Values in action

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” These words by poet Emma Lazarus are engraved on a plaque on the inner wall of the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal. Lazarus wrote her poem, “The New Colossus,” for the fundraising efforts for the pedestal. Her poem was not placed in the pedestal until 17 years after the statue’s dedication and 14 years after Lazarus’s death.

On Oct. 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland and dignitaries gathered in New York City for festivities surrounding the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. That night, after dinner at Delmonico’s restaurant, Frédéric Coudert, a prominent New York lawyer, offered remarks in which he compared the symbolism of the statue to the Sermon on the Mount. He said, “I will say that this statue, with no sword, but the torch raised on high, so that all can see it, typifies all that is most striking in moral and religious instruction. It is a poem which anyone can understand without being a poet.” One commentator notes, “In this way Coudert connected the great new monument with the struggles and ideals of the earliest European immigrants to the American continent and with their ardent wish to create a better and more just society.”

The recently conducted Gallup-Aspen Ideas American Values Index survey indicated that more than 75% of American adults agree on these most important values: respect, family, trustworthiness, freedom, kindness, health, integrity and happiness. In a discussion about these survey results, columnist David Brooks said, “I think about values differently. I don’t think you can get somebody’s values by giving them a buzzword like family or faith. A value to me is a constellation of moral principles. So the Sermon on the Mount is a value system. The last shall be first. The meek shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the poor in spirit. I don’t think you could just give people a list of words and find out what the core of their moral values are.”

Coudert and Brooks touch on the importance of living out one’s deepest hopes and beliefs. It is not enough to use buzzwords or pay lip service to lofty ideals if we are not willing to let our actions be shaped by those values. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned against false prophets and taught, “You will know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:16) We can turn that teaching around and apply it to our individual lives and our life in community. What we really value — our constellation of moral principles, if you will — will be known by the fruits we bear, both individually and as a nation. If we really value liberty and justice for all, as we say in the Pledge of Allegiance, we must be diligent in our efforts to secure and protect those values for all.

Philip Gladden is a retired minister who lives in Wallace.