A Unitarian Universalist minister on Nantucket has canceled her church's traditional Independence Day celebrations, including a public reading of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, declaring that honoring American history "without context... perpetuates the harm, injustice, and anti-democratic process."
Rev. Erin Splaine, who leads the Second Congregational Meeting House Society, Unitarian Universalist church, announced the decision Thursday in a letter to the Nantucket Current. She cited the Supreme Court's handling of the 1965 Voting Rights Act as the primary catalyst.
The cancellation arrives as communities across the country prepare for America's 250th anniversary, a milestone that has already generated its own share of controversy, from disruptions to a planned national birthday concert to broader debates about how the founding era should be remembered. On Nantucket, at least, one congregation has decided the answer is: not at all.
The church's customary July 4th observance included a public reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Splaine told her community those events would not take place this year.
In her letter, as the Daily Caller reported, Splaine framed the founding documents not as statements of universal principle but as records of selective application. She described the rights enshrined in them as:
"Rights and Privileges... tragically, often violently, and unequally applied to fellow citizens who are not white."
Splaine wrote that the cancellation was driven "in large measure because of the recent gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court." She referenced the April 2026 Supreme Court case Louisiana v. Callais, which declared racial gerrymandering unconstitutional. She said she and her congregation had been concerned since that ruling.
Rather than celebrate, Splaine said the church was engaged in an "on-going process... to better understand [their] own whiteness." She added:
"We are working as a congregation and as members of this community to expand our knowledge, to learn the entirety of our American history."
She asked community members not to contact her on social media and instead make appointments, a request she made on behalf of the church's Board of Trustees.
The Second Congregational Meeting House Society describes itself on its website as a church that "celebrates diversity of belief" and "does not require renouncing other religious affiliations or practices." The Unitarian Universalist Association lists the Nantucket congregation as an "LGBTQ Welcoming Congregation," meaning it is "intentionally more inclusive towards bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender people."
Splaine graduated from Harvard Divinity School and has a wife, according to the church's website. She referred to the conversations around the cancellation as "tender, important conversations."
The Daily Caller requested comment from the church. No response was reported.
Set aside the political framing for a moment and consider what actually happened. A church that has long hosted a public reading of the Declaration of Independence decided that reading the document aloud, without what Splaine considers sufficient "context", causes harm. The Bill of Rights, too, apparently cannot be shared with a Nantucket audience without editorial guardrails.
This is not a case of a congregation choosing to add historical programming or expand its Independence Day events. It is a subtraction. The church did not announce a companion lecture, a panel, or a supplementary reading of Frederick Douglass's famous 1852 address. It simply canceled the celebration.
The stated reason, the Supreme Court's 2026 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, is worth examining on its own terms. That case struck down racial gerrymandering. Reasonable people can disagree about the scope of the Voting Rights Act and the wisdom of the Court's reasoning. But the leap from a redistricting ruling to canceling a public reading of the Declaration of Independence is a long one, and Splaine's letter does not bridge it with much specificity.
Meanwhile, the nation is approaching its semiquincentennial. The U.S. Mint recently shipped a new quarter commemorating the Declaration of Independence as part of the anniversary. Communities from coast to coast are finding ways to mark the occasion.
In Nantucket, one church has decided the occasion is better marked by silence.
The Libs of TikTok account on X amplified the story on May 29, drawing wider attention to Splaine's decision. The post described the church as "woke" and paraphrased Splaine's reasoning as canceling the holiday "because White people are 'privileged.'" That characterization is a social-media gloss, but the underlying quotes from Splaine's own letter, about whiteness, harm, and the insufficiency of the founding documents, do the work on their own.
What Splaine's letter reveals is not really about the Voting Rights Act or a single Supreme Court case. It is about a congregation that has absorbed a particular ideological framework, one in which American history is primarily a record of oppression, the founding documents are instruments of exclusion, and the proper posture on Independence Day is not gratitude or even critical reflection but refusal.
The decision also reflects something broader about institutions that have drifted so far into progressive orthodoxy that they can no longer perform basic civic rituals. Reading the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July is not a partisan act. It is one of the most elemental expressions of American civic life. Generations of Americans, including those who fought to expand the rights the document promised, have treated the reading as an affirmation, not an endorsement of every failure in American history.
Even in New England, where communities recently reenacted Paul Revere's ride through Boston to honor the founding era, the tradition of public commemoration endures. The idea that a church in Massachusetts, the cradle of the Revolution, would refuse to read the Declaration aloud is a sign of how deeply a certain strain of self-criticism has taken root in some progressive institutions.
Several questions remain unanswered. What internal process led to the decision? Was there a vote among the Board of Trustees, or did Splaine act on her own authority? The letter references the Board, but the exact mechanism is unclear.
What other events were part of the church's customary July 4th celebrations beyond the readings? Will any of them proceed? And will the congregation revisit the decision in future years, or has the cancellation become permanent policy?
None of these questions were addressed in the letter or in any reported response to the Daily Caller's inquiry.
As even Britain recently presented a commemorative coin to the United States honoring 250 years of American independence, one Nantucket church has concluded that the nation's own founding charter is too fraught to read aloud in a house of worship.
There is something clarifying about that. When an institution tells you it cannot bring itself to celebrate the country's birthday, not reform the celebration, not complicate it, but cancel it, believe it. The problem is not with the Declaration of Independence. The problem is with a worldview that finds nothing in it worth reading out loud.
