The Dream of Our Fathers

Kevin McCarthy
September 3, 2009

The Dream began with God.

At significant moments in our history, people have been called to gathered in the shadow of the people’s palace, the domed splendor of our Capitol Building; the center of governmental power. They were called there to lay hold of the Dream that was promised to us. The dream is of a nation where all are created equal and are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights and liberty.

They gathered at the magnificent Mall, flanked on each side by grand structures that speak of that dream, of the efforts to achieve it, of the visionaries who pursued it, of the martyrs who defended it.

We can gaze down this majestic hall of record, past the Washington monument, to the Lincoln memorial at the far end and upon whose steps, another man stood in 1963 to remind us of our dream, the American Dream.

But that dream did not begin with Dr. King or Abe Lincoln; It did not begin even with the founding fathers who eloquently penned the promises put forth in our founding document, “we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal.” And though they spoke well of the Dream, it did not prevent these imperfect men from rubbing out the native-American or enslaving the African. So, clearly, the dream did not begin with them.

My friends, many years before that, the dream had ignited the hearts of English Puritans. They had discovered the dream in the story of Jesus. It revealed to them that all humanity shared an equal value as the children of God. God loved all humanity.

Thus, they came to realize that a true society had no aristocrat and peasant, but only brotherhood and sisterhood. They concluded if such a nation were to come to pass, that it would only emerge from answered prayers. So they prayed for it. They beseeched the Father of Liberty and he heard their prayers for such a nation; a nation of the dream. They followed the dream to Plymouth plantation, but the dream did not begin with them.

The African slave had turned to the Father of Liberty as deeply as had the Puritans. Their longing for liberty was born by the master’s whip. Their longing for the dream was forged by the experience of anguished journeys in slave ships across volatile seas. Their desire for the dream was borne of a nightmare: chained to hull-bottoms in pitch darkness and condemned to a life sentence of endless days of toil under sweltering sun.

They too, discovered the dream in the story of Jesus; not only discovering a new value as the Children of God but an additional profound knowledge, as well. They had discovered a promise: that the path of undeserved suffering would lead toward divine justice and liberation, one that would be implemented by God’s own hand.

As he had done with the Israelites before them, God promised deliverance for the oppressed; a nation of “Justice for All” became their hoped-for promised land. It was the dream, but it did not begin with them.

And it did not begin with the children of Israel who had received the Dream through Moses on Mt. Horeb; the vision of a promised land flowing with milk and honey, a nation blessed if they would only keep faith in the Laws, decrees and commandments of God.

More than 400 years before that, Father Abraham, the father of the three great faiths was visited upon by the Dream. He was told his descendants were to be as numerous as the stars in the sky, as countless as the sands upon the seashore.

This dream is much older than all of these; it is as old as God; for it is God’s own dream. It has always existed but it has never been realized, often attempted but yet to be accomplished. It is the dream that all God’s children would be one loving family under God because all people came from God. It is the dream of a world where “swords are beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks” It is the dream of One Family Under God.

Today, this dream remains for America to rekindle. But it requires new Founding Fathers and, this time, Founding Mothers as well; new Founders who will take up the dream once again, learning from the mistakes of the past and moving the nation toward the dream.

When Will the Dream Come True?

Some have grown impatient waiting for the realization of God’s dream and have given themselves over to pursue the false hope of an cheap imitation instead; a freedom and equality but without God. It is a deception that tricks one into believing that freedom means to merely do as I please. Yet, such a life only imposes an even more virulent tyranny and demagoguery; a life of uncontrollable desires and self-destructive behavior that imperils the nation.

Was it not reported that our promised land was so near that it could be seen from the mountaintop? Yet forty years have passed since its sighting and we have yet to enter in. Have our prayer been ignored? Have we lost our way in the wilderness?

We must learn from our Fathers. Each time the Dream was given, a covenant was also made. God would deliver the gift of freedom and justice if... if....the beneficiaries would uphold their end of the sacred contract; that is, to uphold the laws, decrees and commandments of God.

Whenever Israel faltered from her founding spirit, God would send a prophetic voice to chaste them; to remind them that God has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”

The Pilgrims, likewise, in the Mayflower Compact, pledged to devote this new land “for the Glory of God” and the advancement of their faith. Thus America, like Israel, is a nation whose destiny rises and falls to the extent that we, as a people, are true to our part of the bargain, our founding pledge to put God first.

America has faltered many times. The pilgrims faltered in their relationship with their native brothers and sisters. A sad legacy was born. God was not glorified.

Nor was God glorified when the Founding Fathers during the great constitutional debates in the late 1780s, struck a great blow against the Dream when they compromised with the southern colonies over slavery. God was not glorified.

Each time we faltered, God withheld his judgment and maintained his hope for America, because he loved America. In the face of slavery, instead of condemnation, God sent a Prophet of emancipation and prayers were heard; slavery was ended.

And when America held on to its white supremacy and Ku Klux Klan membership swelled in 1920 to 3,000,000 people who had been largely recruited in white Christian Churches, God did not condemn America. He sent another prophet to remind us of our dream. He reminded us that the dream is for all people; not just my own.... thus, not only are the victims of racism to be freed but the purveyors of racism are to be freed from their oppressive ways, as well.

The land where God’s freedom rings is the place where the lion lays down with the lamb and where together they study war no more. It is a journey on the path of repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation that gets us there.

It is time today for us to renew our covenant as did Joshua and the Israelites so many years ago. We must, once again, claim ownership of the Dream; to rekindle the Vision of a true and righteous America.

But, once again, we find America lacking, we have not upheld our end of the sacred contract with God. We have fallen short in maintaining the laws, decrees and commandments of God. And God has not been glorified.

Some say our foreign policy is wrong or the wrong man sits within the White House. Those things are important but it is not about foreign policy; it is about personal policy. It’s not about who resides in the White House, but who resides in our own house.

Consider this; everyday in America:

2,054 teens (age 15-19) become pregnant -- (overall 46% of teens are sexually active)

24,657 young people (age 15-24) contract a sexually transmitted infection (STI)

588 abortions among teens (age 15-19)

89 Americans commit suicide

4,493 children born out of wedlock -- (35.8% of all births)

7,000 students drop out of high school

2,461 cases of child abuse reported

4,931 violent crimes committed

517 sexual assault incidents reported

7,000,000 fellow Americans are in the penal system

God is not glorified and so, the nation struggles today. America struggles not because God condemns America.

God’s love abides with America in the hope of all that America can still achieve. However, just as the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, had to heed to principles in order to fly, America, too, must abide by spiritual principles rooted in God. As George Washington noted, “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.”

America was chosen by God to be a model of virtue and peace, to be the “shining city upon the hill,” a place that demonstrated and exemplified the ideal that all humanity could become one national family under God. It is an ideal, however, not for one nation alone, it is the birthright of all humanity. America as “one nation under God” was to be a harbinger of a world to come, “the evidence of things unseen;” the dream of one family under God.

However, today, the world is confused by America. There are those who insist that America’s image has declined in the world. If that is true it is because America sends the world a conflicting and confusing image.

We say that we want to spread freedom throughout the world, yet what freedom is it of which we speak? Is it the freedom described in the words, “where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Or is it the “freedom” that foists drugs, pornography, adultery, materialism and the values of Hollywood upon the world?

America’s image in the world will be transformed when, once again, America embraces its covenant with God and rediscovers a consensus on moral and spiritual values common to all the world’s faiths. When America can resolve its present confusion of values it can once again become a nation where God takes His rightful place as the True Father and author of the Dream.

It was forty-six years ago last month, that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged a new generation of American citizens when he said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

And on September 18, 1976, 33 years ago, a Korean came to the Washington Monument, and declared before several hundred thousand citizens that the American dream was not a dream for America alone, but for all the people of the world.

That man was Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

In his prophetic address to the nation, Rev. Moon called upon America to recognize and fulfill its true mission:

“The United States of America, transcending race and nationality, is already a model of the unified world. She must realize that the abundant blessings which God has been pouring upon this land are not just for America, but are for the children of God throughout the world. Upon the foundation of world Christianity, America must exercise her responsibility as a world leader and the chosen nation of God.”

Today, it is you and I... we are those new founders who are called upon by God to realize the dream. It is you and I that must go forth from this place and call on the nation, once again, “to live out the true meaning of our creed.” This is our sacred task for which we give our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Having come this far by faith, it will only be our faith that will carry us on from here. It is faith that brought Abram to leave his home and journey to Canaan, Faith that led Moses as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night, it was faith that led the children of Israel out of the wilderness into the light of a promised land. Faith... it was Faith that led Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglas to envision a promised land of American freedom. And faith that gave Abraham Lincoln the insight to discover the awful truth that “every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword”

It is this legacy of faith, enduring through time, passing through the many hands of our many founders, be it a Washington, a Lincoln, a King, or Moon that comes to us here and now. It is a legacy that predates all prophets, all dogmas and all creeds. It is a legacy whose origin is God Himself, and like God, it always was and always will be.

With this faith, let us go on from this place toward the Dream of a nation under God within a unified world of peace.