Conceived in Liberty-Waiting to Be Born

Finally Finished!

After three years of reading, sticking notes into file folders, discussing it, and finally getting it written, my new book goes to the publisher this week! Surprised by Mary: How the Christ Who Was Born Through Mary Can Be Born Again Through You will be released from Cascade Books next year. Hurrah!

The obvious question is: Why would a male, Protestant preacher who has never been a mother nor prayed the rosary in a Catholic church try to write about Mary? My only justification is that I’ve been listening; listening to Mary’s stories in the gospels and listening to the way the Church has remembered her throughout its history. I’ve also been “overshadowed” — the way Gabriel told Mary the Holy Spirit would “overshadow” her — by faithful women who continue to encourage, challenge and correct me along the way. I’m particularly grateful for a ruthlessly honest team of women, both clergy and lay, who have patiently read and thoughtfully critiqued multiple drafts of each chapter. That group includes, of course, my wife, Martha, my best editor who always gets the first look at each draft!

With the coming of the 4th of July, I turned back to a passage in the chapter that discusses what we mean when we affirm that Jesus was “conceived by the Holy Spirit.” I remembered the way Lincoln used the word at Gettysburg. (I recommend Garry Wills’ excellent book, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America.). Here is what I wrote.

“Conceived in Liberty…”

In a real sense, the entire history of human progress is driven forward by people who conceive what seems inconceivable; people through whom something that seems impossible becomes possible. Abraham Lincoln used the conception metaphor at Gettysburg when he reaffirmed the Founders’ vision of “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” He said our bloody Civil War was “testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”  

We’re still testing that well-conceived but still unrealized proposition today.  

The crucial word in what the Founders’ conceived is “all.” E. Stanley Jones called it “the most explosive and revolutionary word in our national history.”  (Jones, E. Stanley, The Christ of the American Road. Nashville: Abingdon, 1944, p. 66) The continuing tension in our culture is around who is included in “all.” Anyone who thinks the equality conceived by our Founders has fully become flesh among us isn’t paying attention! Sinister forces of white supremacy, sexism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism have slithered beneath the surface of our life together throughout our history. The relentless tension in our national body is our deeply imbedded resistance to birthing the promise our Founders conceived but has not yet been fully delivered. 

I wrote those words months ago, but the sinister forces I named are no longer slithering beneath the surface. They are out in the open for all to see! They are on our ballot when we vote. I live in Florida, where the anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant, anti-Black, anti-DEI, anti-choice, anti-Disney, book-banning and education-controlling plans conceived by our Governor and birthed by our Legislature are now fully-alive among us. And they are, in fact, growing like toxic weeds across the nation.

Lincoln got to right. We are still “testing whether any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” The courageous decision our Founders made to gamble their lives on “the proposition that all men are created equal” is still the choice we face in every generation.

As we celebrate what our Founders declared 247 years ago, it’s our time to decide. Does “all” really mean “all”?

Happy 4th of July!

Jim