CHAPTER TWELVE

The Christian Worldview and the Failure of Re-conciliation

MANY PTSD PATIENTS EXPERIENCE TRIGGERS. Triggers can be a sight, a sound, or a smell which launches the patient out of reality and back into the moment of emotional and psychological chaos of when the trauma occurred. One of my triggers regarding the accident and the death of my brother was the relationships I began to build during my years in college. For a veteran soldier experiencing PTSD from the battlefield, it may be the backfire of a muffler. For the victim of abuse, it may be a brush of the skin or a particular scent. Even music can be a trigger. Once triggered, the patient reverts to fight or flight instincts. Often, the patient is unaware that this is taking place. They feel nervous, they feel tense, they feel trapped, but they don’t know why. Because of the state of denial that frequently accompanies trauma, the patient may be the last person to see or understand their triggers. Often, it is their family, friends, and coworkers who identify them first.

If we understand white America to be a traumatized people, triggers may be more easily identified. For a nation with a white supremacist Declaration of Independence, a white supremacist Constitution, and a white supremacist Supreme Court, eight years of a black president was a trigger. From 2008 through 2016, many white Americans and white Evangelical Christians did not know what to do with the optic of a black man governing from an office that historically had been reserved for white landowning men. The election of Donald J. Trump as the forty-fifth president of the United States of America was a triggered reaction to eight years of President Barack Obama.

Traumatic triggers may also explain the varied responses by the American church to the Doctrine of Discovery. In 2013, following the trend among several Christian denominations, the synod of the Christian Reformed Church of North America (CRCNA) voted to establish an official task force to examine the Doctrine of Discovery and what influences it may have had on the CRCNA. I was serving as a member of the board of trustees for the CRCNA and was appointed as a member of the study committee. For three years we researched the Doctrine of Discovery as well as the history of our missions agency. We closely examined the narrative of “Heathen Missions” in the CRC and heard from boarding school survivors.

The report submitted to the board of trustees in 2015 offered a sharp critique of the Rehoboth Christian Boarding School and included the firsthand account of two boarding school survivors. One of the survivors attended a BIA Boarding School and the other survivor attended Rehoboth, the boarding school of the CRCNA. (Full disclosure: I attended Rehoboth Christian High School as a day school student for twelve years during the period it was transitioning from a boarding school to a day school. Further disclosure: My term of service on the CRCNA board of trustees concluded the year prior to the submission of our report.)

When the report was released publicly to the CRC, our task force was dismayed to learn that the board of trustees had voted to remove the story of the Rehoboth boarding school survivor from the public version of our report. We were told this was done for “pastoral reasons.” However, this public denial revealed a multigenerational and communal manifestation of their perpetration-induced traumatic stress. This sanitized version of the report was included in the agenda for the 2016 Synod. The day the report was scheduled to be discussed at Synod, I was asked to open the session in prayer. Expecting that the discussion of this report was going to be extremely contentious and would probably trigger the trauma of white America, I included in my prayer a reminder that as “reformed” Christians, we believe in the depravity of all people and we believe that our salvation comes from our faith rather than through our works. It was an effort to create a theological space for my white brothers and sisters to wrestle with this systemic, multigenerational, and communal sin.

Article 70 was the first article dealt with by Synod. The article stated: “That synod acknowledge that the existing Doctrine of Discovery is a heresy and we reject and condemn it. It helped shape western culture and led to great injustices.”1 Synod got off to a good start as it voted to adopt Article 70. The CRCNA included member churches from both the United States and Canada. In response to a lawsuit brought by residential school survivors the Canadian government and many churches reached the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, which established a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Between 2007 and 2015, the Government of Canada provided about $72 million to support the TRC’s work. The TRC spent 6 years travelling to all parts of Canada and heard from more than 6,500 witnesses. The TRC also hosted 7 national events across Canada to engage the Canadian public, educate people about the history and legacy of the residential schools system, and share and honour the experiences of former students and their families.2

As a result, the Canadian delegates to Synod came into the conversation with some awareness of the issues of injustice that were on the table.

However, the good start was reversed rather quickly. After Article 70 was adopted, the room abruptly pivoted and entered into twenty minutes of sharing about the great and positive contributions of the CRCNA missionaries who both established and ran the Rehoboth boarding school. A second article was proposed and adopted that stated an affirmation for CRC missionaries: “That synod, nevertheless, recognize also the gospel motivation in response to the Great Commission, as well as the love and grace extended over many years by missionaries sent out by the CRCNA to the Indigenous peoples of Canada and the United States. For this we give God thanks, and honor their dedication.”3

Mere minutes after rejecting and condemning the Doctrine of Discovery as heresy, the synod of the Christian Reformed Church was affirming our missionaries who ran a boarding school for nearly ninety years as being motivated not by the Doctrine of Discovery but by the Great Commission.

In 1896, after failing to successfully plant an “Indian mission” among the Dakota people on the Rosebud Reservation, the Christian Reformed Church set its sights on the tribes of the Southwest. In the early 1900s the CRC purchased lands in the territory of New Mexico. The lands we purchased had been ethnically cleansed of Navajo people in the 1860s. This act of genocide was perpetrated via the Long Walk as part of the Indian Removal policies of the Lincoln administration to clear lands for the transcontinental railway. The CRCNA purchased land directly east of Gallup and planted a new “Indian Mission.” On the mission compound we built a church. In 1903 the Christian Reformed Church opened an Indian boarding school with an enrollment of six Native students.

The narrative of Manifest Destiny and the Doctrine of Discovery was embedded in the social imagination and worldview of the CRC, and therefore we were able to ignore the genocidal policies that were enacted by the US government to ethnically cleanse those lands just forty years prior. We even named our mission “Rehoboth.” This name comes from the book of Genesis 26 where it states, “Now the LORD has given us room and we will flourish in the land” (v. 22). The CRCNA continued our boarding school operations until the early 1990s.

Because I was not a delegate to Synod and I was not the chair of our task force, I did not have the privilege of the floor and lacked the right to directly address Synod. So I sat through the remainder of the discussion that had been co-opted by a group of traumatized white people who were more concerned with protecting their mythological legacy on the mission field than they were with hearing the stories of the people our denomination had oppressed.

The contents of our report were good, but the way the report was written treated the denomination as fragile rather than as traumatized. Treating the audience as fragile necessitated the need for positive affirmation when it was not appropriate. Treating the audience as fragile meant that certain voices, particularly the voices of the victims, could not be included in the report since it would shatter perceptions of exceptionalism by fragile people.

The CRC synod was treated as a fragile people, even though they were clearly flailing about in their trauma. They were disgusted by the idol of Christendom but lacked the psychological wherewithal and the theological acumen to experience the blood of Christ in this area of systemic, transgenerational, and communal sin. The rich Reformed theology of the CRC should have directed Synod towards the profound theology of human depravity. Yet when confronted with systemic sin and transgenerational human brokenness, the CRC did not move towards the appropriate response of confession and lament but instead sought to justify our religion by works. The hyper-individualism of Western culture and the heresy of Christian empire had replaced a theology of communal grace, mercy, and forgiveness from a sovereign God with an individual theology of works that relied on the power of a self-perceived exceptionalism that required us to secure our own salvation.

THE PERVASIVE POWER OF A CHRISTENDOM WORLDVIEW

While confronting traumatized conservative white Evangelicals with the truth of biblical justice can be a significant challenge, sometimes engaging the trauma of white liberal Christians who believe they are “woke” can be just as challenging. This group will affirm the calling out of racial biases and can identify many of the expressions of systemic racism and sexism in society today. However, they may also believe that the primary source of these problems is conservatives, who are the ones most in need of help. While white conservatives may express a defensive response to triggers, many white liberals, both men and women, perpetuate the same mythology of white superiority and nonwhite inferiority. They just do it more passive aggressively.

In recent years, there has been a trend among religious groups, churches, and even entire denominations of “repudiating” the Doctrine of Discovery. On November 3, 2016, “a group of 524 clergy, spiritual leaders of 22 faith traditions called from all parts of the country, gathered in North Dakota for a day of solidarity and repentance on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation.” The very protest of the water protectors already drew a line between conservative and liberal Christians as it was a clash between the rights of Native tribes verses the rights of corporations and the protection of the environment against the expansion of national economic development. So it was primarily liberal, left-leaning Christians who traveled to Standing Rock. As a “part of their pledge to fight the Dakota Access pipeline, several clergy repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery while gathered around the sacred fire at the Oceti Sakowin camp before representatives of the First Nations.”4

Favorable reports emerged from this event proclaiming it as a beautiful and healing moment. Tears were shed and hugs exchanged as words of repudiation were uttered. I (Mark) was not at the event but visited Standing Rock a few weeks later. During my visit, I talked with one of the organizers of the event who was white. He was very excited about what had happened, but I was a bit more skeptical. I asked if any of the clergy, churches, or denominations had returned land to the Native tribes along with their statements of repudiation. I was informed that did not happen. That was regrettable yet understandable since the scheduling of this event probably occurred quickly and organizing a return of land would require quite a bit of advance planning.

I then asked if any of the churches or denominations had committed to not defend themselves in court should they be sued by a tribe for their land. Because the Doctrine of Discovery has been used as a legal instrument by the United States Supreme Court, its repudiation must be seen not only as a spiritual act but also as a legal act, in legal terms, with legal implications.

The Doctrine of Discovery serves as legal precedent for the land rights of white Americans and for the denial of land rights for Native peoples. If Native tribes sought any legal remedies regarding the return of lands that were stolen from them, as the Oneida Indian Nation did in 2005, ultimately the legal argument against restoring Native lands would rely upon the Doctrine of Discovery. For any of the clergy, churches, or denominations that repudiated the doctrine, they would also need to repudiate their right to defend themselves in court if ownership of any land in their possession were to be legally challenged by a Native nation. The repudiation must be comprehensive and include legal rights as well as a spiritual statement of remorse. Otherwise, the entire event would merely be a photo-op, good for media optics, but with no real cost or change for those in the photo. I was informed that no such legal commitment had been made around the sacred fire at the Oceti Sakowin camp at Standing Rock.

The inability to comprehensively address the full impact of the Doctrine of Discovery reveals a form of trauma. Because of the lack of awareness of how the pervasive narrative of whiteness and white supremacy has traumatized white Christian America, the trauma continues untreated. The trauma of white America often goes undiagnosed because it is often seen in only individual terms. The hyper-individualism of American society results in a captivity to the Western societal value of individualism and prevents white American Christians from acknowledging their collective sin and therefore from addressing their collective trauma.

Another challenge is that white American Christians fail to see themselves as part of a collective, global body of Christ. In the US, the way the Methodists see themselves as related to the Catholics, the way the Baptists see themselves related to the Presbyterians, and the way the Reformed churches see themselves related to the Anabaptists is not through their membership in a global body of believers, but as citizens of a Christian nation. The absence of an awareness of the corporate nature of the body of Christ means that the only available corporate identity is Christendom, implicit and embedded with the dysfunctional American Christian imagination.

Since Christendom rejected Christ and prostituted itself to empire, when the American church is confronted with systemic, transgenerational, communal sins, there is no theological space to wrestle with such transgressions. Individual sins like lying, sexual assault, theft, and even murder can be addressed by the American church as it offers Christ simply as a personal Savior. However, the need to address corporate sins like stolen lands, broken treaties, genocide, slavery, sexism, systematic injustice, white supremacy, and Christendom itself is ignored or outright rejected.

When the American church is confronted with the impact of the Doctrine of Discovery and the idea that what they thought they own is actually stolen property, the church has no meaningful theological response. A few individuals may ask for personal forgiveness, a congregation might call a person of color to the front of their service and have someone publicly wash their feet, or a group of clergy might gather to stand and read repudiations of the Doctrine of Discovery; but no land will be returned, no reparations will be paid, and no systemic changes will be made. 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.

Repentance is not just sorrow and confession, it is the turning around of wrong behavior towards right and just action. Repentance from sinful corporate behavior therefore requires systemic change. For many, the cost of that repentance may be too high. The mythology of American Christian exceptionalism and the trauma of white America is too deeply pervasive and deeply embedded in our narratives and systems. Lament does not allow for the simple glossing over of unrighteousness, but instead calls for a movement towards justice that unearths the historical trauma and the narratives that cause that trauma.

Merely mouthing the words of lament or a ceremony of repentance is insufficient. If the American church were to confess the sin of stolen lands, broken treaties, slavery, genocide, mass incarceration, Jim Crow laws, internment camps, nuclear weapons, the New Jim Crow, and all the social sins justified by the acceptance of the heresy of Christendom, the trauma of such a confession would compel a people unable to cope with trauma to immediately seek out a form of hope. They would scour the Scriptures for a promise from Creator that their confession would not be in vain and that their brokenness would be healed. Many Christians would probably find that hope in 2 Chronicles 7:14, which states: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” The promise of healing at the end of this verse is embraced by Christians throughout our country who seek out the promise of hope in the midst of suffering.

The passage from 2 Chronicles 7 is from the second dedication of the temple, where God is reiterating the terms of his land covenant with the people of Israel. The promise of healing for the land is directed towards the nation of Israel and cannot be co-opted by future nation-states who see themselves as exceptional and chosen nations. As Americans, even American Christians, we are not God’s chosen people and Turtle Island is not the promised land for European Americans. The United States of America is not, never has been, nor will it ever be a Christian nation.

Where is hope if not in a land covenant with the God of Abraham? We have been trained to read the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, incorrectly. We have been taught to put ourselves in the place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 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 for the United States does not emerge from being the promised and chosen people like the Jews, but instead, we take our hope from how God treats the other nations in the biblical narrative.

The hope for the United States comes from a God who was willing to negotiate with Abraham over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. The hope for the United States comes from a God who pulled Rahab out of the city before he destroyed Jericho. The hope for the United States comes from a God who said to Jonah, “Should I not be concerned” when he protested that God had sent him to prophesy to the pagan city of Nineveh. The hope for America does not come from a land covenant with God—it comes from the character of God. And the character of God is not accessed by our exceptionalism but through a humility that emerges from the spiritual practice of lament.

TRAUMA AND THE REJECTION OF LAMENT

Traumatized people often cling to a false sense of security. The trauma of white America emerged from embracing a dysfunctional power that oppressed others. Out of that trauma, white America continues to cling to a false security. Despite the power of the gospel that attests to a divergent narrative, white American Evangelicals and white liberal Christians continue to cling to worldly notions of power. Instead of the biblical narratives of confession, mercy, and justice, American Christians have embraced narratives of exceptionalism and triumphalism. These dysfunctional narratives embraced by a traumatized people are amplified by a hyper-individualism that serves as a blinder to the reality of corporate sin and corporate trauma.5

The necessary corrective for this trauma is offered in the healing power of lament. Lament calls for truth telling that reveals the underlying trauma and can lead to the promise of healing. Lament removes any pretense of exceptionalism and triumphalism that is used to cover up trauma. In the book of Lamentations, the self-perception of exceptionalism prevented the people of God from embracing the fullness of God’s hope and restoration. God’s people had experienced the devastation of conquest and exile and struggled with this unexpected reality. Lamentations points out the faulty reasoning of exceptionalism that the traumatized remnant of Jerusalem was experiencing. As noted in Prophetic Lament: “The fall of Jerusalem is particularly disturbing to the residents who held a high view of their own worth as a city. Jerusalem was David’s city. . . . Jerusalem was home to the temple of the Lord. It was the place of affirmation that Israel had a unique covenantal relationship with YHWH.”6 The residents of Jerusalem embraced this sense of exceptionalism and believed themselves to be impervious to YHWH’s judgment and punishment.

The concept of an exceptional people is rooted not in any inherent worth of the people, but in God’s grace and provision. They are the chosen people because God chose them, not because they deserve to be chosen. “Jerusalem naively believed that their status as the keepers of the temple meant that no judgment would befall them. The temple of YHWH was their protection. Surely God would never judge his chosen people and his very own temple of worship.”7 But Jerusalem would succumb to the Babylonian siege and was laid waste. Their sense of exceptionalism and their belief in their inevitable triumph did not protect them.

The dysfunctional narrative of American exceptionalism has no basis in Scripture. Even when the Bible describes the unique characteristic of Israel’s status, no parallel pronouncement or scenario exists between the ancient theocracy of Israel and the modern United States. There is no guarantee that white American Christianity will continue to flourish under the provision of Christendom. To cling to that sense of dysfunctional and abusive power is a severely traumatizing reality.

White American Christianity has been operating under the faulty assumption of American exceptionalism and triumphalism. White America has traumatized itself with these dysfunctional narratives. The proper response to this scenario is found in the book of Lamentations, with an acknowledgment of this sinful reality and a lament that confesses and repents from this reality.

Lamentations reveals the folly of Jerusalem’s self-perceived exceptionalism. Their belief that they were the center of worship because they were exceptional in some inherent way was debunked when the temple was destroyed. Their sense of strength and the projection of their power was torn down as their once powerful city laid waste. Words of strength have been replaced with words of weakness. Lamentations points out to the remnant of Jerusalem the great folly of their self-perceived exceptionalism.8

Traumatized white American Christians can follow the example of the remnant of Jerusalem, who are powerless over their current circumstance and can no longer cling to their self-perceived sense of exceptionalism and their belief in their inevitable triumph. Accepting the truth of their trauma leads to the healing power of lament.

APOLOGIES OF A TRAUMATIZED PEOPLE

On December 19, 2009, President Obama signed House Resolution 3326, the 2010 Department of Defense Appropriation Act. On page forty-five of this sixty-seven-page bill, subsection 8113 is titled “Apology to Native People of the United States.” What follows is a seven–bullet-point apology that mentions no specific tribe, no specific treaty, and no specific injustice. It basically says, “You had some nice land, our citizens didn’t take it very politely; let’s just call it all of our land and steward it together.” The subsection ends with a disclaimer stating that nothing in this apology is legally binding. To date, this apology has not been announced, publicized, or read by the White House or by Congress.

House Resolution 3326, 111th Congress, Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010. Apology to Native Peoples of the United States.

 

Sub-Section 8113

 

Section A—acknowledgement and apology. The United States acting through Congress–

 

(1) recognizes the special legal and political relationship Indian tribes have with the United States and the solemn covenant with the land we share;

 

(2) commends and honors Native Peoples for the thousands of years that they have stewarded and protected this land;

 

(3) recognizes that there have been years of official depredations, ill-conceived policies, and the breaking of covenants by the Federal Government regarding Indian tribes;

 

(4) apologizes on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native Peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native Peoples by citizens of the United States;

 

(5) expresses its regret for the ramifications of former wrongs and its commitment to build on the positive relationships of the past and present to move toward a brighter future where all the people of this land live reconciled as brothers and sisters, and harmoniously steward and protect this land together;

 

(6) urges the President to acknowledge the wrongs of the United States against Indian tribes in the history of the United States in order to bring healing to this land; and

 

(7) commends the State governments that have begun reconciliation efforts with recognized Indian tribes located in their boundaries and encourages all State governments similarly to work toward reconciling relationships with Indian tribes within their boundaries.

 

Section B—Disclaimer- Nothing in this section—

 

(1) authorizes or supports any claim against the United States; or

 

(2) serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States.9

I [Mark] learned about this apology on December 19, 2011, and was appalled. How could our nation and our leaders bury something like this in a Department of Defense appropriations bill? On December 19, 2012, I hosted a gathering of approximately 150 friends, partners, and fellow citizens. We stood in front of the US Capitol and publicly read this apology. We read several pages of the sections before the apology (to highlight how inappropriate it was to place this apology in a defense appropriations bill). We also had the apology translated into the languages of Navajo and Ojibwe. This was to model for Congress and the White House that when you apologize, you not only do it publicly, but you also make every effort to have the apology be accessible and understandable to the offended parties. We then gave people in the audience an opportunity to react and respond to the apology. Because when you apologize, the offended party should speak.

This buried apology was initiated by Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and signed by President Barack Obama. Throughout their political careers both men have gone far beyond their predecessors in reaching out to Native peoples. I invited Sam Brownback (who in 2012 was the Governor of Kansas) to attend the reading of the apology and sent a letter to the White House inviting President Obama to attend. Governor Brownback declined my invitation, and I received a letter from the White House stating that neither President Obama nor any of his staff would be in attendance.

Over the course of the year leading up to the scheduled reading, I also invited national religious leaders, academic leaders, political leaders, social justice leaders, and business leaders. In the months and weeks prior to the event, various justifications were offered why these leaders, liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, religious and secular, could not be there.

In the absence of any national public leadership, after the apology was read and the people had a chance to respond, I stepped forward, took the microphone, and encouraged our Native leaders, our communities, and our people to not accept this apology. I was not trying to be divisive, nor was I trying to shame politicians, the church, or even our nation. But this event was about the historic relationship between indigenous peoples and our colonizers throughout the world. That morning, in front of the US Capitol, December 19, 2012, our audience was not just the 150 people from the grassroots effort standing on the Capitol lawn, nor even the people watching online. That morning our audience was the entire globe. Our audience was history.

The United States of America is a leader in this world; its words are scrutinized, and its example followed. If the indigenous tribes of North America were to accept this apology in the vague, politicized, disrespectful, and self-protecting way it was given, then we would be condoning our government’s actions and making a model of their methods. We would be communicating to indigenous peoples everywhere that we are still subservient to our colonizers, that we are not their equals, and that we should just be grateful for whatever scraps they bother to throw our way. We would be accepting the dysfunctional expressions of a traumatized people unable to seriously deal with the trauma they inflicted upon others and themselves.

In 2009, despite the fact that our nation had elected its first black president, we were in no way ready to apologize to Native peoples. Even today, ten years later, most Americans are unaware about the Doctrine of Discovery, which is still the basis for their land titles. Most Americans are ignorant about the unabashed white supremacy and genocidal policies of the man they consider to be their greatest president. Most Americans could not name the Native nation that was ethnically cleansed from the lands that their city, their community, even their very houses are built on. Because of the trauma of a white America still in the initial phase of shock and denial, the United States is incapable of offering a sincere, informed apology. Which is why even a white senator with deep moral convictions had to water down this apology, and why a black president, who in his first term in office was learning quickly to speak the language of “American exceptionalism” was unwilling to publicly acknowledge this apology. Another approach is needed that does not emerge from a dysfunctional response to trauma.

About the same time Senator Brownback was watering down his proposed Congressional Apology in an effort to gain its support in the white majority Congress, which was stuck in a state of denial, I had developed and was successfully using a metaphor to initiate dialogue between white Americans and indigenous peoples regarding this dehumanizing history. This metaphor did not emerge from the experience of trauma but rather framed the dialogue in a way that was both honest and constructive. I offer that metaphor here: It 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 the 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.”

On the surface, this metaphor seems to suggest an easy answer. “Is that it? All we need to do is say thank you?” But that’s the beauty of this metaphor. Because that’s not it at all. Saying thank you requires a fundamental shift in thinking. Saying thank you reverses the roles. Saying thank you decenters the white, landowning Christian male and the colonizers from Europe who falsely claimed to have “discovered” lands that were already inhabited. Saying thank you acknowledges that the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island are the hosts of this land. Saying thank you is not the end, but merely a step into the beginning.