Crystal Hall's Reflection | Poverty Initiative Chapel Service

Crystal Hall's Reflection
Poverty Initiative Chapel Service
Moday, February 8, 2010. 12:00 pm.
James Chapel
Union Theological Seminary

I heard a certain version of events in American history class as a child.  The Pilgrims and the American Indians shared a peaceful feast of thanksgiving.  The Africans that were brought to these shores were the courageous heroes of the Underground Railroad.  The women who asked for the right to vote popularized the soapbox speech.  The Southern segregationists only needed to be reminded by four young men at a lunch counter that, indeed, all have a right to be served. 

My teachers continued that those are things in the past.  America is now the greatest country in the world, because of the freedoms granted in its founding documents.  American citizens are now truly free to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  If you work hard enough and persevere long enough you too can achieve the American dream.

During the Immersion, the Poverty Initiative and local activists took a walking tour of Philadelphia.  Our first stop was Independence Park, the site of both Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.  Within sight of where the Declaration was signed, we visited the Liberty Bell Center, a self-described “national shrine”.  The National Park Service, like my grade school history teachers, had a story to tell.

Abolition.  Women’s suffrage.  Civil Rights.  Each of these struggles used the Liberty Bell as a symbol in creating a more just and equitable society.  Did you hear the litany? Abolition.  Women’s suffrage.  Civil Rights.  (Pause.)  According to the national narrative, America’s struggle for liberty ended with the Civil Rights movement.  But for the mother in the shelter system, the undocumented immigrant working three jobs just to survive, and for the student fighting school violence with non-violent resistance, the struggle is not a thing of the past…  The struggle for the human rights to housing, a living wage, education, and health care is not a thing of the past.  These are the pursuits of freedom and liberty by sophisticated, audacious people directly impacted by poverty in this nation, today.

 “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  Do these words perhaps have a more hollow ring?  The Liberty Bell is inscribed with words from Leviticus 25:10: “You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.”  The Kensington Welfare Rights Union of North Philly protested for the right to housing at the Liberty Bell in the 1990s.  Some were arrested and banned from the grounds.  Leviticus 25:10 continues, though not inscribed on the bell, “It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family.”  “Liberty” in this passage is understood in terms of economic redistribution and forgiveness of debts.  The Liberty Bell is cracked and silent.   

But, no.  We cannot allow ourselves to become cynics, jaded into the assumed inevitability of a history that repeats itself.  This struggle, to achieve the ideals of our founding documents, is ours too, not as a patriotic duty but as the fight for human dignity.  If we are to be judged by how we treated the least of these, as Willie Baptist says, we must understand that we—you and me and the man who slept on the steps of Riverside Church last night—we are “all of these.”  We will all be judged by how we strived for justice for each other.  This is our struggle, not because we are American but because we are all children of God.

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