“The heart’s reverence for right, and the hand’s loyalty to truth. . .”
For this Independence Day, I’ve dug out a really rich, wonderful address by Rev. Thomas Starr King. I’ve chosen some excerpts that I feel speak to the ideas of Unitarian Universalist patriotism is these times, in contrast to the perilous times in which this particular address was written in 1851. If you would like to read the entirety, the Google Books project has archived Patriotism, and other papers in PDF format.
Rev. King was a remarkable man, credited by President Abraham Lincoln with keeping California in the Union during the Civil War due to his stirring orations. According to the Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography: “Barely five feet tall and physically fragile, King was undistinguished in appearance. Well into his thirties he appeared no older than a youth. His energy and magnetism as an organizer, minister, and preacher, however, quickly impressed any who had mistakenly judged him by appearance. ‘But, though I weigh only 120 pounds,’ he remarked late in life, ‘when I am mad I weigh a ton!’
He also “organized fund raising for the United States Sanitary Commission, a civilian organization, headed by Henry Whitney Bellows, charged with overseeing the health and medical care of the United States army. By the end of the war California had donated one quarter of the money received by the Sanitary Commission. The first large donation, sent by King, arrived just in time to be of use at the battle of Antietam in 1862.”
Today, one of two Unitarian Universalist seminaries is named for Rev. King, the Starr King School for the Ministry, along with two mountains (one in New Hampshire, and one in California).
As with any document from 1851, you may want to substitute gender-inclusive language in your reading of this text.
Tags: duty, History, justice, liberty, passion, patriotism, principles, Thomas Starr KingPatriotism
by Thomas Starr King
The substance of this article is from a discourse, delivered in Boston, before the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, on the occasion of their two hundred and thirteenth Anniversary, June 2, 1851.
[Patriotism] is a constructive quality, quickening the intellect by its love of country to zealous ambition to improve it and raise it higher. It is an imaginative sentiment. Imagination is essential to its vigor. It comprehends hills, streams, plains, and valleys in a broad conception, and from traditions and institutions — from all the life of the past and the vigor and noble tendencies of the present, it individualizes the destiny and personifies the spirit of its land, and then vows its vow to that. So that it is of the very essence of true patriotism to be earnest and truthful, to scorn the flatterer’s tongue, and strive to keep its native land in harmony with the laws of national thrift and power. It will tell a land of its faults, as a friend will counsel a companion; it will speak as honestly as the physician advises a patient; and if occasion requires, an indignation will flame out of its love, like that which burst from the lips of Moses when he returned from the mountain, and found the people to whom he bad revealed the holy and austere Jehovah, and for whom he would cheerfully have sacrificed his life, worshipping a calf.
