At a recent Sunday Mass, the priest introduced an unfamiliar word: anagoge (pronounced AN-uh-goh-gee). It’s used today to mean a spiritual or allegorical interpretation, usually of Scripture, but he used anagoge in its original Greek sense, “a leading upward.” He then encouraged us to look upward more often, even literally, to the heavens rather than downward to earthly things.
Anagoge first brought to my mind frivolous thoughts, mostly about up and down. If we feel up, we’re ready for adventure or fun; if we feel down, we’re mildly depressed. If we look down on someone, we regard them as our inferiors; if we look up to them, they’re exemplars worth imitating. The upside of a workplace might be fellow employees and fresh coffee, while the downside is the traffic we face getting there. Traditionally, heaven is up, and hell is down.
We’re heading into the Summer of the Semiquincentennial, our 250th birthday bash celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but that homily left me thinking about my fellow Americans. Are we looking up or down?
If we follow the daily news, whatever our political slant, we might believe the country is going down the tubes. If we go by certain surveys, such as a recent Pew Poll, we find that Americans are more unhappy than other high-income countries with the state of their government and the future of the country. The poll found that 49% of us are “pessimistic reformers,” people who want change in the government but count it an impossibility.
The good news is that despite a decline in the last six years, Gallup found that 44% of Americans are “very satisfied” in their personal lives. Interestingly, personal satisfaction has ranked higher than satisfaction with the nation’s fortunes since 1979, the Carter presidency years. So, for nearly 50 years, Americans have been reasonably happy, or up, if you will, with their own affairs, but down on those of the country.
There’s a good side to this disparity. For one, depending on how much credence we give to surveys, a good number of us have remained contented with our lives – wages, jobs, family, and so on – no matter the state of the country, an indicator that the system in which we live is still working.
A second ‘up” view in these surveys has to do with our unhappiness regarding government and the national situation. Surely a certain unhappiness is healthy. After all, dissatisfaction with King George III and the British parliament created our country. The diverse opinions from all parts of the political yardstick make this dissatisfaction inevitable, but it’s also a sign of liberty.
The “downs” of this diversity are extremism and ideology. In debating issues like men in women’s sports, illegal immigration, and the national debt, common sense and reason have gone missing, replaced, particularly by those on the left, with feelings, shouts, and threats. This is what happens when we make a god of politics, looking down rather than up.
Which brings us to again to anagoge and America’s 250th anniversary.
With the exception of the fanatics among us, a tiny minority who despise American principles, I firmly believe that most Americans want to be proud of their country and that they want to be “optimistic reformers.” Put another way, they want to be anagogistas, my word for those who prefer looking up at the stars and the sky to staring downward into a sewer.
But to look up, we must sometimes look back.
In “It’s Okay to Love Our Exceptional Country,” Bob Hoge describes a visit he made to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum to view their extraordinary special exhibits for America’s 250th birthday party. Intended by the library as “both a reflection and a celebration of America’s story,” the exhibit presents magnificent paintings from John Trumbull’s Revolutionary Series, the bloodstained gloves Lincoln wore at Ford’s Theater, a cannon fired at the Battle of Gettysburg, an American flag flown on the Apollo 11 space mission, and more.
All across our beautiful country this summer, from New York’s tall ships to Revolutionary War battlefield reenactments, from concerts and speeches to fireworks, Independence Day 2026 grants us grand opportunities to touch base with our American past, to remember with thankful hearts and minds those men and women who built “the land of the free” and gifted it to us, and to share this gift with our young people and with one another.
Look back with gratitude, and it becomes much easier to look up with hope.
Jeff Minick is a father of four and grandfather to many. A former history, literature, and Latin teacher, Jeff now writes prolifically for The Epoch Times, American Essence Magazine, and his Substack.
This culture article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News. To comment on this article, please email [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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