The Last Great American Dynasty

Today is my last day as a U.S. Citizen, and I have feelings about it.

Last weekend, I was decked out in sparkles, belting out Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince at the top of my lungs at the Eras Tour in Liverpool. Being American has almost made up more of my identity since moving to England than it ever did whilst actually living in the States.

It makes sense, I suppose, when your accent stands out. For 12 years (and I am not exaggerating when I say this), I have not been able to escape a single week of someone either asking me where I’m from or bringing up my “Americanness” in some way. And I’ve always had mixed feelings about it.

The Enneagram 4 in me likes to feel unique – to stand out with that quirky Zooey Deschanel New Girl vibe. But then there’s another part of me that just feels tired, at war with myself, exasperated at having to explain to the 800th stranger why I’d ever choose to live in England over California, as if I have to justify my life to them before they’ve even asked me my name. I’ve also felt heartbroken because the longer I’ve lived outside of the U.S., the more I’ve seen how the rest of the Western World views it, and friends, it’s not pretty. Not something with which I identify.

Hear me out – I know of a lot of people who admire the States for various reasons. I’ve heard comments on how friendly we are, how beautiful our landscape is, how charming it is that we are so freely open and excitable (I see this most often in U.S. teachers and communicators because they have a unique way of capturing an audience with both depth, frankness, and personality – a gift and a weapon depending on who is wielding it).

But every coin has two sides. With that excitability and openness comes loudness and sometimes entitlement. There is a belief which I have seen played out time and time again, where “freedom” is defined as whatever makes us happy, even if its at the expense of our neighbour – we see this most often during U.S. election years.

I watch from afar as good, loving, hardworking people rip each other to shreds and toss around insults and accusations that have no business being written in black and white, all because their peer doesn’t see the world the way that they do. There is a very blunt “my way or the highway” mentality, and the nuance of compassion and critical thinking seems to go out the window.

I attended two concerts during the same Mumford & Sons tour in 2012, one in the U.S. and one in the UK, and was astounded to see the difference between the calm, collected British approach to queueing into the venue and making space for others, versus the savage American approach of trampling each other to get to the front of the stage. Somewhere along the way, our wholesome ambition of the American Dream turned into cultural entitlement, and I can’t help but see this phenomenon play out on mass scales when I attend events like this and literally see the juxtaposition of one Western culture over another.

It’s painful, too, when someone hears my accent and immediately starts asking my opinions on Trump – because the British media enjoys presenting America as though it’s the subject of a Marvel film with one primary villain. But in truth, from where I sit, I see nothing but villains on the American front of the global stage. I cannot endorse any of them. I know I’ll probably lose subscribers for saying this, but if you are reading my work as a Christian writer and hope to find a Biden or Trump sympathiser, you will be very disappointed.

Rarely will you hear me speak of politics on this platform, but on a day where I am contemplating everything it has meant to me to be American, one thing I will say is that it has been a long, long time since I’ve seen promise, integrity, or hope in any major U.S. leaders, and it makes my skin crawl when American Christians attach THEIR understanding of “God’s will” to their preferred political candidate.

Please don’t hear what I’m not saying: I’m not saying that Christians shouldn’t care about politics. Quite the opposite. As followers of Jesus, we should be moving to bring the Lord’s prayer to fruition, fighting for “on Earth as it is in Heaven” in every pocket of life (and that means learning how to follow Jesus with our vote and our bank account and our language). But this is not what I see in American political discourse – instead, I see worship of a candidate and murky theology to defend that worship. I see a lack of Biblical discipleship and an obsession with Fox News and CNN.

In the UK, our discipleship is no better, but we are perhaps better at hiding it. We all worship something, be it sex or food or politics or our phones, and so another thing I am NOT saying is that the UK has it all figured out and that the U.S. is garbage. What I AM saying, though, is that my daily existence here in England invites the opportunity to hear how the rest of the world sees the U.S. right now, and it is often, and quite ironically, the opposite of everything I was raised to believe the U.S. stood for.

In place of the American dream, we have student debt that cripples young people before their career can even begin. In place of one nation under God, we have a nation polarised BY what they believe God wants for America. In place of freedom, of defiance in the face of unfair overseas tax (the thing we were told sparked the American Revolution), we have one of the only nations in the world that taxes its overseas citizens no matter how long they have lived outside of America.

But you know what we also have? A nation where you can often ask strangers in a Zumba class to pray for your son, and no one gives you funny looks. We have one of the most diverse and stunning landscapes in the world. We have some of the best universities and Bible teachers and researchers. We have people like Sharon McMahon fighting to remind us that our little acts of kindness do make a collective change in the world. We bore the incredible Martin Luther King Jr whose “I have a dream speech” is still, in my opinion, one of the most stunning modern speeches of Christ-like social justice. We have Auschwitz survivors from WWII who specifically moved over to America and joined the military to give back to the beautiful nation that gave them a chance at a new life. We have a nation where I can sincerely say that every man in my life championed me to learn and grow and lead as a woman. We have childlike openness and unabashed curiosity. It is a different kind of freedom, and gosh it’s beautiful.

At the end of the Eras Tour, I stood on the side of the road at 11:30pm in Liverpool, desperately trying to hail a cab to get my friend and I home safely. Ages passed, and no cabs arrived. I watched as the streets slowly cleared out and my nerves started to rise at the thought of drawing this much attention to myself, decked out in gold sequins, alone in a strange city in the middle of the night. I prayed and asked God to please get us home. Moments later, a lovely Southern drawl sounded behind me:

“Did you guys say you were going to Canning Street?”
“Yes! We are.”
“We just managed to get an Uber, and we’re going to Canning Street. Jump in with us.”
“Oh my gosh, thank you SO much!” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Or actually, I could. I’ve watched God in action for a while.
“No worries,” she said. “I got you.”
“Where are you guys from?” I asked.
“Tennessee.”

And for a moment, I felt proud of my own American accent. Proud to draw attention to myself for this thing which feels like a heavy weight. Proud to be associated with the kindness of these particular strangers.

I am both proud and heartbroken to be American. America itself has become my Heartbreak Prince, for it is America’s very own laws and restrictions that leave me no choice but to abandon my citizenship in order to pursue the freedom it claims to offer its citizens. I’ll share more of the specific reasons for why I am renouncing another day, but not today. Today, I reflect, and I grieve, and I say only this: I had no real choice but to do what I’m doing. I spent four years praying and processing before making this decision. To be truly free, I have to abandon the “Land of the Free.” The irony astounds me still.

But I will say this as well: I am now British, and I may be losing my U.S. Passport tomorrow, but I will always be American, too. Because I believe that, in a way, I am doing the most American thing I can do by making the hard choice and leaving the comfort of familiarity behind out of hope for something better ahead. It’s an approach that citizens of Heaven take. The approach of Hope. The approach of believing that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. And by the grace of God, I declare that no matter what it says on my passport, I shall be free indeed.

All my love,