Christianity Today: What to the Christian Is the Fourth of July?, by Myles Werntz (Abilene Christian University):
In 1852, Frederick Douglass was invited to deliver a speech at the annual Independence Day celebration in Rochester, New York. After escaping from slavery some 14 years earlier, Douglass became an abolitionist and a sought-after speaker in the United States and abroad.
As a Christian, Douglass filled his speeches with biblical allusions and often directly addressed churches. He spoke often of the contradiction between the faith Christians of his day professed and their acceptance of slavery, naming the distance between the words of Jesus and the prejudice and other moral failures of the American church.
And so, in that speech at Rochester, Douglass did not mince words. In his now-famous address titled “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” he played on the pride and patriotism of America, likening the holiday to “what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God.” Yet he used the occasion to highlight not his country’s faithfulness but its sin: The very tyrannies America opposed abroad it committed daily against slaves. The speech was a dire warning to a young nation quickly running out of excuses.
Douglass was not the first former slave to issue this judgment of the distance between the glory and reality of America’s political principles. But his speech is remarkable for its timing. Answering the question of his speech’s title, Douglass writes like the prophet Amos: To the slave, “your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence.” …
If we are to take Douglass seriously today, then the question he asked in 1852 must be turned around: What, to the Christian, is the Fourth of July?
Douglass urged churches to join him in calling American promises of liberty and equality up to their full stature. He wanted white Christians to see that for the slave, Independence Day in 1852 was a cheap trick. For American Christians today, hoping to shake off the allure of moral slumber, the task is to think soberly and honestly about what this day is and means.
That does not mean refusing to celebrate. As Douglass demonstrated, this is a day for both criticism and appreciation, and the criticism is given precisely because the appreciation is deserved. …
[July 4th] is a day of dedication for churches to being the city on a hill—and embracing the cost that entails.
In 1852, this looked like churches shuttling slaves to freedom long before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and Christians risking their reputations for justice or even joining in the misery of the slaves themselves through advocacy and civil disobedience.
In 2026, being the city on a hill will look like embracing a vision of being the church in the world for no reason other than that this is what Scripture requires of us as we seek, however feebly, to bear witness to the kingdom of God. Such has been the lot of God’s people since the beginning (Heb. 11:35–40), and it is a great luxury that, from time to time, American law has followed along.
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