On May 9, 2012 ~ the Mille Lacs Messenger, a Minnesota county newspaper, published the
following letter of mine.
___________________________________________________
Opposed to Jesus
Our founding fathers' act of establishing this nation of ours was
fundamentally opposed to the gospel of Jesus.
The United States of American was established on a bigoted religious doctrine,
the Christian Doctrine of Discovery, a doctrine that denied,
and still denies, this land's indigenous peoples/tribes
their fundamental human right to own land and to be
complete independent sovereign nations.
The Doctrine of Discovery was a series of fifteenth
century papal doctrines that were used to create the
international laws of Western Christendom. These
laws were used to regulate and guild colonizing
European Christian nations.
After crossing the Atlantic ocean and setting
foot on Guanahani island, Christopher Columbus,
acting under the international laws of Western
Christendom performed a ceremony to "take possession"
of the indigenous people's island land for the
Christian nation of Spain. Then, Columbus and
his men, by an act of thievery, forcefully took
possession of their land and enslaved them.
The international laws of Western Christendom asserted
that Christian nations had a right, based on the Bible,
to claim absolute title to and ultimate authority over
any newly "discovered" Non-Christian inhabitants and
their lands. In the Inter Caetera papal doctrine,
Pope Alexander stated his desire that the
"discovered" people be "subjugated and brought
to the faith itself." By this means, said the
pope, the "Christian Empire" would be propagated.
Because the World Council of Churches recently denounced
the Doctrine of Discovery and declared it to be "fundamentally
opposed to the gospel of Jesus", more and more U.S. Christians
are becoming aware that, both, Columbus' act of taking
possession of indigenous people's land for Spain and the
founding fathers' act of establishing the United States
of America were "fundamentally opposed to the
gospel of Jesus".
In 1823, the Doctrine of Discovery was adopted into U.S.
law by the Supreme Court in the celebrated case, Johnson v.
McIntosh. Writing for a unanimous court, Chief Justice
John Marshall observed that Christian European nations
had assumed "ultimate dominion" over the lands of America
during the Age of Discovery and that upon white Christian
"discovery" the red pagan Indian peoples had lost
"their rights to complete sovereignty, as independent
nations," and only retained a right of "occupancy"
in their lands.
Marshall also observed that upon the establishment of
the United States of America, this nation acquired
ownership of the indigenous peoples' lands (stolen lands)
from Great Britain, and that it also acquired the
right to subjugate and have "dominion" over this
land's pagan indigenous peoples from this
same Christian nation.
This land's indigenous peoples are still being held
hostage in their own homelands; it's time to set them
free from our nation's Christian bigoted laws and oppression.
Thomas Dahlheimer
Wahkon
|