A PBS documentary series entitled "We Shall Remain" [1]
insinuated that the Pilgrims and the Puritans through their belief in Manifest Destiny
were compelled overtake this continent and to either convert the Indians or
annihilate them. As a Baptist I have no love for the Pilgrims or Puritans.
Their Protestant understanding of Christian life (stemming from their Catholic
background) of forcing people to conform to their beliefs has been the bane of
the Christian faith since the fourth century.
This documentary, however, does not distinguish between Christian faiths
and rejects the command of Jesus Christ to be witnesses unto the uttermost part
of the earth. Historical Baptists (those previous to the Great Awakening and
the later revivals of Charles Finney) were committed to individual soul
liberty. They gave each man the right to worship God according to the dictates
of his own conscience. This would include the right to refuse to worship at
all, should that be his conviction.
Whether the notion of Manifest Destiny was moral or not is, it seems to
me, a mute point. We are where we are. I cannot conceive of a way that the
Native American people could possibly have maintained their culture and existed
beside the growing American population. What I do believe is still relevant is
that whatever happened to the Native American people, the commission of God to
take the gospel to the uttermost part of the earth mandates that Christians
reject the notion that it is immoral to give the gospel to a culture other than
our own, and thereby change that culture.
Marvin
McKenzie
In the
fields
