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America’s 250th Birthday Gift: Civic Renewal

America’s 250th Birthday Gift: Civic Renewal

Last updated on: July 4, 2026 at 5:31 am by Ted Peters

America’s 250th Birthday Gift: Civic Renewal 2026-07-04T05:31:39-07:00 Ted Peters

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What should we offer as America’s 250th Birthday Gift? Civic Renewal? The gospel message includes renewal. Might the gospel help here?

America’s 250th Birthday Gift? Civic Renewal?

I define the gospel as the story of Jesus told with its significance. Part of the significance of this story is that we, who have inherited our ancestors’ sin and who engage in some sinning of our own, are invited by God to personal renewal. Could a nation learn from the gospel?

The gospel message asks us to face our state of original sin truthfully, accept divine forgiveness, repent, turn around, petition the Holy Spirit for renewing power, and then take practical steps to right the wrongs. Righting past wrongs is one way we show love to our neighbor. Building virtuous character through the habit of loving one’s neighbor leads to sanctification. Every Christian knows how this works. Did I get that right?

Could a nation go through this process? Could a nation walk the road that leads to sanctification? If so, how might we start? Would the 250th birthday of the United States of America provide the kairos moment to start? Might we call this civic renewal?

Jim Wallis on Civic Renewal

Jim Wallis

“What exactly are we celebrating if the hard-fought gains toward a more inclusive democracy are being dismantled before our eyes?” This question is being asked by Jim Wallis, a public theologian who has been engaging America with prophetic judgment for decades. Wallis wants to know what we could offer as America’s 250th Birthday Gift? Civic Renewal? So, Wallis goes moral shopping in his Substack post, “A Big Fourth of July.”

The struggle over our nation’s future is a struggle over whether we will continue expanding the circle of belonging or return to an old version of the country where only white people matter. That was the issue nobody wanted to talk about in my white neighborhoods in Detroit, Michigan, my white schools, and my white church. To find the hidden truths about America, I had to step outside my white world and listen to Black America and the Black churches.

What Wallis has uncovered is that racial injustice is America’s original sin. To right this wrong, America as a culture and as a nation needs to repent and renew.

Jesus said that only the truth will set us free. Only truth-telling can lead America to genuine freedom beyond the comfort of falsehoods that often accompany the July 4th celebrations. In fact, the gravity of our present moment, when our flawed nation’s best ideals are being actively dismantled, gives us a choice to make about our shared future and the kind of world our grandchildren will grow up in.

If we think of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the Civil War as America’s Second Founding, we rightly affirm our moral commitment to protect the dignity of every person regardless of race and to promote a universal common good. Making this moral commitment is at the heart of what I dub civic renewal, a fitting gift for America’s 250th birthday.

Is the gospel political?

The Peters family when the teenagers were still home

Is the gospel political? Yes, but not in the same way MAGA or the Democratic National Committee is political. When the story of Jesus is told, political symbols such as the Kingdom of God prominently prompt your and my response. Jesus announces that the Kingdom of God is close or already among us or imminent. As we see in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), the Kingdom of God arises first within the human heart and then spreads like a tsunami, inundating the entire city, nation, and world with justice, light, and harmony. If hearts already alive with the Kingdom of God could imbue public discourse in America, perhaps civic renewal would follow.

One implication of the gospel is the overcoming of division, especially racial division. “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” exclaims St. Paul (Galatians 3:28). The promise of America formulated in 1776 and reformulated in the post-Civil War constitutional amendments is similar: we are all created equal. The gift of civic renewal would include a new commitment to equality.

Conclusion

Burgers on the Weber along with pyrotechnics on the Potomac are a felicitous fit for the 250th birthday celebration. But the more lasting gift would be a new resolve to stitch racial justice into the fabric of America’s undergarments, outer cloaks, and top hat.

Patheos PT 4042. America’s 250th Birthday Gift: Civic Renewal. Redeeming America 40.

Substack PT 4017 Countering the Cursing in American Language. Redeeming America’s Future 9

Substack PT 4018 Public Theology, Political Symbolization, and Discourse Clarification. Eric Voegelin Redeeming America’s Future 10

Substack PT 4019 Election Day Weather Report: Storm. Tripp Fuller on Redeeming America’s Future 11

Patheos PT 4020. Changing Election Day 2026 Weather. Marc Elias on Redeeming America’s Future 12

Substack PT 4041. America’s Rolling Coup D’etat and the Loss of Democracy. Redeeming America 38.

Meet Ted Peters. For Patheos, Ted Peters posts articles and notices in the field of Public Theology. He is a Lutheran pastor and emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union. His single volume systematic theology, God—The World’s Future, is now in the 3rd edition. He has also authored God as Trinity plus Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society as well as Sin Boldly: Justifying Faith for Fragile and Broken Souls. In 2023 he published. The Voice of Public Theology, with ATF Press. This year he has published an edited volume, Promise and Peril of AI and IA: New Technology Meets Religion, Theology, and Ethics (ATF) and along with Arvin Gouw an edited collection, The CRISPR Revolution in Science, Religion, and Ethics (Bloomsbury 2025). See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com.

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About Ted Peters

For Patheos, Ted Peters posts articles and notices in the field of Public Theology. He is a Lutheran pastor and emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union. His single volume systematic theology, God—The World’s Future, is now in the 3rd edition. He has also authored God as Trinity plus Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society as well as Sin Boldly: Justifying Faith for Fragile and Broken Souls. In 2023 he published. The Voice of Public Theology, with ATF Press. This year he has published an edited volume, Promise and Peril of AI and IA: New Technology Meets Religion, Theology, and Ethics (ATF) and along with Arvin Gouw an edited collection, The CRISPR Revolution in Science, Religion, and Ethics (Bloomsbury 2025). See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com. You can read more about the author here.

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