As we are tracking the ramp up to the 250th anniversary of the original July 4, and trying to reflect on this theologically, there is some very local color to consider. Quite a few proud citizens around Charlotte (where I live!) would say the real 250th should have been last year, and specifically May 20, the day 27 bold men signed the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, affectionately nicknamed “MeckDec.”
Historian Robert Middlekauff (The Glorious Cause) tells us that some 90 declarations of independence were issued months before the Declaration of Independence. Nine states, 8 counties, 3 grand juries, 50 towns, and a half dozen groups (like New York mechanics and Pennsylvania militia battalions) wrote declarations. But Charlotte seems to own bragging rights for being the first.
Thomas Jefferson was accused back then – by his rival John Adams! – of plagiarizing from MeckDec. He denied he’d ever seen it. But the parallels in exact wording would suggest otherwise: MeckDec affirms that due to our “unalienable rights” we “absolve ourselves from all allegiance” to the British Crown, and that the signers “solemnly pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” to the cause of freedom.
For now I have 3 thoughts (and another email is coming on MeckDec!). Plagiarism is an ethical no-no in our culture, and so easily detected now with AI and Google searches! But let me dare to suggest that Plagiarism is underrated – theologically speaking. Our greatest theologians through history (St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Wesley, etc.) have unabashedly and with apology cribbed phrases, sentences and even whole paragraphs from their predecessors. Believing God had inspired rich wisdom in their ancestors, they thought it best not to veer off into creative thought, but to repeat what was beautiful and time-tested. What if Jefferson (and his 4 co-authors) had been required to add footnotes, or obtrusive phrases like “as those Scots-Irish Presbyterians wrote in their Declaration last year…”? How would one improve upon or devise an alternative to “pledge our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor”?
The vast majority of the signers of MeckDec (25 of the 27!) were indeed Scots-Irish Presbyterians, a feisty bunch, allergic to authority. When Lord Cornwallis brought the Revolutionary War here, he complained in exasperation “County of Mecklenburg is the most rebellious and inveterate I have met in this country.” He called it “a damned hornet’s nest of rebellion.” You have to be impressed (and shocked) by the chutzpah, the gritty lunacy of 27 guys in one minor county taking up a fight against the massive British Empire!
But how biblical! God asks Abraham’s little family to save the world (Genesis 12). Joshua and Caleb alone among many more who’d conducted reconnaissance in the land where they felt like mere grasshoppers said “The land is good, do not fear, the Lord is with us” (Numbers 14). Little David slew Goliath the giant (1 Samuel 17). Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego declared their independence from Nebuchadnezzar and the mighty Babylonians (Daniel 3). Jesus asked twelve guys with no education or resources to change the world.
We may picture such Old Testament heroes, and Jesus’ disciples, as placid ciphers who simply fulfilled divine plans. But I picture every one of them as feisty, allergic to authority, dissing the grand powers of this world, not violently but with a steadfast sense of the truth and goodness of all that God is always about in this world.