Last weekend, we Americans celebrated the 239^th anniversary of the founding of our nation.  Declaring independence from our mother country was a bold and daring step to take.  It carried with it many dangers and uncertainties.  And even in the years that followed the Revolution, this new nation had many, sometimes difficult choices to make.

One decision that it faced was the choice of a city to serve as its capital.  The northern states wanted it to be established in their territory; and the southern states, in theirs.  Fortunately, our founders tended to be more biblically literate that people are today; and so they realized that the situation that they faced was not new, but one that had been faced and resolved long ago.

Somewhere around 1000 BCE, King David was struggling to join together into a single nation, not 13 states, but 12 tribes.  The northern tribes wanted the capital to be located in one of their cities; and the southerners, in one of theirs.  David wisely decided on a third option.  Instead of siding with either the north or the south, he chose Jerusalem: a city which was situated on the border between the two, but which belonged to neither.  Some 2800 years later, our founders wisely decided to follow his example.

But the choice of Jerusalem to serve as Israel’s capital was not David’s only, brilliant, political move.  He also recognized the power that would come from linking his authority to that of Israel‘s God.  And so, as we heard in today’s first reading, he had the Ark of the Covenant brought into Jerusalem.  The Ark was a wooden chest which, for over 200 years, had been revered as the place where God dwelt among God’s people.  And its presence in his capital sent the clear message that his decisions and actions had the very approval of God.

David was certainly not the only ruler in history to try to employ the authority of God or of the gods to strengthen and attempt to legitimize all that he did.  Those in power often attempt to link God and country, often not in order to discern God’s will for the decisions that they have to make, but in order to claim that God supports whatever choices they have already made, to affirm that, in whatever they do, God or the gods are on their side.  Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (chapter 2) observes: “The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers, as equally false, and by the magistrates, as equally useful.”  Religion, or a distorted form of religion, has often proved to be useful to those who are in power and who are determined to stay in power.

That approach is one that has been used time and time again throughout the history of nations, including our own.  A distorted use of religion, and specifically of biblical texts, has been used at various times in American history to justify slavery, the displacement and persecution and even slaughter of Native Americans, a second-class status for women, and discrimination against people who are, or appear to be, different from those in power: whether because of their skin color, sexual orientation, country of origin, or other inborn characteristics.  It has been used to claim that capitalism or socialism is the economic system sanctioned by God, when neither is true.  It has been used to try to lend religious support to a selfish and self-centered individualism, which is contrary to the Bible’s focus on the responsibility that we have to use God’s gifts for the service of all.  (They also, by the way, choose to ignore the fact that the Declaration of Independence itself ends, not with an affirmation of individualism and an absolute right to private property, but with the solemn pledge: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”)  To put it another way, we are all in this together.

“Patriotism” may be, as Samuel Johnson affirmed, “the last refuge of a scoundrel,” but religion, or at least a distorted form of religion, can give it a pretty good run for its money.  And the misuse of biblical texts and of alleged religious principles has often been used in an attempt to prop up positions that, in reality, are contrary to authentic principles of a biblical faith.

It is important in a democracy like ours to remain cognizant of the ways that some people misuse religion in an attempt to support the legitimacy of their own positions.  And it is especially important to keep that fact in mind as we approach the current competition for the presidency.  Even though that election is nearly 16 months off, we already have 5 announced candidates from one of the two major political parties and 16 from the other.  Without doubt we will be hearing many, either explicit or at least implied, religious references as this crowd of candidates assert and debate their opinions and political positions.  And we need to be able to recognize their implied or explicit religious claims and to critique them, challenging their validity and comparing and contrasting them with the authentic principles of true religion as taught in the scriptures as a whole and, in particular, as we find them in the teachings of Jesus.

In Walter Brueggemann’s commentary on today’s first reading, he points out the fact that David, by bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, was invoking an ancient, traditional, religious symbol in an attempt to legitimate a completely new form of government: one which was actually a dramatic departure from what was truly the traditional way that Israel was governed.  If that was the way that David was using religion – David, who came to be portrayed as one especially beloved of God – we need to be very suspicious of the ways that contemporary politicians, both those in office and those running for office, attempt to use or misuse religion for their own purposes.

Those who are truly interested in obtaining God’s blessings on what they do, whether in government or any other area of life, do not begin by deciding first what they are going to do and then trying to find a way to twist God’s word so that it supposedly supports them.  Instead, they begin with the approach taken in today’s Collect, praying that they and all God’s people “may [first] know and understand what things they ought to do, and [then] also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them.”