on what they should do they were invested in that as a new thing in human history. Americans today have a certain level of complacency about institutions being able to protect them and the people who are having the worst fights are the people who have lost that.
The United States of America was fashioned out of irony. According to the cited PBS article “The irony wasn't lost on [John] Adams that the Declaration of Independence, which trumpeted freedom for all men, was written by a slave owner. ([Thomas] Jefferson was far from the only slave owner in the Continental Congress; a full third of the delegates, from both North and South, either currently or had owned slaves, while [George] Washington, who commanded America's army, owned over 100.) Nor did the British let this contradiction go unnoticed. Queried Samuel Johnson: ‘How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?’”
Our strength might be in continuing the struggle to live up to the ideals of a fit democracy while reluctantly, & at times maliciously, complying with the necessary diet & exercise.