The Doctrine of Discovery

and White Christian Nationalism

Doctrine of Discovery

It all began with the Doctrine of Discovery.¹ Before the Spanish started the oldest permanent settlement in North America, St. Augustine in 1565. Before the English arrived in Jamestown in 1607. Before the Pilgrims founded Plymouth Colony in 1620. Before the Dutch built Fort Amsterdam on the southern tip of Manhattan Island in 1625.

Papal Edicts

From 1452 to 1493 the Catholic Church issued papal decrees that called for Europeans to conquer lands that were not Catholic. Although nullified in the 1530’s, the doctrine created a belief that Europe had the right to occupy lands and enslave inhabitants because of Western religious, cultural, and racial superiority.

The doctrine has been cited for centuries, including by the U.S. Supreme Court from 1823 to 2005.² For Robert P. Jones, the author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy, it is a “Rosetta Stone for understanding the deep structure of the European political and religious worldviews we have inherited in this country.”³

Saracens and Pagans

The first edict, more marching orders than religion, granted the king of Portugal the right to “invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens [Muslims] and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed … and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery”.⁴ The adversarial theme considered all non-Catholics to be physical enemies subject to conquest.

15th Century Europe

“Saracen” was synonymous with Muslim in 15th century Europe and reflected the reality of the Vatican surrounded on three sides by Islam. This serious military threat prompted the Catholic Church to begin issuing the edicts. Within decades European colonizers and missionaries spread Catholicism to the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. “[T]he expansion of the faith was inextricably intertwined with military glory and economic profit. Because of this it is idle to ask, as is frequently done, whether the Portuguese pioneers and Castilian conquistadores were motivated more by greed or by religious zeal.”⁵

Christians Have Human Rights

Robert P. Jones says: “These documents … all say the same thing: … that Christian identity is the thing that determines whether you have your own human rights or not.”⁶

To summarize Ned Blackhawk, another reviewer, racism against Native Americans predated African American slavery, fueled the rise of the United States, and still pervades our society. ⁷

England and Virginia

By the start of the 17th century, England had added Scotland and Ireland to its possessions, and was looking at the New World.

First Charter of Virginia

JAMES, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c. …

We would vouchsafe unto them our licence, to make habitation, plantation, and to deduce a colony of sundry of our people into that part of America commonly called Virginia, and other parts and territories in America, either appertaining unto us, or which are not now actually possessed by any christian prince or people …

First Charter of Virginia (1606)⁸

England was still Christian, if no longer Catholic, and missionary zeal was still a motivation, along with a proper government:

… propagating of Christian religion to such people, as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring the infidels and savages, living in those parts, to human civility, and to a settled and quiet government; 

First Charter of Virginia (1606)⁹

Profits

The Virginia Company that received this charter was a for-profit stock company supported by investors. The charter authorized “to dig, mine, and search for all manner of mines of gold, silver, and copper” with a fifth of the gold and silver and a fifteenth of the copper to the King.¹⁰ Virginia was no El Dorado, but eventually the Colony found success with tobacco as an export crop to England.¹¹

Land Ownership

During the colonial period colonists acquired property rights primarily through grants from the Virginia Company and, later, the Crown Colony. 

The pre-existing ownership rights of Native Americans were dismissed. At various times the English simply stated that they owned the land through “right of discovery” and “right of conquest.” Any land not cultivated or otherwise developed was seen as free for the taking. Treaties were negotiated with different tribes in the 1600’s and 1700’s to void Native American claims, but land was seized rather than purchased. Titles for land in Virginia begin with colonial records created by the English.¹²

Expansion of settlements and plantations led unsurprisingly to a series of Indian wars, first with the coastal Powhatan Confederacy, and later with the Shawnee, Iroquois, Cherokee, and Eastern Sioux.¹³

The Doctrine of Discovery made its way into the U.S. legal system. “Back in the 19th century, it was used as a precedent which gave people a sense of title to land that had not been owned with an official title in deed,” said Fr. David McCallum in the Vatican. The Doctrine was invoked in an 1823 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Indigenous people had only rights of “occupancy,” not ownership. The land, then, was open for the taking. “It was actually considered a precedent,” McCallum said, included in citations as recent as a 2005 case in upstate New York involving the Oneida Indian Nation.¹⁴

Religion

In 1619 the Anglican Church was formally established as the official religion, a status it kept until after the American Revolution. Local taxes paid the parish costs, and the parish had local functions such as poor relief. By the 1760s dissenting Protestants, especially Baptists and Methodists, were challenging the Anglicans.¹⁵

In 1786 the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom ended tax support for the Anglican church. Virginia’s political leaders officially “disestablished” the church from government and began a new tradition of separating religious and government organizations.

Virginians James Madison and Thomas Jefferson added these protections to the Federal government with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …” Choosing a religious belief was defined as a natural right protected from government interference.¹⁶

White Christian Nationalism Today

In 2008 54% of all Americans identified as White and Christian. By 2016 that had fallen to 47%. Today it is 42%. “It’s just a continued slide,” Jones says. “Most importantly, moving from majority to decisively non-majority white and Christian has set off a kind of ‘freak out’ moment among many white Christians.”¹⁷

Just over a third of self-identified Democrats are white and Christian; about 70% of self-identified Republicans are. PRRI [Public Religion Research Institute] polling finds that two-thirds of Democrats say America’s culture and way of life has changed for the better since the 1950s; two-thirds of Republicans believe it has changed for the worse. “It’s the formerly dominant white Christians who were culturally dominant, demographically dominant, politically dominant and are no longer.”

Robert P. Jones, President of the Public Religion Research Institute¹⁸

Jones quotes James Baldwin, the Black writer: “All that can save you now is your confrontation with your own history … which is not your past, but your present. Your history has led you to this moment, and you can only begin to change yourself by looking at what you are doing in the name of your history.”

A 2022 Florida law says no individual may be made to feel “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” by being taught to reflect on the past.¹⁹

Jones says we should face this history to move to a better place together. “If we really want to live up to this promise of being a truly pluralistic, multi-religious, multiracial democracy, it’s going to take us coming to terms with that history and putting into place something different.”²⁰

Ned Blackhawk adds,”The nation can never fully achieve its ethical and political aspirations while living with falsehoods about its past.”²¹

Footnotes

1. Bill Chappell, “The Vatican repudiates ‘Doctrine of Discovery’,” NPR, March 30, 2023 ↩︎
2. Bill Chappell, “The Vatican repudiates ‘Doctrine of Discovery’,” NPR, March 30, 2023 ↩︎
3. David Smith, “‘We have to come to grips with history’: Robert P Jones on The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy,” The Guardian, 9 Sep 2023 ↩︎
4. David Smith, “‘We have to come to grips with history’: Robert P Jones on The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy,” The Guardian, 9 Sep 2023 ↩︎
5. “Catholic Church and the Age of Discovery,” Wikipedia, retrieved 9/16/23 ↩︎
6. David Smith, “‘We have to come to grips with history’: Robert P Jones on The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy,” The Guardian, 9 Sep 2023 ↩︎
7. Ned Blackhawk, “Tracing the Origins of American Racism as a Path to Healing,” The New York Times, Sept. 6, 2023 ↩︎
8. The English Crown, “First Charter of Virginia (1606),” Encyclopedia Virginia, 07 Dec. 2020 ↩︎
9. The English Crown, “First Charter of Virginia (1606),” Encyclopedia Virginia, 07 Dec. 2020 ↩︎
10. The English Crown, “First Charter of Virginia (1606),” Encyclopedia Virginia, 07 Dec. 2020 ↩︎
11. “Colony of Virginia,” Wikipedia, retrieved 9/16/23 ↩︎
12. “How Colonists Acquired Title to Land in Virginia,” Virginia Places, retrieved 9/16/23 ↩︎
13. “Colony of Virginia,” Wikipedia, retrieved 9/16/23 ↩︎
14. Bill Chappell, “The Vatican repudiates ‘Doctrine of Discovery’,” NPR, March 30, 2023 ↩︎
15. “Colony of Virginia,” Wikipedia, retrieved 9/16/23 ↩︎
16. “Religion in Virginia,” Virginia Places, retrieved 9/16/23 ↩︎
17. David Smith, “‘We have to come to grips with history’: Robert P Jones on The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy,” The Guardian, 9 Sep 2023 ↩︎
18. David Smith, “‘We have to come to grips with history’: Robert P Jones on The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy,” The Guardian, 9 Sep 2023 ↩︎
19. Hannah Natanson, “All the ways Ron DeSantis is trying to rewrite Black history,” The Washington Post, July 24, 2023 ↩︎
20. David Smith, “‘We have to come to grips with history’: Robert P Jones on The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy,” The Guardian, 9 Sep 2023 ↩︎
21. Ned Blackhawk, “Tracing the Origins of American Racism as a Path to Healing,” The New York Times, Sept. 6, 2023 ↩︎