The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy
Dum Diversas, the initial edict that laid the theological and political foundations for the Doctrine, was issued by Pope Nicholas V on June 18, 1452. It explicitly granted Portuguese king Alfonso V the following rights:
Robert P. Jones • The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy
In essence, the Doctrine provided that newly arrived Europeans immediately and automatically acquired legally recognized property rights over the inhabitants without knowledge or consent of the Indigenous peoples. When English explorers and other Europeans planted their national flags and religious symbols in “newly discovered” lands, as many paint
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This sense of divine entitlement, of European Christian chosenness, has shaped the worldview of most white Americans and thereby influenced key events, policies, and laws throughout American history.
Robert P. Jones • The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy
Today I am here, in this land that, along with its ancient memories, preserves the scars of still open wounds. I am here because the first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is that of again asking forgiveness, of telling you once more that I am deeply sorry. Sorry for the ways in which, regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizin
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Notably, there is no record that any Lutheran minister, representing the city’s largest Protestant denomination—or any other Protestant minister—tried to stop the lynchings.
Robert P. Jones • The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy
The “doctrine of discovery” is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church. Historical research clearly demonstrates that the papal documents in question, written in a specific historical period and linked to political questions, have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith. At the same time, the Church acknowledges that these p
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The return of Columbus in 1493 also precipitated the culmination of one of the most fateful but unacknowledged theological developments in the history of the western Christian Church: the Doctrine of Discovery.
Robert P. Jones • The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy
The Doctrine of Discovery was formally incorporated into US law in 1823 in Johnson v. M’Intosh, which held, by unanimous decision, that “discovery gave [the US government] an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy, either by purchase or conquest.”
Robert P. Jones • The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy
How can we meaningfully respond to being beneficiaries of a crime so plain it cannot be denied and so large it can never be fully righted?