Our Theology

What we believe about this work

We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .

A group of people unified around a common identity. Our central goal is to help restore the underlying cultural forces unifying America’s “we.”  American Scripture Project aspires to respond to the volatility, mistrust, and uncertainty in today’s environment, and counter technology’s power to toxify our disagreements, corrode our politics, and undermine our institutions, so that we may practice maintaining meaningful relationships.

The act of asserting an idea. This was America’s formative moment, not the conquering of lands and peoples, not the revolting against the British, rather the proclaiming of a moral and intellectual framework—as opposed to an ethnicity, geography, religion, or a divinely anointed monarch—and then organizing a large group around that framework. This was a novel way to establish a nation. And this makes the American endeavor precarious, because our “we” depends upon our ability to “hold,” to assert, to proclaim, to believe in our idea. Amidst our unstable and confusing times, American Scripture Project is an opportunity for congregations today to regain this unifying habit, to “hold” together.

Truths exist prior to their discovery. Gravity was here before Newton named it. By the same token, the principle of universal human dignity at the core of the Declaration, and at the center of the American project, preceded America. What happened in Philadelphia in 1776 was a discovery upon which our national experiment in self-government was founded.

In religious language, this is called Revelation. Every religion tells a story about the discovery of its core Truth, whether in the lightning at Sinai, or in the golden plates buried in upstate New York. Religions then establish a tradition to protect, maintain, interpret, and bequeath that Truth. Over time, that tradition changes, reshaping believers’ understanding of the underlying Truth, and occasionally, the ossified traditions cause schism, as believers demand new avenues to Truth.

But however a Revelation story is told, and its interpretative tradition continued, it must be lived, in homes, schools, supermarkets, and bowling alleys. Big doctrines and hermeneutics may come down from a bishop or chief rabbi, but the local pastor relays them. And while this level of Revelation may lack tomes of rules and theological arguments, the Truth here, up close, is more palpable, real, intimate, and relevant. As Pirke Avot (the 2^nd century rabbinic compilation of wisdom) teaches, “When two sit together and words of scripture pass between them, then God’s presence abides amongst them” (3:3).

Those seeking Revelation’s truth create a circle of learners, but they are more than seekers, since the circle has mourned, laughed, cried and danced together; listened to and argued with each other; grown in esteem, frustration, and love for each other. No denominational edict can replace the power of a sincere personal condolence or apology at the right moment.

At first, in a new job, the local rabbi, imam, or pastor conveys Truth based on religious authority, but over time, by modeling honesty, kindness, courage, humility, and grace, that authority gets supplemented, and eventually replaced, by pastoral trust, moral respect, and hopefully communal honor. This honor the pastor brings to the community, as facilitator, guide, teacher, and convener of the circle of learners sitting with the text. These are the values we bring to American Scripture Project, and when we apply them with care, the circle of learners can assert, “We hold these truths.”

What kind of Truth needs no evidence, no scientific proof of its veracity? This is not a fact-based truth, established and tested through experimentation, observation, peer-review, and professional standards. Rather, this is a meaning-based truth, within which a critical mass of humans agrees to find purpose for their lives. We describe meaning-based truths with words like honor and dignity, grace and kindness, concepts that defy measurement. We know these things to be true because they elicit an almost autonomic response—we do not have to calculate or decide in order to act upon such truths.

This kind of truth determines roles, forms character, and even conquers mortality in its ability to make the value of our lives last beyond our limited time. Meaning-based truths are lived out in what David Brooks has called “eulogy virtues,” the kinds of traits we remember in our beloveds when they die, as opposed to the “resume virtues” which are often fact-based achievements and accomplishments, which barely merit mention at the graveside. Such a truth is “self-evident” in that life is meaningless without it.

Often, we hold to a meaning-based truth even against the undisputable evidence of a fact-based one. Surely the fact-based truths of American chattel slavery—with its suffering, degradation, death and abuse—could not cancel the meaning-based truth of human dignity. In fact, the disconnect between the two contributed to the slow (and violent) overthrow of the former by the latter.

Because of this mortality-conquering, fact-defying power of meaning-based truth, it must be sustained like a form of Revelation, with its story and its process of interpretation. When America says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” we allow no other idea to precede this declaration of universal human dignity. It becomes the starting point, and American Scripture Project attempts to create an exegetical tradition to help us understand the magnitude of this core American meaning-based truth.

If we are to take America seriously, how can we ignore the ways we come to understand it, to define it, to uphold it, and to live out its meaning?  As citizens we interpret America and tell its story, celebrate its Truth, teach it to our children, and affix it to the doorposts of our houses, and our gates (Deut 6:7-9). What else are the flags we hang, and the ideas we think as we see those flags?

Which means, of course, that American Revelation varies across our vast continent and throughout our diverse population, like the varieties between and within religious denominations. The African American way of American Revelation with its astonishing forbearance, resilience and strength surely contrasts with Ashkenazi Jewish stubborn curiosity, ironic humor, and loud pluralism, or New England Episcopalian pride, aspiration, and nobility. That is not to say that each lacks the elements of the other. Rather, that is to say our avenues to Truth, America’s Truth, the way we discover and encounter and interpret that Truth, will differ in emphasis, in style, and in resonance, and this diversity extends to myriad local communities with their idiosyncrasies, cultures and customs. This is why American Scripture Project rests upon the thick cultures and interlocking relationships of congregational life.

National leaders and organizations may try to recreate American Revelation, forming ways to rediscover our self-evident truths through mass-media and national campaigns. But the most powerful encounter with Truth, as Pirke Avot teaches, happens between two people, face to face, sitting over a text, breaking bread, seeking what is “self-evident.”

To create a way to reunify as a “we”; to restore our courage to “hold” convictions, even when we disagree; to encounter the Revelation of America’s Truth, in all its diversity; and to experience a process of understanding the meaning within that Truth, this is what American Scripture Project aims to offer our congregations and country.