The latest skirmish in Americas culture wars is playing out not in a university seminar room or on a cable news set, but in a historic church on the windswept, ultra-elite island of Nantucket.
A Nantucket church on the exclusive Massachusetts island long favored by former President Joe Biden has canceled its annual Fourth of July reading of Americas founding documents, citing an effort to understand "our own whiteness" and drawing sharp criticism from conservatives.
According to RedState, the decision comes from the Nantucket Unitarian Universalists (NUU) and the Rev. Erin Splaine of the Second Congregational Meeting House Society, who announced the move in a letter published by the Nantucket Current.
"Our cancelling the 4th of July celebration this year reflects ... an on-going process within the congregation to better understand our own whiteness," wrote Nantucket Unitarian Universalists (NUU) and the Rev. Erin Splaine of the Second Congregational Meeting House Society in a letter published by the Nantucket Current on Thursday.
The historic Nantucket Unitarian Meeting House has hosted a public reading of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights in downtown Nantucket each Fourth of July holiday for the past 25 years, making the abrupt reversal all the more striking.
The churchs leadership framed the move as a response to recent judicial developments and a broader ideological project. We came to this decision in large measure because of the recent gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court, Rev. Erin Splaine and the groups board of trustees wrote in a letter to the Nantucket Current news outlet on Thursday.
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 continued, casting the traditional reading of the Declaration and Bill of Rights as an act that allegedly reinforces systemic wrongs. Our cancelling the 4th of July celebration this year reflects the deep concern we are feeling since the Supreme Court decision, the letter continues, as well as an on-going process within the congregation to better understand our own whiteness and how we can be part of changing an inherently unfair system which has been in place for 250 years.
For many on the right, this is yet another example of a fashionable self-loathing that targets Americas founding principles rather than honoring them while working to perfect the union. The rhetoric of whiteness and inherently unfair systems, critics argue, turns a unifying civic holiday into a platform for grievance politics and racialized moral posturing.
The controversy has also drawn attention because of Nantuckets status as a playground for Democratic Party royalty.
Both Joe Biden and John Kerry have long favored the island and its neighboring liberal bastion, Marthas Vineyard, as vacation retreats, underscoring the gulf between the rhetoric of oppression and the reality of multimillion?dollar coastal estates.
Online reaction has been blistering, particularly toward Rev. Splaines posture of moral superiority coupled with a refusal to engage dissent.
Wtf. Erin Splaine, the Reverend of the woke Unitarian Universalist Church in Nantucket, just canceled July 4th celebrations because White people are privileged and honoring American history perpetuates the harm, injustice, and anti-democratic process.
She then forbids anyone from contacting her on social media about her decision, one critic noted, highlighting the irony of denouncing Americas founding as anti-democratic while shutting down open debate. To many conservatives, this episode encapsulates a broader pattern in progressive circles: using the language of justice to justify erasing traditions that celebrate liberty, limited government, and the rule of law.
The churchs decision lands at a moment when the country is moving toward its 250th birthday, a milestone that ought to invite sober reflection on both Americas failures and its extraordinary achievements. Instead, institutions like this Nantucket congregation appear determined to treat the founding documents not as the framework that made self-correction possible, but as artifacts of irredeemable oppression to be sidelined rather than read aloud.
From a conservative perspective, the message is clear: if the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are too harmful to be publicly celebrated, then the target is not merely whiteness but the very ideals of individual freedom and limited government that restrain centralized power. While the return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office has coincided with some retreat of the most aggressive woke excesses, episodes like this show that the ideological campaign against Americas founding values is far from over.
As of now, there has been no public comment from Biden or Kerry on the Nantucket churchs move, a silence that speaks volumes given their long association with the islands rarified social scene.
With the nation approaching its semiquincentennial, the question is whether more institutions will follow this path of repudiating the Fourth of July, or whether Americans will reassert a patriotic, clear-eyed appreciation of the documents that launched the greatest experiment in self-government the world has ever seen.
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