Sweet Land of Liberty: What is the Fourth of July to the Spiritualist?

 A few summers ago, I attended a Fourth of July service at a Spiritualist church where the closing hymn was My Country 'Tis of Thee. While many older members sang with enthusiasm, several younger attendees seemed uncomfortable singing a patriotic song in a church service.

After talking with a number of people, I realized that most had never been taught why patriotic hymns, American flags, and Fourth of July services became part of American Spiritualism.

The answer lies in the history of the movement.

American Spiritualism emerged during one of the most turbulent periods in our nation's history. Early Spiritualists were deeply involved in movements for abolition, women's rights, prison reform, labor rights, Native American rights, peace, education, and countless other social causes. They looked to the Spirit World not only for personal guidance, but for inspiration on how society itself could progress.

Much of this vision was shaped by Andrew Jackson Davis and his Harmonial Philosophy, which taught that the universe is governed by divine laws of harmony, justice, liberty, and love. Spiritualists believed these were not merely moral ideals, but universal principles reflected in the higher spheres of spirit life. Their goal was to help build a society on earth that more closely resembled the harmony of the Spirit World.

This understanding helps explain the patriotic services found in the 1911 Spiritualist Manual published by the National Spiritualist Association.

The opening invocation does not celebrate military conquest or national superiority. Instead, it prays for freedom while looking forward to the day:

"When the war drum throbs no longer, and the battle flags are furl'd,
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World."

Significantly, the prayer does not suggest that this vision has already been achieved. Immediately afterward, it asks God to "Make us and our descendants fitting and willing instruments to prepare the way for the coming of that day." The greatness envisioned by the early Spiritualists was not something already possessed, nor merely something to be nostalgically recovered. It was an ideal still unfolding, one that required every generation to actively labor for liberty, justice, peace, and the common good.

The prayer continues by asking that the people be given "the wisdom and foresight to preserve every principle of government which tends to make their homes happy and to keep their souls unfettered," to remove "whatever becomes a hindrance to their progress or subversive of their liberty," to be shielded from "the evil machinations of ambitious men," and to educate future generations. In other words, the Spiritualists understood that ignorance, tyranny, and the pursuit of power could derail the nation's moral progress. A just and harmonious society would not arise by accident. It required continual dedication to truth, wisdom, love of neighbor, and the principles of divine law.

Likewise, the Apostrophe to the Flag does not proclaim America to be perfect. Instead, it prays that the nation's triumphs become "truth over error, peace over strife, and love over hate." The closing benediction echoes the same theme, asking the higher spirits to inspire humanity to cultivate harmony and love so that we may become "good citizens of our country and bring blessings to our fellowmen."

These prayers remain just as relevant today, perhaps even more so.

The world in which the early Spiritualists lived was hardly an ideal one. They knew civil war. They knew slavery. They knew poverty, inequality, political corruption, and bitter social division. They had no illusion that the past was better than the present, nor that their own generation had fulfilled the promise of liberty and justice. The Harmonial Republic they envisioned had yet to be realized.

What sustained their hope was their conviction that the Spirit World had revealed a higher pattern for humanity. Through mediumship and the Harmonial Philosophy, they believed they had been shown a glimpse of a society founded upon liberty, justice, peace, and universal love. That vision was not merely a promise of heaven after death. It was a blueprint for what humanity could begin building here and now.

For the early Spiritualists, progress was never inevitable. It depended upon people choosing to become, in the words of the Spiritualist Manual, "fitting and willing instruments to prepare the way for the coming of that day." They believed that whenever men and women labored to uplift one another, defended the oppressed, educated the young, sought truth, and cultivated love, they did not labor alone. The higher spirits themselves would strengthen and inspire that work, helping humanity move one step closer to a more harmonious world.

That message is as urgent today as it was over a century ago. We continue to live in an age marked by division, injustice, violence, and fear. The teachings of Spiritualism do not call us to pretend our nation is without fault, nor to believe that greatness belongs solely to the past. Instead, they call us to recognize that the future is something we help create. Every act of kindness, every defense of human dignity, every effort to overcome prejudice, and every attempt to bring peace where there is conflict is part of building the world that Spirit has promised is possible.

Viewed in this light, the American flag within a Spiritualist church is not a declaration that the nation is without fault. It is a reminder that the work remains unfinished. It is not a monument to what America has been, but a banner of what America and humanity can become. It represents the continual effort to build a society that more faithfully reflects the divine laws of harmony, justice, liberty, and love.

The old patriotic hymns carry the same meaning. They are not sung because America has already become the "sweet land of liberty" envisioned by the reformers of the nineteenth century. They are sung as affirmations of hope, songs pointing toward a nation that is still being built, one generation at a time.

This is why these traditions endure in Spiritualist churches. They are not celebrations of perfection; they are commitments to progress. They remind us that patriotism is not blind loyalty to a nation, but faithful devotion to the principles that make a nation worth loving. To the early Spiritualists, the flag was never simply a national emblem. It was a sacred banner of humanity's ongoing march toward the Harmonial Republic, a world where truth triumphs over error, peace over strife, love over hate, and where the Spirit World and humanity work together in the great task of making this world a better place.