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Editor:
Some recent editorials have downplayed the atrocities of America's past and exposed the blasphemy that justified those heinous practices as 'Christian.' What foolery can be made of people even today! The accounts have been handed down through generations of ancestors as well as through documented history. America was founded on principles of mass murder and Calvinist oppression, NOT Christianity.
The natives practiced religions that were far superior to [those of the Europeans] as evidenced by their respect for each other and all else of the Great Spirit. Although there were incidents of struggles between tribes for hunting rights, their acceptance of the Europeans into the New World was more akin to the way you would expect people to behave by heeding the teachings of Jesus Christ. Who plundered who? Who were the real savages? Who can deny the moral superiority of the Native Americans compared to white Europeans?
The closest to being a Christian nation America has ever been came only with attempts by many decent and well-meaning people to emulate the loving Jesus by example. The enslavement and killing of Native Americans, the stealing of their land and resources does not get one into the Kingdom of God. The Puritans brought oppression of thought and continued the biblical deviations that ensured a rigid mind control of those colonists.
White European supremacy was no more than an excuse for 'me first' values of instant gratification. Beckoning to Satan's temptation was the norm of white America until Vietnam exposed what America stood for, not only by the treatment of the natives, but also by the perpetuation of slavery, discrimination, and imperial and post-imperial world domination for the wealth of a privileged few.
The wealthy and corrupt had control of the masses and the government even before the American Revolution. God is money ("In God We Trust") and dominates the lives of most Americans because of this privilege of the few. We are supposed to be happy and keep our mouths shut. This allows much suffering by America's defenseless children, working poor, disabled, and elderly. The resistance to labor movements was not because Christians wished unfair wages and horrible working conditions on worker; rather, it was attributed to control by the wealthy for bigger profits.
It would be nice for America to have ever been a Christian nation. We cannot become a Christian nation amid the hypocrisy, the false teachings, and the coninuing lies. We remain a greedy nation always hungry for huge profits at the expense of human value. We instill the values of material wealth into our children and teach them to deplore the less-advantaged people of our society and the world. We are masters of judging others, even avoiding the problems of our greed by building more prisons to contain the people who struggle in the exhaust of our oblivion.
What an affront to Christians to have religious mainpulators discount the atrocities of our past and our present and steal hope from our present and steal hope from our future. Where is the shame?
Rev. J. William Tucket
Rutland, VT
