(John 8:31-36)

On a visit in New York everywhere I went I heard people saying: “It’s a free country, ain’t it?” Now it came from the lips of a man elbowing his way ahead in a long cue lined up in front of the ticket window at Brooklyn’s Ebbet’s field, answering the frowns and dirty glances of those pushed back by his push ahead — “Well, it’s a free country, ain’t it?” Now it came from the little Chinese boy sitting beside his mother on the trolley when the motor-man stopped and went to the rear of the car to chase away a half-dozen street urchins who were hanging on the back of the trolley for a free ride. “Why is the man doing the boys that way? It’s a free country, ain’t it?”

Yes, it is a free country, thank God. And in such times as these when freedom has been lost in a large part of the world and is threatened from many quarters, even from within by those who so little understand freedom’s true nature, it is well for us to remind ourselves of the true source and real nature of our American freedom.

What is the real source of our American freedom? On what does it rest? Why can you turn your radio or TV to listen to whatever station you please in this country or abroad; read the newspaper of your choice; speak your mind with equal abandon on the weather or on the government; choose for yourself your job or profession? Why can Americans do that when other people can’t. No one makes you work when or where you don’t want to work. Your son doesn’t have to make chairs just because his old man spent the greater part of his life making chairs. He can drive a bus or pilot a plane if he chooses and prepares himself to perform that task with proficiency. You can worship how or when or where you please, or not worship at all, if you choose. Upon you there is no constraint in this good land.

It is a free country. But where does this freedom come from? On what does it rest? On the Constitution of the United States? No, though that magnificent document is a powerful safeguard to freedom. On the army and the navy and (with apologies to Mr. Truman) the marines? No, though we proudly and gratefully hail these three strong arms of our nation’s defense as among the best protectors our liberties have in this precarious day.

But the real foundation of American freedom is the free spirit of her people. Dr. Moffatt’s translation of Psalm 51:12 sounds like it was written expressly of American democracy: “Restore unto me the joy of my salvation and give me a willing spirit as my strength.” The foundation of all American freedom is the free, the willing, the uncoerced spirit of her people. This is the source of American strength. The constitution, the armed forces, the law courts of the land, the framework of our democratic government are but the agencies through which the free spirit of a people expresses itself to enjoy and to safeguard human liberty. Destroy that free spirit and you have destroyed every scrap of liberty; nurture and tend and keep alive that free, willing spirit and all freedom is preserved. Here is the point of America’s strength and here her weakness, too — the willing, the uncoerced, the free spirit.

The true source of a people’s freedom was dramatically illustrated by the contrasting courses pursued during the darkest days of the last great war by those two ancient cities Paris and London. When the danger of war’s destruction drew close to London, when the air raids came each night with increasing intensity and the peril of invasion was imminent, the people of London said in effect: “Let our beautiful parks, our architectural monuments of our proud culture go, but let us preserve our way of life from Nazi tyranny. Let the courthouses and Ole Bailey go, but be sure that justice is preserved in this land. Let our churches and cathedrals and temples of worship, those landmarks of centuries, be bombed to bits, but be sure that men continue to worship God in this land. Let the Houses of Parliament and all the material symbols of democratic government be destroyed, just so we preserve freedom in these Isles.”

And in what pitiable contrast stood Paris. When it was threatened the cry went up: “Save our beautiful city — spare it destruction.” So they saved the city but lost liberty, equality and fraternity — and these priceless spiritual possessions were not regained until brave British and American troops had crossed the channel and stormed the defenses and thrown out the invader.

’Tis highly significant that the Freedom Bell, which last week rang out the joyous notes of promised liberty to the enslaved peoples of Europe, was placed in Berlin by the willing, volunteer contributions of freedom loving Americans. And so the Freedom Bell is a symbol, not only to Europe, but to us, of the true nature and source of freedom wherever freedom is ever to be found on this earth: the willing, uncoerced, free spirit within the heart of man is the strength of democracy.

But how to generate the free spirit? What does it come from? Why do some people have it and others don’t? Is it just in the blood? We who have so long enjoyed American freedom are apt to be like the man who has always enjoyed good health — we are likely to take it for granted and forget how the free spirit came into existence and was nurtured among us.

The free spirit of America which is her strength is born of evangelical Protestant religious faith. Make no mistake about it. The record stands. The slogan of the American Revolution: “No taxation without representation,” was simply the voice of those who had learned something of the blessing of representative church government also aspiring for representative political government.

Protestantism basically is the conviction that the church of Jesus Christ is here to serve the purpose of Almighty God in gathering His elect, those who are being saved day by day, into the fellowship and its nurture, and not that the church is here to bind and to enslave men to the autocratic rule of other men who wear the garb of ecclesiastical ordination. It is a protestant conviction that “God alone is Lord of the conscience and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to His word”. (Westminster Confession of Faith) Protestantism has believed that man must be left free in his own conscience, and if his allegiance to God and church is secured, this allegiance is freely given; and expressed in a free manner, and never compelled by force, by fear, by threat.

Dr. Thomas M. Lindsay in his History of the Reformation says: “It was this principle of the priesthood of all believers which delivered men from the vague fear of the clergy. It is the one great religious principle which lies at the basis of the whole Reformation.”

Protestantism liberated the spirit of man because it found the true source of all freedom: the living Christ of the Gospels who says: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” The Reformers found that true liberty of which Cooper wrote:

But there is yet a liberty unsung

By poets, and by senators unpraised,

Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the powers

Of earth and hell confederate take away;

A liberty which persecution, fraud,

Oppression, prisons, have no power to bind:

Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more.

’Tis liberty of heart, derived from Heaven,

Bought with His blood who gave it to mankind,

And sealed with the same token. It is held

By charter, and that charter sanctioned sure

By unimpeachable and awful oath

And promise of a God. His other gifts

All bear the royal stamp that speaks them His

And are august, but this transcends them all.

“This fundamental principle of the Reformation is perhaps most eloquently stated by an Eastern Orthodox writer, Dostoievsky, in the words of his Grand Inquisitor, the voice of the Roman Counter-Reformation. The story, it will be remembered, is laid in Spain, in Seville, in the most terrible time of the Inquisition, when fires were lighted every day to the glory of God. And there in His infinite mercy Christ came down among men, down to the hot pavement of the southern town in which, on the day before, almost a hundred heretics had, to the greater glory of God, been burnt by the cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor. He was recognized by all and surrounded by worshippers and children crying: ‘Hosanna,’ while the crowd swept and kissed the earth under His feet. The blind recovered their sight once more, and the dead were raised before all the people. And then, suddenly, came the guards of the Inquisition, who laid hands on Him, and in deathlike silence led Him away. In the blackness of that night the Cardinal visited Christ in His cell and rebuked Him for daring to bring, even there, His gospel of evangelical freedom, promising to burn Him the next day as the worst of heretics.” (Primer for Protestants by Nichols)

The Cardinal speaks: “Thou didst desire man’s free love, that he should follow Thee freely, enticed and taken captive by Thee. In place of the ancient rigid law, man must hereafter with free heart decide for himself what is good and what is evil, having only Thy image before him as his guide. Thou didst crave faith freely given, not based on miracle. Thou didst crave for free love and not the base raptures of the slave before the might that has overawed him forever. The freedom of their faith was dearer to Thee than anything in those days fifteen hundred years ago. But we have come to teach them that it’s not the free judgment of their hearts, not love that matters, but a mystery which they must follow blindly, even against their conscience. So we have done. We have corrected Thy work and founded it upon miracle, mystery, and authority. We shall tell them that every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, and they will have no secrets from us. And they will be glad to believe our answer for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves. Why hast Thou come to hinder us? And why dost Thou look silently and searchingly at me with Thy mild eyes? Be angry. I don’t want Thy love, for I love Thee not. I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou … Tomorrow I shall burn thee. I have spoken.”

Then the story comes to a rapid end. The Inquisitor waits some time for the prisoner to answer something, however bitter and terrible. But suddenly, the Christ “approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him. That was all his answer. The old man shuddered, his lips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said to Him: ‘Go, and come no more … come not at all, never, never.’”

The Reformation rests simply on the figure of Christ as accessible to all men in the gospel, a Christ who needs no recommendations, no credentials, who can be trusted by the power of the spirit to evoke recognition and the love of free men. That Christ sets men’s spirits free.

Our assembly today on Reformation Sunday is not simply for rededication to a historic rebellion, but for reconsecration to a continuing reformation. For us merely to recite again and remember with emotion the ancient abuses of a corrupt ecclesiasticism which triggered the Reformation long ago would serve only to feed the fires of intolerance today. That would be inimical to the spirit of true Protestantism. “We are most Protestant,” wrote the editor of The Christian Century last week, “when we are most free. If Protestants would be themselves they must rediscover in themselves the mobility and suppleness which are the conditions of freedom. They cannot just be everlastingly against the structure that once qualified their freedom. They must instead address themselves to new static forms — in their own churches, in their communities, in themselves — which limit their free, inventive, imaginative, creative service of their free God.” (The Christian Century, October 18, 1955)

Is freedom threatened amongst us in America today? The Reformation principles of liberty, freedom of conscience, ready access to God for everyone — are always in jeopardy. But the threat now comes, not from an established church and a tyrant upon his throne, but from established custom and the tyranny of prejudiced hearts within our Protestant congregations. Yes, the threat to freedom that arises among us today is not from the clergy in a totalitarian ecclesiastical system, seeking to fetter and bind the consciences of the laity, but rather the threat to freedom comes from the laity within the churches and the libertines without the churches who bring pressures to bear to throttle the voice and stifle the expression of conviction on the burning issues of human freedom among us in our time.

Some ordained ministers in our Southern Protestant churches are being pressured from their pulpits by church officers and congregations because these ministers hold to convictions of equal freedom for all classes and conditions of men. Yes, some protestants are repudiating their heritage as they stifle the free spirit that made their church and nation great.

Christian missionaries among backward neglected peoples of our Southland have been publicly denounced in mass citizens meeting for the merciful work they have done and the gospel convictions they have held. These missionaries are being driven from their homes and their labors by the prejudice, hate and fear that rose in their neighbors’ hearts. They are 20^th century pilgrims adrift in the land of the free.

Oh how we will get our dander up and loudly protest to and through our national state department when the slightest persecution threatens our missionaries in any foreign land, be it Portugal, Paraguay or Peru, yet we stand silently by while right here among us groups without the law take the law in their own hands to persecute and drive from our midst Christian missionaries on our own needy frontier, on the rumor that they hold views differing from ours.

Oh where is our Protestantism? Where the courageous Christian spirit that gave us birth? Where even is our enlightened self-interest — our instinct for self-preservation? Do we not know that when the door is opened to anarchy and lawlessness to despoil one family that every family is threatened? If the protection of a community is taken away from one citizen or one family unjustly, illegally, then no family, no citizen is safe. The German people who allowed the persecution of the Jews by their Nazi neighbors soon discovered that their own families were not safe.

Now is the time for Protestants who take seriously their heritage to stand up and be counted as the friends and protectors of that free spirit which has made the Protestant church and the United States of America.

Ours is a free country, so what? The constitution, the traditions of freedom in America can perish. There are no safeguards unless the free spirit lives among us … When that spirit dies, the framework of freedom crashes. How is it to be nurtured and kept alive? Now, as in the past, by being loyal now ourselves to our Protestant heritage, by enshrining its convictions and its faith in our own lives.

History shows clearly without the slightest shadow of contradiction that a totalitarian state and a totalitarian church are equally inimical to the basic liberties and freedoms of men. As far as my freedom is concerned, I would as soon entrust it to a totalitarian political  system as to a totalitarian religious  system. Communism with all its slaveries must be resisted by all free men of good will, but it is not best resisted by joining up with a totalitarian religious hierarchy.

Then how are we to safeguard and nurture freedom now? By remaining steadfast and loyal to our Protestant heritage, by cherishing those principles of our faith which have given birth to human freedom; by having the courage and the faith to make our own decisions — to choose the hard right rather than the easy wrong for ourselves. But we cannot meet the challenge by simply speaking piously of our fathers’ faith. Their faith is of no value to us until it becomes our own.

In our church school there is a class of young adults who have not been content with just calling themselves by the name of a historic group of courageous Christians — “The Covenanters” — those Scotch blood covenanters who signed in their own blood their solemn compact with each other and their God, that come what might of persecution or death, they would never renounce their reformed faith and knuckle under to a state controlled church. These young people, our contemporaries, have not stopped with indulging themselves in a heroic memory and a stirring sentiment — but have drawn up their own covenant and signed themselves, pledging their lives and fortunes to the Living Christ and the building of a Christ-like world.

So must we all — or the free and willing spirit which is America’s glory and her strength will surely die.

• Scripture Reference: John 8:31-36 • Secondary Scripture References: Psalms 51:12 • Subject : Protestantism and Liberty; The Priesthood of all Believers; The Reformation; Civil Rights; Race Relations; 672 • Special Topic: n/a • Series: n/a • Occasion: Reformation Sunday • First Preached: 10/30/1955 • Last Preached: 10/30/1955 • Rating: 2 • Book/Author References: Primer for Protestants, Nichols; History of the Reformation, Dr. Thomas M. Lindsay