The pretense of Thanksgiving

The pretense of Thanksgiving

Today, America celebrates Thanksgiving as a foundational event in American history.  Americans' regard Thanksgiving as a "moral" starting point for the best that American stands for.   Yet, does Thanksgiving indeed have a moral foundation?  The answer to this question requires examining the Pilgrims' rationale for coming to America in the first place. 

Today, all Americans know the popular story is how the Pilgrims came to American to escape "religious persecution".   However, the key issue here is were they in fact being persecuted?  An accurate analysis of their justification for fleeing England can only be accomplished according to the standards they claimed was their supreme moral authority, not the King or Church of England, but the verses of the Bible itself.

Today, Americans don't question if the Pilgrims had the "right" to flee England, but this is not what the Bible says.  Their justification for fleeing England is based on 2 Corinthians 6:17:

    "Therefore come out from among unbelievers and be separate, says the Lord." 

The key word here is "unbelievers" or non-Christians.  2 Corinthians 6 focuses solely on interactions between Christians" and "unbelievers" or non-Christians, which was not their situation in England or the Netherlands.  The Pilgrims didn't approve of the practices of the Church of England nor the English monarchs but they were in fact Christians.  Neither this passage nor any other verses provides biblical justification for Christians to separate or flee from Christian rulers, in fact, the Bible does not even consider that a possibility.

            But we need to dig deeper to examine their claim of "persecution" by the King of England.   According to the highly regarded Columbia Encyclopedia the Pilgrims "Although not actively persecuted, the group was subjected to ecclesiastical investigation and to the mockery, criticism, and disfavor of their neighbors."  Investigation, mockery, criticism, disfavor.   Is this really “persecution”?   Were they imprisoned or executed?  Was their property and possessions taken from them?  Was their right to move about freely prohibited?  Were they confined to ghettos?  The answer to all these and similar questions is NO.   Perhaps they felt harassed, perhaps people "looked at them funny", perhaps they didn't get invited to the best parties, but were they denied fundamental rights of English citizenship?   No.  Then what IS the substance of their claim?

            Still let’s give the Pilgrims the benefit of the doubt and analyze deeper their claim and rationale for fleeing England according to what the Bible says about 1) Christians relations with secular  rulers, Christian or non-Christian, 2) how Christians are to respond to what they perceive as injustice, and 3) how Christians are to respond to actual persecution.   Both Old and New Testament verses provide the answers: 

Proverbs 8 (Amplified Bible)

            15   By me (God) kings reign and rulers decree justice.

            16   By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges and governors of the earth.

Romans 13

             1   Let every person be loyally subject to the governing (civil) authorities. For there is no authority except from God [by His permission, His sanction], and those that exist do so by God's appointment.

             2  Therefore he who resists and sets himself up against the authorities resists what God has appointed and arranged [in divine order]. And those who resist will bring down judgment upon themselves [receiving the penalty due them].

The point of these verses is clear - God appointed all kings and rulers and God requires Christians under those rulers to obey them, not for the sake of those rulers, but in obedience to God Himself.  The scriptures make no distinctions whether the rulers are just or unjust, that is NOT the issue, the issue is obedience to God.

            Next, what does the Bible say about claims of injustice by governing Christian authorities?  Actually the Bible says nothing.  Studying the above scriptures and many similar ones throughout the Bible reveals why - the issue is not specifically addressed because the Bible "presumes" that devout Christians will conduct themselves in obedience to those scriptures, period.  Biblical scriptures affirm over and over that life will be filled with trials and difficulties and the only way devout Christians are to meet them is head-on in prayerful obedience to God for His sake - regardless of perceived or experienced worldly “unfairness” or difficult circumstances.

The following verses state how truly devout Christians are to relate to their Christian rulers, whether they agree with those rulers or not:

            1 Timothy 2

     1  I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— 2  for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 3 This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

            James 5

     9  Don't grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door! 10  Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11 As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

Clearly the Bible's directions are to pray for those rulers and to persevere in your prayers for them, regardless of any difficult circumstances, because it pleases God.  ONLY in prayerful obedience and perseverance does a Christian prove himself worthy to be called a devout Christian.

The Pilgrims and their modern apologists seem to have ignored the prior 2 Corinthians 6 verses and others that admonish devout Christians to:

     4   as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5 in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6 in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7 in truthful speech and in the power of God…

The point in these verses is that God is the final ultimate judge, not man, not man's perceptions.  God will right the situation – in His terms, in His time – God does not grant this role to even the most devout Christian in the most difficult circumstances, and for a Christian to take on that role for himself is - in essence - to defy and disobey God Himself, and in doing so, show himself unworthy.  

            Finally, let's say the Pilgrims' were actually persecuted.   What does Jesus Christ himself say a devout Christian should do in response deliberate persecution for their faith?

            Matthew 5

      10   Blessed are those who are persecuted because of [God's] righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

     11   Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.  12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

            1 Corinthians 4:

     12  We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it.

            James 1

      12  Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, [then] he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.

There is no Biblical justification that Jesus Christ or the God of Israel approve of running away from a situation because persecution; rather the verses clearly state that the true Christian is blessed and proves himself worthy to Jesus Christ if he endures and perseveres under it, that enduring and persevering in prayerful obedience to God is the believers highest goal.  But this is not what the Pilgrims did.

All the above verses should be analyzed in their full context and in detail.  For example, James 1:12 reveals a three part commandment:  perseveres means to stay true to God's commandments in spite of difficult worldly circumstances.  The second point is the trial or test - of what?   Of staying true and persevering in God’s commandments despite those difficult circumstances (such as persecution) - only then does the Christian "pass" the test.  The third point is that only after the Christian has accomplished and finished the first two parts is he "qualified" to receive  God's blessing.  In other words, without completing the first two steps, the Christian cannot claim God's Blessing, nor Godly Authority or Righteousness on any situation or circumstance.  Failure to obey all three parts is in essence disobedience to God.   

            The question comes back to the Pilgrims and their claim of Godly Righteousness as justification for fleeing England.  Even if under the most severe persecution do any Biblical verses allow devout Christians to flee from obeying God's anointed Christian rulers?   Absolutely not.  Again, the Bible allows Christians to flee or separate themselves from difficult circumstances only if they are being persecuted for being Christians which was not the Pilgrims situation.  According to the scriptures then, isn't running away from the situation an act of direct disobedience to God, precisely what the Pilgrims did?  If that was indeed an act of disobedience to God, can they claim God's blessing on that action?  No, their primary concern was changing their own worldly circumstances to the way they wanted it to be, not obedience to God.

In American culture, Thanksgiving has come to represent an event which celebrates the founding of all things good about European presence in what is now the United States.  It is as if Americans are somehow re-enacting an event that justifies and reaffirms all that is "Godly" and morally righteous about American culture.  In America’s Thanksgiving mythology the Pilgrims have been crowned as the forbearers of God's new "chosen" people that infuses everything American with a "Godly Righteousness" at the heart of everything done by America. 

Yet, examining American Thanksgiving stripped of its mythology reveals it to be a day that celebrates the start of Anglo-European conquest on this continent; Anglo-European “success” in establishing a foothold in America even though that foothold was established in DIRECT DISOBEDIENCE to the Scriptures the Pilgrims and their contemporary apologists claim as their highest moral foundation.  Rather, the Pilgrims were in fact in blatant defiance, violation, and disobedience to God's Word.  Instead of placing obedience to God's Word as their first priority, their actions demonstrated that they put their worldly ambition first and essentially ignored God's commandments to get what they wanted here on earth.  The question is:  analyzed according to  the context of the devout Christianity they claimed to be practitioners of, did their fleeing England demonstrate Godly character, or not?

What America is really celebrating in Thanksgiving is its "success" in bringing what is now the United States under Anglo-European control.   Thanksgiving mythology provides the “warm fuzzy” sense of a Godly moral righteous to cover the lies and the barbarous acts of conquest.  To American Indians Thanksgiving is the start of physical and cultural genocide of thousands of years of history pre-dating Anglo-European invasion.    

The proof of the lie of America's Thanksgiving story is actually in most American homes, libraries, and in most hotel rooms - a Bible - yet, the mythology, the lie, the propaganda has become real. 

"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." Adolf Hitler

In the final analysis Thanksgiving, as Americans know and practice it today is, to put it simply a lie - propaganda that has been packaged to produce in most Americans the "warm fuzzy feelings" of patriotism and a moral or "Godly Righteousness" about this country without any critical discernment or questioning of historical facts according to commandments and lessons of the Bible, which America purports to uphold as its highest moral standard and reason for being.

Today America's Christians, particularly the Evangelicals, bemoan America's "fall from Grace", America's "lack of moral fiber".  They wring their hands and point to America's addiction to materialism, superficiality, and pop culture in all its forms, and say "get back to the Bible."  But they turn a blind-eye to the fact that these obvious, surface cultural manifestations are simply outward symptoms deeper underlying moral failings directly connected to the moral character of the nation from its inception as embodied in the mythology of the Pilgrims and the first Euro-American Thanksgiving. 

In Matthew 7, Jesus Christ said:

 24 "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand."

If the U.S. did not claim a Judeo-Christian "Godly Righteous" for its history and all its institutions this would be no issue.  If confined to the material world of politics and material gain European experience on this continent could simply be stated "we came, we saw, we conquered, get over it", no need for further discussion.   But America's claim to a Biblical moral foundation and justification for everything it has done and continues to do puts these issues on a different moral level, one that requires questioning its moral rationale by the standard it claims as its most high - the Bible.  

Start with the first American Thanksgiving and then examine how American has mythologized its history - from the American Revolution, American expansion, its "progress", it's self-assigned role in the world, and then compare that to Biblical commandments of both the Old and New Testaments.  Then ask again, where is America's moral justification?  My response to the evangelicals' cry about America's "fall from Grace" is that America from its inception was never built on a moral foundation of solid rock, but rather was built on sand to begin with.

Particularly for Indigenous peoples this history and the questioning of it is important because America's claimed moral authority, as personified in Thanksgiving, remains the starting point for all U.S. government laws and policies pertaining to American Indians from the earliest days of the existence of the U.S. to the present.  Examination of U.S. government laws and policies in all phases of U.S. control over American Indians from treaty making, to Removal, through "manifest destiny", to Assimilation, Termination, to Self-Determination, reveals a presumed "Godly moral authority" in all its decisions.  In dealing with American Indians, the U.S. government through the Presidents, Congress, and the federal courts have taken over God's place as the final authority, based on the "presumptions" first evidenced in the mythology of Thanksgiving.  First the Pilgrims, then the colonists, and then the Americans justified their intrusion and conquest of North America in biblical terms.  U.S. Supreme Court decisions starting with Johnson v. McIntosh in 1823 claimed Christianity as the justification for the "Doctrine of Discovery" under which they gave themselves the moral authority to take control over American Indians and all their resources and lands.  Under the “Doctrine of Discovery” American Indians became "wards" of the U.S. government in U.S. law.  In Chief Justice Marshall’s words:

"[T]he character and religion of [the New World’s] inhabitants afforded an apology for considering them as a people over whom the superior genius of Europe might claim an ascendancy. To leave them in possession of their country was to leave the country a wilderness ...[A]griculturalists, merchants, and manufacturers, have a right, on abstract principles, to expel hunters from [their] territory ...[E]xcuse, if not justification, [could be found] in the character and habits of the people whose rights ha[d] been wrested from them ...The potentates of the Old World ... made ample compensation to the inhabitants of the new, by bestowing upon them civilization and Christianity."

There!  See how simple it is?  So if I think I’m smarter than you and have the weapons to overpower you then I can declare you inferior and take your stuff because I say my God said so.

Does this sound like the rationale of a truly "Godly Christian"?  

Inadvertently acknowledging the questionable nature of the "Discovery Doctrine" by any moral standard Marshall continues "[h]owever extravagant the pretension of converting the discovery of an inhabited country into conquest may appear, if the principle has been asserted in the first instance ... if a country has been acquired and held under it; ... it becomes the law of the land, and cannot be questioned."

Again, see how simple that was!  We said so, we've got the power to enforce it, so that’s the way it IS.  End of Subject.  REALLY?  How does “pretension” become law or biblically supported morality?  How does "pretense" become Godly Authority?  And why can that claim not be questioned?  When one consciously "pretends" is that not in itself an admission that what is being pretended is not fact, not truth, but is rather a lie?

Some Christians claim that Genesis 1:26-28 provides Biblical justification for conquest,

“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 

But this passage does not single out Europeans or whites to be the subdue'ers.  The verse applies to "believers" of whatever color or background.  God does not designate specific groups of people other than believers - but in this fallen imperfect world people certainly do.  Euro-Americans have taken upon themselves this role as if God had specified them, which He did not.  If strictly followed, the most the Bible would justify is for believers to send their teachers out into the world to preach the Gospel and when they've finished teaching - return home.  Today, most churches and ministries have outreach to third world countries throughout Asia, Central and South America, and Africa.  These outreach programs have one purpose - to preach the Gospel and bring people to Christ.  Their purpose is not to take over the governments, nor to acquire private property, nor to claim the land for themselves.  Yet that is exactly what the Pilgrims did without any Biblical justification.

Unfortunately for American Indians, and fortunately for the U.S. government and all those who have benefited under this legal pretension, the Johnson v. McIntosh decision continues to be the U.S. government’s legal precedent in all laws and court decisions regarding American Indians from 1823 to the present.  

The point of this commentary is to stress the need to learn the facts about this history, see it clearly and accurately, in order to learn and grow from it.  For Indian Country the point is to learn to understand how American mythology persists in ways that still negatively impact Indian country in order to question and to challenge the laws, court decisions, and government policies that continue making American Indians stereotypes and 2nd class citizens.   Indian country and all true believers need to understand how the common American tactic for justifying its history is to point back to some historical event, to "tweek" it, translate it, to rationalize it for some objective, and then to institutionalize it into the everyday "common" knowledge.   This is precisely what has been done with Thanksgiving.  

Today all Americans are getting a taste of the consequences of having relied unquestioningly on the pretensions and mythologies of their institutions - physical and ideological- all constructed to uphold and justify America's "warm fuzzy" sense of itself.  Americans are experiencing first hand that their "invincible" institutions are indeed quite imperfect and quite fallible, as are any man-made institutions whose value is in practice measured by material success, and this applies to America's multi-faceted organized religions and ministries as well - orthodox, traditional, non-denominational, evangelical, and "new age" as well. 

Acknowledging American fallibility from its inception, and a willingness to learn and grow from it, is no quick and easy task, but one filled with discomfort and often great dismay because it means reexamining Americans' taken-for-granted mythologies under the bright glare of fact and having to let go of beliefs that are held most dear, almost sacred, to many people.  Yet doing so may prove to be the real start of building a nation whose foundation is truly "built on the rock".