The Rainbow that Is America

I’m in Washington, D.C., with the family for a week of vacation (and some work) (and a great big and ravenous dog is watching our house!). Last night, after hours a Smithsonian museums, we sat with tens of thousands of Americans and watched Tom Bergeron host “A Capitol Fourth,” culminating with an amazing fireworks show over the Washington Monument.

Here’s what both Courtney and I remarked on during the show: The large number of immigrant families around us on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol, dancing and singing and waving American flags.

With all of the (largely white) Tea Party fervor in recent years about getting back to the “real America” and the “true America,” it was refreshing to see that some of the most passionate Americans on Capitol steps have different skin color than I, and speak English with a thick accent.

Many of us post-evangelicals have an ambivalent feeling about our country — coming from the history of genocide of Native peoples to the current drone strikes that hit innocent civilians — yet seeing a recent immigrant dance with his three-year-old daughter last night, both of them waving flags and singing the National Anthem, was enough to renew my faith in America.