"Whatever natural good was present in the piety and community of the pagan past is an infinitesimal fraction of the grace rendered unto those pagans’ descendants who have been received into the Church of Christ. Whatever sacrifices were exacted in pursuit of that grace—the suffocation of a noble pagan culture; an increase in disease and bodily death due to government negligence; even the sundering of natural families—is worth it." Declan Leary writing at the American Conservative
Brad responds to this article and similar comments by Jesse Waters, Dave Rubin, and Matt Walsh, all of whom have taken the stance that "this land was conquered just like all populated land on Earth. And thank God that it was. Our civilization is far superior to what came before it."
He also discusses the explosive new data from PRRI on the decline of White Evangelcalism and the rise of the Nones--the USA's biggest religious group to date.
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Hello, welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
It's just me today.
Dan is off on vacation and enjoying some time off, so might be a little bit shorter of a Weekly Roundup today, but a lot to talk about and a lot of important things happening.
I want to start by just spending quite a bit of time today talking about a kind of new moment in the defense of white supremacy and white Christian nationalism in our country, and so what I've seen over the last couple weeks is a shift in rhetoric, and what I mean is this.
There are constant claims of genocide that was carried out on this continent when colonizers arrived from Europe in the 15th century and forward.
We hear about stolen land.
We hear about the mass killing of Native Americans.
This is important.
It's part of our history.
We need to talk about these tragedies and these travesties.
And so, as these appeals and historical manifestations have become more ubiquitous, there's been a shift in how people who are on the right side of the political spectrum, people who are talking heads on Fox News, people who have a vested interest in white Christian nationalism and white supremacy, have responded to this.
So when they hear about stolen land, when they hear about Native American genocide, We've really reached a point where it's gone from not, rather than ignoring it, or rather than sort of fluttering it off or saying, oh, that was bad, but, you know, whatever, we've got to the point where the response is, yeah, you're right.
There was a tremendous amount of killing and death, and that was a good thing.
So we've really reached this point, right, where people are saying, yep, you're right, that happened, and it was actually really good, and I'm really glad it happened.
So let me give you some examples.
The most, I think, alarming one, and several of you alerted to me this just the other day, comes from the American Conservative.
And the American Conservative published an article on July 8th by Declan Leary, and The headline reads, The Meaning of the Native Graves.
They're good, actually.
And so Leary goes to talk about what's happened in Canada.
Some of you have kept up on this story.
In Canada, there were boarding schools supported by the Church's mission and in conjunction with the Canadian government.
And what's been found are seven to eight hundred graves of children at these boarding schools, okay?
What this has led to is the widespread sort of suspicion that there are just many many many more native children who died in these Canadian boarding schools that were operated by the Catholic Church in conjunction with the Canadian government than were previously known.
That it seems as if there were widespread deaths at these schools under circumstances that are unknown but likely tragic and likely preventable.
Back here in the United States, this has led to calls for investigations into the federal boarding schools that existed in this country.
So, Deb Haaland, who is the Secretary of the Interior, has announced an investigation that the Department of Interior will conduct into the federal boarding schools that existed in this country between 1869 and the 1960s.
There are about 350 of those schools, and the goal is to see if similar unmarked graves can be found at their former campuses.
From 1869 to the 1960s, Native American children were taken from their families.
and forced into government schools in order to, quote, culturally assimilate.
And, you know, obviously this is a child separation policy, and unfortunately many children never made it back to their parents, okay?
So we have this situation, right, that's opening up a series of debates and a series of kind of historical recognitions that Native children were taken from their families and many of them never returned home.
So if I go back to the article by Declan Leary, the argument throughout the piece is basically that finding these graves is a good thing because it reflects the fact that the Church was doing its work of proselytizing and spreading the Word of God around the world, And the fact that children were there and hearing about Christ and his mission and his gospel shows that good things were happening.
And so, yes, they died, and yes, this is unfortunate to find their graves, but you know, overall, it's a net good.
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