Reckoning with History: Settler Colonialism, Slavery, and the Making of American Christianity

Columbia Seminary church historian William Yoo has written another good book. By "good," I mean hard, well-researched, effective. His last book, "What Kind of Christianity" establishes a solid case that the Presbyterian Church USA would not exist without enslavement. It's a claim by the past upon the present--by those crushed, killed, raped, and separated by our "Christian" ancestors who have something to say about how we live as a church today.

William launched his book a few weeks ago at our church. It broadens the scope from the PCUSA to American Christianity as a whole. Few, if any, American Christians are free from that stains of our ancestors' sins. If you're curious to explore what the book is about, here's the recording.

Here is what I said that evening--my response to Dr. Yoo after reading his work:

Reckoning with History is an ambitious book: you take two huge, awful topics—slavery and settler colonialism; two topics that are either uncomfortable or illegal to talk about…
With each of these topics, you’re asking, as Christians: how? How could it be that followers of the Prince of Peace, the one who said, “love your neighbor as yourself” were capable of the grotesque de-valuing of human life that was required to justify seizing this land from the people who lived here and then capturing and brutalizing people to make a profit from it?

I think this version of history is ambitious. But I want to note that you are rejecting several other ways of telling this history:

You reject the idea, popular on the right, that the history of injustice shouldn’t be told; that we need to “move on” from all of this icky, uncomfortable stuff because it makes white people feel bad.

You’re rejecting the “Doctrine of Discovery” thesis, in which there was some ancient, sinister “master plan” with roots in the papacy that played out over centuries; there wasn’t a malevolent script embedded in white Christianity that we can blame for these evils.

You’re rejecting the meta story of “inexorable liberal progress”; you’re saying we can’t overlook misdeeds of our ancestors because they lived in times when “they didn’t know any better.” They did know better. You are clear about this because you lift up the voices of people who were speaking and working against land-theft and enslavement.

 
You’re also rejecting the selective way that some of look only to the past and cherry pick our historical ‘heroes.” The William Lloyd Garrisons, you say, were few and far between. There were at least as many James Henley Thornwells in our family tree.

The people who appear in the pages of your book are inevitably the people who left writing behind for you (and us) to read. You give us these beautifully detailed passages from Indigenous Activists and Abolitionists. You also tell us about the defenders of Indian Removal and Slavery. You show us the people who are articulating the moral poles on these questions.

But I think the “main characters” in your book are silent. I think your main characters are the people like us. People who aren’t going to have our thoughts written in history books.

We are people who go to church. Who vote. Who move through the world every day, making choices. Our choices are informed by all kinds of things. Sometimes they are informed by the soaring ideals of our religion. Most often, our lives and values are informed by much more pedantic motives: Expediency—what’s easy. Desire—what we want. Fear—what we’re afraid of.

As the horrible realities of settler colonialism and slavery imposed themselves on the lives of “regular” Christians, we had to make decisions about whether we would comply or dissent.

If we comply, if we go along with the injustices, we feel no external friction because they are legitimated by the culture. Any friction we might feel is internal—it’s in the conscience. It’s uncomfortable inside to follow a liberating Christ and enslave another person. You make the clear case that this kind of cognitive dissonance becomes intolerable after a while. White people had to invent increasingly strident theological defenses of slavery to resolve cognitive dissonance. We’ve had to intentionally mis-remember our history—by glorifying the landing at Plymouth Rock and erasing the legacy of slavery.

If regular people resist injustice, if we resolve the internal dissonance, we face external friction. You’re risking friendship. You’re risking going against the law. You’re risking the social ties that give you access to employment and emotional support. You alienate friends and family. You might even face threats or bodily harm. Very few people are courageous enough—or foolish enough—to do that.

Through your whole story, even as you tell us about the stalwarts on both sides of these moral atrocities, there’s a “silent majority” in the background. You’re asking us, what would you have done if it were you? When we sit with those questions, I think we’re also exercising a moral muscle. One that allows us to ask, “are there compromises that we’re making now? Is our life of faith a life of discipleship or expediency?