This is in response to the Nov. 21 letter “In God we trust: Many founders had lots to say about God” by Doris S. Kelly. It’s interesting to me that our white Christianity and our white values are considered, without question, to be the “public religion … and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient and modern.” What are true Christian values? Puritans viewed Indian deaths by European disease as divined by God. They felt that God was making room for the colonists. In addition, they viewed the Indian’s form of religion as “heathen.” They disrespected them and devised a social construct that racialized Native Americans and stratified America in a negative way.
In the beginning of our country, religion served to identify (and separate) different racial groups. Early Americans viewed themselves as Christians and Africans as heathens. But once the heathens were converted to Christianity, things got confusing so that the “good” Christian white folks had to make a distinction between white and black. This division of race helped to delineate the border between savagery and civilization; between slave and owner.
In an annual message to Congress, Ulysses S. Grant wrote regarding the railroad extending into Indian lands: “A system which looks to the extinction of a race is too horrible for a nation to adopt without entailing upon itself the wrath of all Christendom and engendering in the citizen a disregard for human life and the rights of others.”
Many of our founding fathers may have been ministers of “the faith.” However, it has not always been gentle. More often than not it was a self-serving mission. We felt compelled to convert “heathens” to Christianity; we believed in a divine right to property (manifest destiny), and we believed in our own economic prosperity (of the dominant class at the expense of others). I just wish that “our” God were kinder.
Edmonds
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