Click here for Part 1: The Problem

The History of the Problem

We concluded the last post with some pretty serious ideas; namely, that many members of the colonies and early settlers of North America saw themselves as a new Chosen People of God, a sort of New Israel inhabiting and settling the new Promised Land of North America.  (For the purposes of time, we will only look at a few examples, though whole books have been written on the subject.)  We can see these ideas expressed as early as the 1600s, in the writings and sermons of the Puritans.  John Winthrop, aboard a ship headed for America, said “…we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.”  He saw he and his people as “a peculiar people, marked and chosen by the finger of God.”  As we quickly mentioned earlier, the phrase “city on a hill” comes from Matthew 5:14, where Jesus is calling his followers, the Church, to be a city on a hill, to shine the light to the world.  Of course, Jesus was specifically not speaking about one nation or another.  He was speaking to all who would believe in him and go on to become his body, the Church.   According to Jesus, it is not a nation who is the City on a Hill, but the Church, across all nations.

Samuel Langdon was a preacher who would eventually become the president of Harvard.  In 1788, Langdon preached “We cannot but acknowledge that God hath graciously patronized our cause and taken us under his special care, as he did his ancient covenant people.”  Here again we have a Christian religious leader, who also had great political influence, such that he became the president of Harvard, identifying American colonists as God’s new Covenant People.  God had a special relationship with American colonists, Langdon thought, such that God was leading the colonists to take land that was already inhabited.  I would again argue, though, that Langdon needs help with his Biblical interpretation.  The Covenant People, after Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is no longer identified with one nation.  The Covenant People now is anyone who would believe—American, English, Iraqi, Irani, Native American, Spanish, German, etc.  To say that God leads the American colonists (or present-day Americans) as his Covenant People is to ignore the fact that there are Covenant People in every country.

Next, we find ourselves in the 1830s and 1840s, and we see more evidence of this line of thought.  John O’Sullivan was a journalist that lived from 1813-1895.  In 1839, O’Sullivan wrote an article called “The Great Nation of Futurity”.  In it he wrote “This is our high destiny…we must accomplish it.  All this will be our future history, to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man…For this blessed mission…has America been chosen.”  So, America’s chosen mission is to establish the salvation of man on earth?  As a Christian, this makes me cringe.  I’m pretty sure salvation was established 2000 years ago by a man named Jesus Christ.  Once again we venture into the realm of idolatry when we take something that is God’s job and put ourselves in His place.

Later, O’Sullivan went on to write about American expansion, coining the term “manifest destiny”.  In the July/August 1845 issue of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, O’Sullivan wrote that American colonists had a “manifest destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us…”  Of course, there’s a major problem with O’Sullivan’s idea—that land was already inhabited.  What do we do when we think God has given us land which is already occupied?  We take it from them.  And that’s exactly what American colonists did.

Native Americans died because of exposure to diseases that Europeans brought with them.  The Indian Removal Act slowly forced Native Americans to move west.  The route along which the Native Americans traveled in order to be relocated is now known as the Trail of Tears because thousands of them died from exposure, disease and starvation in the process of having their lands stolen and being forced to relocate.  All as a result of seeing America as a “chosen people” who had a God-given right to the land.  Never mind that there were already people living in the land.  Never mind that those people would be killed in order for the colonists to take the land.

This is where idolatry leads.  When we take God out of the equation and replace Him with something else, what’s done in the name of our new god becomes evil.  In the next post we will see what the Bible has to say about all this and where the roots of the problem lie.