Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles & Soong-Chan Rah
(Format used for this read: Print–paperback)
Before I begin my review, I want to take a moment to honor the host peoples of the land that I currently reside on now.
ππ°ππ°ππ· πΌπππ» ππ»πΏπ· ππ°^ππ°^(Osage)
I acknowledge you.
I honor you.
I thank you.
And I lament the atrocious actions my ancestors took against you.
If you would like to know what Native land or indigenous tribe originally inhabited the land you reside on before European colonizers stole it, you can click on the website below run by the non profit Native Land Digital:
I have been reading this book for weeks now…it is not a lengthy book but it is packed with powerful words…I was trying to take my time learning from all the information and wisdom presented in the pages here.
There is so much factual history I did not know correct details of…I wanted to take my time to really absorb it all….I did not want to rush thru it and miss anything.
This will be another LENGTHY review, yall.
If you haven’t noticed by now, I do that A LOT when I read nonfiction books for growth or learning.
I will be sharing a WHOLE lot of the author’s quotes as I share my own thoughts… as I continue to review, you will see the authors words in red.
In fact, this may read more like a report than a review…I felt led to share so much of what I learned and just kept writing and writing and writing.
As I sit here typing this review, I will admit to you that I am in a state of discomfort, frustration, outrage, and lament at the awareness I have of my ancestors (biological and faith based) and the atrocities they committed against Native peoples.
While I was vaguely familiar with the historical information I read about, I will admit that I did not have extensive knowledge on the facts presented.
Most of the time as white people we are not educated in the TRUE history in our country.
What we are taught about in school and read in textbooks is completely whitewashed….we have a narrative of exceptionalism and triumphalism that creates mythological heroic pictures of our nation’s “original” settlers and founders.
Like the authors state in the book :
“The victors write the history. And that is incredibly dangerous.”
Which means the stories of so many people have been not only ignored, but purposefully and intentionally erased from our textbooks and national story.
This book has two authors that present not only unsettling truths about our nation’s history but also about how the Christian faith played a major role in them.
Here is the official summary:
“You cannot discover lands that have already been inhabited.
In this prophetic blend of history, theology, and cultural commentary, Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah reveal the far reaching, damaging effects of the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’.
In the fifteenth century, official church edicts gave Christian explorers the right to claim territories they ‘discovered.’ This was institutionalized as an implicit national framework that justifies American triumphalism, white supremacy, and ongoing injustices.
The result is that the dominant culture idealizes a history of discovery, opportunity, expansion and equality, while minority communities have been traumatized by colonization, slavery, segregation, and dehumanization.
Healing begins when deeply entrenched beliefs are unsettled. As other nations have instituted truth and reconciliation commissions, so do the authors call our nation and churches to a truth-telling that will expose past injustices and open the door to conciliation and true community.”
Did you ever learn about the Doctrine of Discovery in your American school?
How about in church?
I can tell you right now that I do not remember being taught in detail about this AT ALL.
Ever.
Anywhere.
This book goes into great detail explaining the origins of this…and this quick 5 minute video from a couple of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people is a GREAT description too….take a few minutes real quick and check this out:
I grew up being taught the blatant LIE that Christopher Columbus “discovered” America in 1492…
“You can not discover lands already inhabited” is the sentence that Mark Charles begins Chapter One with.
This is something he told a group of men on Columbus Day outside of Union Station in D.C. who were holding a ceremony to honor the “explorer”.
He then addressed the crowd gathered there with the same sentence and then goes on to say “The fact that America calls what Columbus did ‘discovery’ reveals the implicit racial bias of the country–that Native Americans are not fully human.”
What was left out of my historical teachings in my school experience was the ugly truth that our country was not “founded”….it was STOLEN from people who had already lived here for GENERATIONS.
Chapter 1 (The Doctrine of Discovery and Why It Matters) and Chapter 2 (The Power of Narratives and Imaginations) begins to pull back the veil on the true historical realities of this country.
Columbus did not “find” this land….he stole it from it’s original inhabitants.
Because they were deemed “less than”, “uncivilized”, “savages”, and “unworthy.”
And the European Christian church not only validated this, but felt they were in authorized to do so.
“The Doctrine of Discovery deemed as just and lawful what benefited the European powers, affirming the privilege of the ‘pure’ European Christian to determine what is right and just.”
“The authority to ‘discover’ and to ‘conquer’ drew from an assumed spiritual authority.”
“The spread of the European version of the Christian message would justify violence in all forms found in Western imperialism.”
While reading this book, it reminded me of how I felt when I have read other books about the ugly truth of the foundations of the United States AND of the American church.
We have some atrocities that we have NEVER admitted to…as a nation and as a church…we have in fact taken great efforts to cover up reality and even to create myths that we eventually began BELIEVING was reality….
And the harm and pain and erasure it has caused and continues to cause to SO SO many is immense.
There can never be true healing, repair or forgiveness without first acknowledgement, confession and repentance.
Why do so so so so many of us not understand that?
We have blinders on of our own creation.
Set upon us by our own ancestors and left in place by our own complicity and ignorance.
The European colonizers that arrived on these already inhabited lands viewed themselves as superior and created an interpretation of their faith that placed them as “chosen” and “othered” everyone else.
“In order to strengthen the claim to usurped land, the more pure, European American Christian settler colonialists needed to elevate themselves over and against the indigenous inhabitants. The dominant powers created dysfunctional narratives derived from a diseased social and theological imagination that elevated the sense of worth of the dominant group.”
“Theology that arises from Scripture and from the teachings of Jesus does not allow for the identification and exclusion of the other.”
The authors go into great depth explaining the power of theological narratives and how they effect society….in a functional or dysfunctional way.
“The belief that the theological imagination allows the Christian to connect with the divine can lead the Christian to assume that they speak from a position of privilege, chosen and preferred by God, and that the Christian has the capacity to know what is best for the rest of the world….
The diseased social imagination of the United States has been shaped by the dysfunctional theological imagination of the Western world known as the Doctrine of Discovery, which has resulted in the formation of the dysfunctional social systems of the United States.”
“It is the arrogance of Western theology to assume that all of our theological musings are rooted in rationality and logic and therefore must not be susceptible to dysfunction.”
Europeans came to this land thinking their way of life and living out their faith was not only the RIGHT way, but the correct way.
The foundation for entire society was built on these ideas….the idea of white supremacy and oppression of others.
Chapter 3 (The Kingdom of God is About Relationship Not Empire) and Chapter 4 (The Rise and Defense of Christendom) explains more faith history in regards to how Europeans validated conquests…and also how Scripturally that was 100 percent against the narrative of Christ’s love.
“The strongest warnings Jesus gives are directed as his disciples when they begin believing that because they are with Jesus they are somehow privileged and better than others.”
“But Jesus was absolutely clear, an earthly Christian empire was not God’s plan….Promised lands and earthly prosperity were not the barometers for the followers of Jesus.”
“The Christian imagination shifted from a mindset of suffering to a mindset of exceptionalism and triumphalism.”
“Because those living outside the boundaries of European Christendom could be deemed as infidels, justification could now be established for the enslavement and genocide of those who were others.”
“…instead of seeking to restore relationships with the other, the church would aid the state in seeking to expand the empire, even at the cost of human lives.”
“An insider versus outsider reality has been formed that puts European Christianity on the inside, while others fall on the outside.”
“Jesus’ goal is not an earthly empire rooted in human power.”
“How did the church move from the ministry of compassion and care as commanded by Jesus and advocated by Paul to a Doctrine of Discovery that affirms violence and injustice in extreme forms?”
In Chapter 5 (A Dysfunctional Theology Brought to the “New World”) and Chapter 6 (Exceptionalism and the Founding Documents of the United States) dissects the history of exceptionalism in our country.
It’s a DEEP problem with a complex past that began in our colonial times and is still wreaking PLENTY of havoc today. (take a peek at certain campaign slogans to see what I mean on that…in fact the authors expound on that very thing on a few pages in Ch 5.)
“The language of exceptionalism masks an unequal economic system, a failing educational system, and a crumbling society.”
And we GOTTA get real about what our founding documents TRULY SAY.
Exceptionalism and white supremacy is EMBEDDED in them, yall.
Most of us do not even have the foggiest idea.
“While the Declaration of Independence may initially assert that ‘All men are created equal’, thirty lines below that assertion, indigenous people are referred to as ‘merciless Indian savages.’ “
“Both American Christian theology and American society at large during the time of the writing of the Declaration of Independence relied upon Scottish Common Sense philosophy for their foundation…..Common Sense philosophy gestures towards a bias towards one’s own point of view….the rational assumptions of white Americans reign supreme.”
“White American Christian exceptionalism depends on the fundamental assumptions of white supremacy. “
“The assumption of the superiority of the white European Christian male against other races, sexes, and religions is evident, therefore, throughout the entire US Constitution…it was originally written to protect the interests of white landowning men.”
“The US Constitution may have been a revolutionary collection of ideas for the white landowning men who wrote it, but to nearly everyone else it served (and still serves) as an extremely oppressive document.”
Chapter 7 (Dysfunctional Theology and the Spread of Settler Colonialism) and Chapter 8 (Genocide, the Impact of a Dysfunctional Theology) discusses how as our nation grew, the dysfunctional social imagination continued to infect all of our social structures and systems.
In these pages, I read about court cases that affirmed dehumanization of native people and people of African descent…. about laws and policies enforced that justified genocide and forced removal of people from their ancestral land ….about boarding schools created to “kill the Indian save the man” to force assimilation into whiteness by horrific abuse and cultural erasure…it broke my heart in a million pieces of grief and lament… and also light of fire of rage within me against the horrific injustice of it all.
The fact that the Christian church supported, encouraged and ENFORCED these ideals just amplified those emotions.
“The Dred Scott decision affirmed what was already embedded in the social imagination of the American people. Africans and Natives were considered less than human.”
“Using the Doctrine of Discovery to declare themselves the only eligible purchaser of tribal lands, the United States government manipulated the land market by creating a monopoly through which it was able to suppress land prices, thus effectively cheating Native tribes out of their lands.”
“The indigenous tribes of North America only had the right of occupancy to the land, while Europeans had the right of discovery to the land, and therefore the true title to it.”
“In contrast to the horrific history of the US revealing the reality of the dividing walls of hostility, God had originally intended unity and community for humanity…The people do not own the land, God does….”
“For Christians, there should be awareness that usurping the Native lands would be considered sin in the eyes of God. “
“To the white supremacist mind, the most charitable act and the most benevolent blessing they can bestow is allowing those of the lower race to associate with them.”
“The lie of white supremacy elevates the image of God in one people group and diminishes the image of God in others. The lie of white supremacy is embedded deeply in the diseased theological imagination of the American Christian mind and serves as a foundation for the destructive sin of racism.”
“Whiteness is neither a privilege nor a blessing to be shared, it is a diseased social construct that needs to be confronted.”
Chapter 9 (Abraham Lincoln and the Narrative of White Messiahship) and Chapter 10 (Abraham Lincoln and Native Genocide) will REALLLY challenge many of you like it did to me…because it will reveal some serious whitewashing of our national history and the “hero hype” we have bought into for years on end.
“The US has always been the victor, and the victors write history…When one nation is able to control the telling of their own history for hundreds of years, a mythology forms that allows injustice, oppression, exploitation, and even war crimes to be seen as benign and even to possibly be honored and celebrated.”
These chapters also reveal some truths about a President–Abraham Lincoln—that we have literally elevated onto a bigger than life pedestal.
“The mythology ignores his own words, which betray that his social imagination did not accept the equality of the races, but instead sought to preserve the union at all costs.”
We have created a picture of Lincoln as a white messiah. That is not to say he did not accomplish great or important things….because he did …..BUT he was not perfect and we must acknowledge the reality of some of his damaging and problematic beliefs.
Many of his speeches are shared in these chapters that include quotes such as this:
“I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which , in my judgement, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality….I am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position”
“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it…”
Something else I was not aware of was the negative and devastating impact Lincoln’s presidency had on native peoples. The signing of the Pacific Railway acts which ethnically cleansed multiple tribes…. ordering the hanging of the Dakota 38 which was the largest mass execution in US History….ordering “The Long Walk” of the Navajo people to the death camp Bosque Redondo are just a few of the actions he took that show the value he did not hold on native lives.
Chapter 11 (The Complex Trauma of the American Story) was very enlightening for me….in these pages the concept of historical trauma and response is explained and addressed.
“Historical trauma refers to cumulative emotional and psychological wounding, extending over an individual lifespan and across generations, caused by traumatic experiences. The historical trauma response (HTR) is a constellation of features in reaction to this trauma…..HTR is how psychologists understand disease and dissatisfaction within a broad community.”
Listening to the examples given of HTR in Native communities really helps not only in understanding more of generational effects but also increases empathy as well.
Chapter 12 (The Christian Worldview and the Failure of Reconcilation) and the Conclusion (Truth and Conciliation) focuses on what the church at large has handled incorrectly in recent times regarding all of these unsettling truths…. and also what we need to do to truly move forward in healing.
“White American Christians fail to see themselves as part of a collective, global body of Christ.”
“For white Christians and the American church, bringing the blood of Christ into transgenerational, corporate, and systemic sins like the Doctrine of Discovery would require not only a complete rejection of the heresy of Christian empire but possibly a returning of all the fruits that were gained through that heresy.”
“We read the Old Testament as if the United States is the chosen people of Israel. But in the Old Testament narrative, Americans would be the citizens of the pagan nations. Hope from the United States does not emerge from being promised and chosen people like the Jews, but instead we take our hope from how God treats the other nations in the biblical narrative.”
So what we all desire to know is once we take the step of acknowledging unsettling truths of our nation and of our faith, is how do we bring healing and restoration?
“Instead of the biblical narratives of confession, mercy, and justice, American Christians have embraced narratives of exceptionalism and triumphalism…..the necessary collective for this trauma is offered in the healing power of lament.”
Mark Charles shares a powerful metaphor on what a dialogue between white Americans and indigenous people should look like in this regard:
“If feels like our indigenous peoples are an old grandmother who lives in a very large house. It is a beautiful place with plenty of rooms and comfortable furniture.
But years ago, some people came into her house and locked her upstairs in her bedroom.
Today her home is full of people. They are sitting on her furniture. They are eating her food. They are having a party in her house.
They have since come upstairs and unlocked the door to her bedroom, but now it is much later, and she is tired, old, weak and sick; so she can’t or doesn’t want to come out.
But what is the most hurtful and what causes her the most pain is that virtually no one from this party ever comes upstairs to find the grandmother in the bedroom.
No one sits down next to her on the bed, takes her hand, and simply says ‘Thank you. Thank you for letting us be in your house.’ “
Of course just saying ‘thank you’ to Native peoples is NOT ENOUGH. But what that does is decenter our ancestors of white colonizers, acknowledges the REAL hosts of this land, and initiates a shift in thinking and perspective to move into a new beginning.
“George Erasmus, an aboriginal leader from the Dene people in Canada, says ‘Where common memory is lacking, where people do not share in the same past, there can be no real community. Where community is not formed, common memory must be created.’ “
Read that again….
Where community is not formed, common memory must be created.
Listen to history from those who have been pushed to the margins, those who have been oppressed and ostracized, those who have been stripped of their power and humanity.
That sounds like something Jesus would do…don’t you think?
I know I shared a BUNCH of words here….but please still go get this book and read it.
There is SO much to learn from the authors.
Much of what they say will make you uncomfortable…..sit in that.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again…
You can’t grow or change without being challenged and without some level of discomfort.
Don’t run from truth….uncover it, learn it, and let it create in you a new perspective, a new way to listen, and new ways to act.
Be unsettled….so change and healing can truly come.