Heroism inspiration

John Wing was a Puritan Anglican pastor who, like the Pilgrims, spent much of his ministry in the Netherlands. He decided to migrate to America, but died before he could do so. His widow Deborah brought her family first to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and then to Sandwich in Plymouth Colony. Central to both colonies was the desire to be free to worship in the manner to which they felt called. And the Mayflower Compact clearly regarded all free men as the governors of their colony.

This was a challenge to the English traditions they were leaving. It is also easy to see their limitations since suffrage extends only to men. Although it is worth noting that the Pilgrims believed that women should have far more property rights than they did in England, and surprisingly their pastors taught that men should be concerned about their wives’ enjoyment of the procreative act as much as their own enjoyment.

These folk had come to worship in their way, but they had no tolerance for other ways.

Two of Deborah Wing’s sons joined the Society of Friends and they lost their suffrage.

One of my ancestors gave all of his property and possessions to his son because he kept being fined for being a Quaker.

This story leads us to the Fourth of July. We stopped in St. Clairsville, Ohio to visit the grave of my ancestor Thomas Iiams, who was a sergeant in a Maryland regiment in the Revolutionary War. (His grandson Thomas, a Civil War veteran, changed the spelling of our name.) it would be exciting to talk to both Thomases to ask them what they saw as the goals of those two conflicts. Did they understand themselves to be fighting for liberty, equality and justice?

As we celebrate our holidays these are the values we rightly lift up. At the same time the history of our country clearly teaches us that these are great goals which we have both made great progress toward and also have fallen short of in many ways.

Juneteenth points us to the horrors of slavery and the many ways we have mistreated African Americans in our history. We have mistreated so many ethnic groups starting with our expulsion of indigenous peoples from their native lands through burning churches to chase out the Irish and on to outlawing Chinese immigration after they did much of the work on the transcontinental railroad.

In Arizona, we can point to the terrible treatment of Mexican landowners when their property became American land following the Mexican War and the Gadsden Purchase. The list goes on.

This long list of our misbehavior should not distract us from our continuing responsibility to work for equality, liberty and justice in our day. From my perspective to achieve these great goals we need both strong political values and institutions and strong personal morality. For the morality, I offer the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) particularly his teaching that if you even call your brother a fool, you are in danger of the fires of Hell. Coupled with his admonition that we should pray for our enemies, his teachings, if lived out, could greatly improve our civil discourse and help us in living out our patriot dream.

We need to be willing to make a personal commitment to the well-being of all. We recently visited the memorial to our valiant fellow citizens who died in the crash of Flight 93.

You remember how these passengers, having learned of the other terrible crashes of that day, determined to stop their hijackers from killing any one else or destroying a Washington structure like the Capitol, rushed the cockpit and produced the crash that took their lives, but stopped the intended attack.

May their heroism inspire us all to commit ourselves to the great American project of the Fourth of July: liberty, equality, and justice for all.

Tucson faith leaders, we would like to include your original sermon or scriptures of encouragement. Sermons must be written by the person submitting them, not borrowed from another source or writer. If you are a faith leader from any religion or denomination, please contact Sara Brown at [email protected].