c. 2007 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) In two weeks, my family and I will join the 20 percent of Americans who move each year.
In our case, a change of one letter _ NC to NY _ means going to “The City,” as New Yorkers call Manhattan, going from house to apartment, from spread-out to congested, from driving to walking, from a downtown farmers market to fruit and vegetable stands on every corner.
And more changes: a city teeming with young adults, an 843-acre park in mid-Manhattan where the gates have names but no padlocks, a dozen languages overheard in a single cross-town trip, a newspaper that devotes two days to an extraordinary series on the science of evolution, and where every block is unique.
Ours isn’t even a particularly dramatic move. Imagine the young adult going from Ohio to Iraq, or the older adult going from independent living to retirement center, or those crossing time zones to go from lush East to desert West, or children graduating from school and venturing beyond parental safety net, or singles who join their lives with comparative strangers.
Americans are a mobile people. Maybe we are just restless and never satisfied, but I think our mobility reflects three of our most profound freedoms.
First is the freedom to move about. Thanks to our country’s wise founders, we have open borders between states, a common currency, uniform observance of contracts, and the ability to take our labor and assets wherever we want, without asking permission from landed gentry or bureaucracy.
Second is the freedom to fashion our own lives, to the point of reinventing ourselves. Even when the “frontier” closed and vast expanses of uncharted land became known, mapped, owned, inhabited, fenced and paved, we were left free to make of our lives whatever we could. We all face limitations _ some not of our choosing _ but still we are free to imagine, to invent, to try, to fail and to try again.
Third is freedom from religion. The founders’ intent was to prevent America from becoming like Europe, where heavy-handed religion controlled lives, defined classes, prohibited public discourse and investigation of ideas and science, pitted one religious sect against another, and justified oppression in the name of Christ.
Some of my mobile ancestors arrived as Puritans seeking religious freedom, others as Norwegians and Germans seeking economic opportunity. They migrated west, ventured into the Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal and Sunday-brunch persuasions, and, once the nation was formed, never ceased to be American citizens with a right to say and to think whatever they pleased.
Thanks to those freedoms, I will be able to walk out my door without wearing a religious brand, walk to a dozen nearby churches, try out something new, hop a subway to even more variety, hear the many accents of modern Christianity, find new ways to serve, and feel the presence of God in a thousand breezes.
These three freedoms are always under assault. Our freedoms frustrate those who profit from manipulation and fear, those who are addicted to control, and those who want to impose their narrow morality on others.
It is fitting that our nation’s Independence Day falls in the middle of “moving season.” These freedoms to move, to change, to believe, were among the reasons revolutionaries threw off a monarch’s control.
(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest in Durham, N.C. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)
KRE/PH END EHRICH600 words
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