In an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times last Sunday, December 28, William Kristol wrote
“. . . my (generous) interpretation of Obama’s choice of the Lincoln Bible is this: It’s an homage to Lincoln, not a claim to be like him. Obama intends to look back to Lincoln for guidance and to look up to him as a model. Lincoln, our greatest president and statesman, had a deep understanding of American exceptionalism. . . . Obama could do a lot worse than study Lincoln and learn from him.”
Even if American Exceptionalism had any advocates in Y2K― remember our anxieties over computer melt-downs as we moved from 1999 to 2000?― surely this decade has put paid to that notion.
If the attacks on 9/11 at the beginning of this decade showed how vulnerable we are to inimical forces beyond our shores, the years since have shown us how vulnerable we are to irresponsible forces at home, culminating in 2008’s twin collapses in governmental and financial institutions.
Perhaps Mr. Kristol had remembered President Lincoln’s characterization of the United States as “the last best hope of earth,” but had forgotten how Mr. Lincoln had prefaced that phrase with these words:
“Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. . . . The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. . . . We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth” [Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862].
And later, in his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865, the President further circumscribed any supposed tenet of American Exceptionalism when he spoke of the opposing sides in the Civil War:
“Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. . . Fondly do we hope― fervently do we pray― that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan― to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations” [emphases added].
As we begin 2009 on this Feast of the Holy Name, our reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians is a Christian antidote to the attitude underlying American Exceptionalism, and all other forms of exceptionalism, not least any so-called Christian Exceptionalism:
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,”― an especially poignant counterpart to Lincoln’s remarks about a war fought against slavery― “being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.”
The incarnation, by which Jesus willingly renounced divine exceptionalism in order to identify with us― even to death on a cross― reveals to us the One who is truly “the last best hope of earth.” So in this New Year, let us have “the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus.”
Let us pray.
“O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature. Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
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