Today’s readings give us a chance to talk about freedom quietly a week before advertisers and politicians can fill the airwaves with patriotic rhetoric designed to sell us everything from washers to “wisdom” from Washington. We call the Fourth of July “Independence Day” and have good reason to celebrate. We say this is the day we gained our freedom from British rule. But are the words “freedom” and “independence” really synonyms?

I would maintain that, though we did gain our independence from England in 1776, we remained largely English for some time after. If we had truly become something new in the eighteenth century — Americans — we wouldn’t have viewed native Americans as the enemy. But we continued to think of ourselves as Europeans and held on to our hatred and fear of everything non-…