Post from 2005. Current Independence Day worship and preaching resources here.
Some Independence Day resources: Again this week, don't miss Dan Clendenin's "Journey with Jesus" essay: "Peace to the Nations"
Two-hundred years ago this year, in 1805 Alexis de Tocqueville landed on the shores of Newport, Rhode Island and began his prescient travelogue of our country. To commemorate that bicentennial the Atlantic Monthly commissioned a prominent, contemporary French intellectual, Benard-Henri Lévy, to travel extensively in America and report his findings. When Lévy visited Willow Creek megachurch near Chicago, he recorded his impressions of how Americans portrayed the divine: "a God without mystery; a good-guy God; almost a human being, a good American."3 This Fourth of July, as we celebrate our great country, and read Zechariah's political poetry written to his own country, I worry that Lévy might be right, that we all too easily, too readily, too unknowingly create God in our own, self-serving national image. I hope I am wrong, and I pray that Lévy is wrong. There's an interesting set of reflections, litanies and prayers for Independence Day from Lisa Clark of Mt Carmel Evangelical Lutheran Church. Her readings and reflections mention both the heroic and the not-so-heroic episodes in our national history.
A couple of helpful discussions about whether and how to celebrate Independence Day, can be found at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America site, and the United Methodist site.
The Rev. Thomas L. Weitzel, ELCA, shares worship ideas for Independence Weekend, and there is a United Methodist service of holy communion for Independence Day online as well.
You can also find some interesting and diverse Independence Day sermons online, including these: The ECUSA selected sermon from Worship that Works, by Rev. Canon Ben E. Helmer.
"Freedom," "Church and Politics," and "Jesus and Jefferson," sermons by Pastor Edward f. Markquart, Sermons from Seattle.