A liberal church on swanky vacation island Nantucket nixed its Fourth of July readings for the first time in 25 years in “political protest” over the Supreme Court’s voting rights ruling — and its congregants’ “whiteness.”
The Nantucket Unitarian Universalists has read the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights inside its church every Fourth of July for the last 25 years.
This year, the church’s board of trustees and presiding Rev. Erin Splaine published a letter announcing the cancelation of the readings just one month before America’s 250th birthday.
The church blamed the revision on the Supreme Court’s “gutting” of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and “an on-going process within the congregation to better understand our own whiteness,” according to the letter.
The self-proclaimed “liberal and free faith” leaders claimed that white people know the rights laid out in the America’s foundational texts “have, for centuries, been tragically, often violently, and unequally applied” against non-white citizens.
“A celebration without context and the centering of the fullness of our American Story only perpetuates the harm, injustice, and anti-democratic process,” the letter said.
Splaine, a lesbian preacher, said that she will be at the church on Independence Day morning “should anyone want to talk or engage further.”
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of Nantucket will fill the void and host its own reading of the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.
“Those documents are aspirational. We may not be there yet, but we felt it was important to gather together and try to live up to the promises our country has made,” St. Paul’s Rev. Max Wolf told the Nantucket Current.
St. Paul’s intervention did little to satisfy outraged locals.
Charlie Chasin, a Nantucket resident, bashed the Unitarian church’s lame-duck excuses in a letter to the editor of the Nantucket Current.
“For all its imperfections, we’re all blessed to be living in the United States and I think it’s a shame to lose sight of that,” Chasin wrote.
Amy Riley, another islander, highlighted the church’s cowardice as it shied away from a pertinent teaching opportunity.
“Canceling the reading risks becoming an empty gesture. It may signal virtue, but it does not teach history. It does not bring people into deeper conversation. It does not honor the abolitionists, reformers, veterans, civil rights leaders, immigrants, teachers, parents, and ordinary citizens who spent the last 250 years trying to make this country more just,” Riley wrote in another letter to the editor.
“The Declaration of Independence should not be treated as a fragile symbol that can only be celebrated without criticism. It is strong enough to be questioned. It is important enough to be taught. And on Nantucket, of all places, it deserves to be read aloud,” she added.
Universal Unitarianism does not follow a specific religion and instead preaches “the best ways to offer that love to each other and the world,” according to the Nantucket Unitarian Universalists’ website.
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