The Culture of Apology

The Doctrine of Discovery is how Europeans, and then the United States, justified the conquest of indigenous peoples in the 16th through 19th centuries.

title to lands lay with the government whose subjects explored and occupied a territory whose inhabitants were not subjects of a European Christian monarch. The doctrine has been primarily used to support decisions invalidating or ignoring aboriginal possession of land in favor of colonial or post-colonial governments.

Last year the World Council of Churches repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery. Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori:

The nations from which the settlers came, and the new nations which resulted in the Americas, sought to impose another culture and way of life on the peoples they encountered. Attempting to remake the land and peoples they found “in their own image” was a profound act of idolatry.

The age of Western expansion was marked by brutality, subjugation, and exploitation, and it is consistent with their faith for Christians to repent and make amends, even if the sins were committed by one's ancestors.

History teaches, of course, that imperialism was not confined to the West; the Russian, Ottoman, Mongolian, and Mayan empires slaughtered millions more than the West ever did, but no apologies ever came from those quarters. Another example of Western exceptionalism--not the imperialism, but the culture of apology. © 2013 Stephen Yuen