I grew up loving this country.  It is not because of our vibrant economy or large and powerful military.  It also is not because of our spacious skies, amber waves of grain, majestic mountains, or fruited plains. I have had love and pride in this country for its values.

What are these American values? They are values of our Declaration of Independence with the assertion that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

They are the values of our country’s constitution, which states that the purpose of our union is to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

They are the values etched on the Statue of Liberty in the New York harbor, which says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

American values are about the importance of truthfulness, about the equality of all people, about fairness and justice, about the rule of law, and about freedom and liberty.

It is about the freedom to worship as I choose, to love and marry whom I want, to choose my own vocation, to travel where I wish, to spend my money as I desire, to live the life I want, to believe what I believe, to be able to speak openly and freely and to find happiness any way that suits me, as long as it does not interfere with others’ wants and freedoms.

We have not always lived up to these values, but they were what we aspired to.

The values I have just described are not only American values, but I would suggest they are also Christian values. Jesus’ primary message was about a “kingdom of God,” a world in which people would be free from poverty, persecution, fear, and violence; a world of compassion and caring for others; a world where people were free to pursue happiness.

The only form of government that has brought us closer to this ideal world is democracy.

Ever since the beginning of civilizations, autocratic rule has been the norm, and what characterized autocracies was an imbalance of power and wealth. The ruling elites controlled everything, and the general population lived to serve them. Income and power disparity have been currently rising to alarming levels in this country, and the current administration is likely to exacerbate this further.  A June 2021 article from CNBC reported that “the top 1% of Americans have about 16 times more wealth than the bottom 50%.”

I think it is fair to say that most of us want a happy life. Just what gives us happiness? Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” is informative. Our most basic needs are what he calls “deficit needs.” These are the needs for food and water, shelter, safety, and the need for community (family, sex, friends, intimacy). We cannot be happy if we are struggling just to survive.

For millennia, the most that common people could expect from their governments was having only these basic needs met, and religions told us to be satisfied with this, as our reward would be in an afterlife where we would finally be happy for the rest of eternity. Religion has been used by the religious and secular elites to appease the less fortunate.

Maslow reminds us that people need more from life than just simply to survive and procreate. We need meaning in our lives.  We have the need to contribute and to accomplish. We have the need to grow and evolve, to “self-actualize.” We have the need to love others. Autocracies care only about the needs of the ruling class.  Democracies are concerned about the general welfare, i.e., love for others. These are the values that made me love America.

I fear we are in the process of losing these values, of losing the America that I have loved. In this recent election, Trump won most of the American vote with essentially a new set of values: greed, selfishness, tribalism, lust for power and money, xenophobia, and disregard for laws and norms.

Just as the prophet Jeremiah in the Hebrew scriptures lamented the destruction of Jerusalem due to the Hebrews’ moral failings, I am lamenting the loss of my country, the United States of America, due to its moral failings.

Abraham Lincoln, in a 1938 speech (known as the Lyceum Address), said that it is the values manifest in our constitution and our laws that preserve our union. He said that if our republic ends up failing, it will not be because of a foreign enemy but will be because of destructive forces within. Lincoln said:

Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.

I fervently pray that we do not destroy ourselves and that we return to the values of our American founders and the values of Jesus Christ. America can not be great if it is not good.

But thoughts and prayers are not enough! We need to act! We cannot give up or be complacent. Remember that famous saying, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” We need to protest, speak up, write letters, vote, and organize.

And our churches need to be involved in the fight. Some argue that the church should not be involved in politics. Maybe we should not endorse candidates or political parties, but we certainly should be vocal about our values. Isn’t that the whole point for our existence?

I believe we should take our cue from Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, who, at a national prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral held for President Trump’s inauguration, prayed, “Take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love, and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth.”

In her homily, she entreated us to “respect differences,” “genuinely care for one another even when we disagree,” work for “unity that serves the common good,” that we honor “the inherent dignity of every human being,” that we have “honesty in both private conversation and public discourse,” that we have humility, and that the president “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared.” Aren’t these Christian values?  Aren’t these American values?

Let’s make America good again.

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Dr. Craig Vander Maas is a neuropsychologist whose research and writing interests are the intersection of religion, science, and politics.  He is the author of the recently published book Beyond Religion: Finding Meaning in Evolution