Church & State 250: How Christians Justified Manifest Destiny

How did Manifest Destiny become a Christian story about land, providence, and moral duty? 

L. Daniel Hawk, Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Ashland Theological Seminary and author of Undoing Manifest Destiny, joins Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram to explain how theology helped justify conquest, removal, and Indigenous erasure. Hawk traces Manifest Destiny through John O’Sullivan’s famous phrase, the Doctrine of Discovery, Lewis and Clark’s “Corps of Discovery,” Genesis 1:28, and the settler belief that land had to be owned, fenced, cultivated, and turned into property before it counted as rightly used. 

He also challenges a common assumption: early Americans did not usually justify westward conquest by directly appealing to the book of Joshua. The deeper story, he argues, was a Christianized vision of dominion, civilization, and national innocence. This conversation helps listeners understand how biblical language shaped American expansion, and why that history still matters for churches, politics, and America’s 250th.

Guest bio
Dr. L. Daniel Hawk is Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Ashland Theological Seminary. He is the author of Undoing Manifest Destiny: Settler America, Christian Colonists, and the Pursuit of Justice. His work helps explain how biblical interpretation, settler colonialism, and American national identity shaped Christian justifications for conquest, land seizure, and Indigenous erasure.

Book Mentioned
Undoing Manifest Destiny: Settler America, Christian Colonists, and the Pursuit of Justice by L. Daniel Hawk
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9781514008645

Relevant Links & Resources
L. Daniel Hawk Faculty Profile
URL: https://seminary.ashland.edu/faculty-and-staff/l-daniel-hawk/

Support Sarah Stankorb’s work and preorder Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion, Releases September 15, 2026.  Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798889837091

Website: https://www.sarahstankorb.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I just I think this is an opportunity for us as as a nation really to take a look again at the virtues and characteristics and beliefs that define us and unite us as a nation and then take a hard look and say how we doing. And I I think that I think this moment gives us the opportunity really to reunite, to to revitalize, to to rehearse who we are as a nation, and then really take a hard look and say, you know, what where do we need to or where can we move forward in in recapturing our union so that we're a united people? How how do we do that? You know, instead of getting all wrapped up in that falderall, I I would hope that we have we take the opportunity to think think as individuals and as groups uh about where we are as a nation and and what what what are the values that truly unite us and how how can we follow these values uh to to uh kind of fulfill our aspirations of who we see ourselves as a nation in the world.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Hey, welcome back to Church and State, 250 plus years of faith in America, where we're exploring the role religion has played in shaping the American story. I'm your political host, Will Wright, and I'm joined as always by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. And today we are joined by Daniel Hawke. He is a professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Ashland Theological Seminary and author of Undoing Manifest Destiny, Settler America, Christian Colonists in the Pursuit of Justice. And for this Church and State series, we've been asking how religion has been shaping America from the founding into the present. And Dan's work takes us into one of the hardest parts of that story: how Christians use scripture, theology, and even like a national mythos to justify conquest, removal, and the erasure of indigenous people. So today, Dan's going to help us work through all of that, help us better understand what is Manifest Destiny and the story that it tells about America. And gosh, just thank you for coming back on the show, Dan.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Well, it's it's a real pleasure to talk with the two of you. Yeah, thanks. So so we'll we'll we'll just jump right into it. We brought you on to talk about Manifest Destiny. I think Manifest Destiny is one of those topics that I remember from like high school civics class or history class, uh, but that is about all I know. And it's probably not not sufficient enough, or at least the context of this conversation. So let's just start there. Like, what is Manifest Destiny?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Manifest destiny, very generally, is the conviction that the United States has a divine or providential destiny to expand and take the entire continent. So, in order to expand the nation to the coast, so it's it's a destiny because either providence or the inexorable advance of civilization makes makes this occupation, this seizure of the land acceptable, and it gives us a reason for saying here's why we took the land. We have a destiny, and that destiny is manifest in the way that we're seeing the nation move inexorably across the continent. So it's it's there for everybody to see. And I I the way you talk about it in terms of how it gets taught in the schools is a good way of illustrating how that particular piece and belief gets repurposed in terms of our national mythology and narrative. So it's you know we learn in schools, yeah, we uh we had a manifest destiny, and that propelled us across the continent. But at least in my experience, there's not a lot of conversation about the implications of that. Why did why did we believe that? And why was it such a powerful driver of colonial expansion?

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Yeah, and and and who was there in the way of that manifest destiny, right? The assumption that these lands were essentially unoccupied or or or for the purposes of taking the land unoccupied, at least, at least in terms of like European land rights, right? Anything like that. There's no respect there. And so they have this occupied. So if we take ourselves back, right, to the time period, you have United States very different than today, right? You almost have and there's an entire continent almost that we haven't explored yet or seen, and people are just seeing, oh, all this land, right? Money, it's wealth, it's power, all these things like are just flooding into people's minds. Because what I'm trying to think through is right, we have these concepts, manifest destiny, right, that we learn about in school, and yet people on the ground, real motivations, real thinking, real primary sources tell us what was going on. And I would just love to hear, like, from your perspective, looking at the primary sources, digging into that. Was this a political thing? Was it a religious thing? Obviously, I guess it was both, but in what way was it both, right? I mean, it's like, and how like really how do they do this? Was it what are the what do the primary sources say? Like, was there someone who wrote we have a manifest destiny? And this is what what was what kind of help us understand that part of it?

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah, well, the uh beginning with the earliest days of the republic, there does emerge this sense of providence expanding and kind of giving the United States the ability to to grow and develop and take land, and with the idea that we're going to plant a new expression, a higher civilization of humanity that encapsulates freedom and progress and and all kinds of things for the sake of the whole world. So that these ideas about providence and destiny, they're there in the mix. And they come together in the 1840s when a journalist named John O'Sullivan talking about annexation of Texas just coins the phrase we have a manifest destiny to overspread the the continent, and that just resonates with people. And so, I mean, the as a doctrine, it doesn't really get explicit notion beyond the the late 19th century, but in the popular mind, it just continues to resonate. And you know, how much of this is kind of political aspiration and desire, how much of it is religious conviction is hard to talk about. From my perspective, particularly because the early United States is really drawing on available cultural resources and symbols to create a sense of a united state, to unite the nation, to create what Anthony Smith has called a new religion of the people, which he talks about nationalist movements, need to grab these motifs and these ideas to entice citizens to see themselves as part of something bigger than their own localities or their own groups. So in a sense, everything is infused with religious conviction, whether it's directed toward a Christian nationalist trajectory or whether it's really part of a larger idea of the United States as exceptional. So this idea of American exceptional exceptionalism is kind of a larger framework. And I think it's useful to see Manifest Destiny as as the colonizing tip of the spear that basically legitimizes United, the white settler America's possession expansion of the continent. Yeah. So let's let's think in terms of the Louisiana Purchase, which had a huge impact on the way that early America begins to see and develop the sense of destiny. So the very name that that President Jefferson assigns to people to go out and as we learned in school to map the this new territory, the core of discovery presents what the uh Lewis and Clark and their group is going to do. They're not just mapping, and they're not just kind of recording flora and fauna and and making new trade relationships with the peoples. They are actually, in terms of the legislation of doctrine discovery and its protocols, they are actually laying claim to the land that they've now acquired. And and and Jefferson himself, and this is something I you you don't often see with respect to this particular mission. One of the first things they were to do, Lewis and Clark, when they met a new people, was to announce to them that they had a new great chief. They had a new father in the East, the great chief of the 17 great nations of the United States. And a lot of times they were given a medallion, a peace medal with Jefferson's image on it. So all of this is tied back to that that original doctrine of discovery idea that sim that that Christian powers, simply by virtue of being Christian, have a mandate to uh expand into disc to discover and to expand and to subdue for the sake of extending Christendom. And and there are some pieces that go into this idea, in beginning with the pilgrims and and the Puritans of New England that that begin to flesh this out in terms of Genesis 128 in particular, which is God's first commandment to humanity to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, take dominion over all the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and everything that lives on it. So dominion and discovery are really closely aligned, beginning in again in the Puritans of New England, who kind of develop the infrastructure for how we take that verse and expand it to the acquisition and seizure of lands. But that's that's the real connection. I mean, and that's the piece that really gets expanded, particularly in the 19th century, is this idea that Christians are fulfilling the basic mandate to all humanity, and that the indigenous peoples are not, and are either resisting or opposing the imposition of God's replenishment of Eden and establishment of order in the land so that it can be fruitful and that people can multiply.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

And so just to make sure I understand this, it's really good, but they're they're looking at Genesis and they're saying, hey, God tells his people to be fruitful and multiply. Part of that, and and to subdue the earth, right? So part of that is that if we're going to multiply and go out there, like this is not just like an idea. This is this has a divine mandate and commission behind it, that we have to do this. If we're not doing this, we actually might be even committing a grave sin by not discovering and not taking over what God has essentially given to us, laid out for us. And is that is that kind of correct? Is that exactly so? Well, I'm glad I have that foundation. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

No, yeah. So that's that's it in a nutshell. So the question is, what does it mean to take dominion? Subdue. What does it mean to subdue? And how does one fill the earth? I mean, how do how do we make the land fruitful and a place for all living things to multiply?

SPEAKER_01 14:49

And this is the question that they're asking. And I I would love to for you to tell us about the answer they gave. I think we can kind of predict how they did that. But but part of this too, though, right, was their sense that they were biblical Israel, right? Even be able to, or some had some kind of this continuance with biblical Israel to the place where they felt like almost they could take the conquest theology, the conquest land theology, right? And take that and apply that and appropriate, appropriate it for the 18th century, 19th century, I guess it would be the 19th century, appropriate it for that so that they can then have the biblical justification to go drive out the heathen from the land because it's their land. Could you, I mean, I know your expertise says in in the Old Testament and and in even those conquest narratives, could you help us understand the connection between the conquest narratives, the idea of biblical Israel, and and the attitude of manifest destiny in the eighth and 19th century?

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Yeah, great question. And and the the short answer is not much of a connection. Interesting. So what happens is this kind of creation mandate becomes the kind of the central justification for taking land, ordering it, making it fruitful, taking dominion, so on and so forth, seizing the land. And and this is all developed initially by New England Puritans and just kind of expands into the developing national consciousness, cultural consciousness of the colonies. And you would think, and this is one of the biggest surprises to me when I was working on the book, you would think with people who identify so directly with biblical Israel that appropriating the conquest narratives of the Hebrew Bible would be a no-brainer. Yeah. So we're just we're we're a God's new Israel. And and so we're gonna do what Joshua did. And you're the heathen, and you're the yeah. And interestingly, so for example, interestingly, so two things. One is that there's virtually no reference to the to the conquest narratives in the book of Joshua. I'm very surprised. I'm very surprised. It's one of those things that you just hear because people just say it and repeat it and it makes sense. But you there it there are there are crickets throughout the 19th century with respect to that. I mean, we like the Exodus metaphors, okay? God delivers us from tyranny, pass through the sea into the promised land, and we have Canaanites there, we know what to do with them. Interestingly enough, there are there are almost no instances where the peoples, the indigenous people are called Canaanites. Interesting. In colonial New England, the phrase is Amalekites, aggressive traditional end, but they never, they never refer to to the indigenous peoples around them as Canaanites. And there's been some reflection about this, and it strikes me, and this is I mean, this is my my hunch the the the Christians of the the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries had as much ethical problems with the biblical context, the con biblical contrast as we do. And but so but on the other hand, you know, so you've got this kind of sense of humane and biblical values, and the idea that we're actually doing what Joshua did kind of is is is a little too close, and I think it really probably clashes so much with the nation's desire to be a biblical people that it's just like so we repress it. And I would suggest it's still there, but it's a script that's kind of running in our operating system, but it doesn't reach the level very rarely. I mean, it it it's it's almost as if there was a and it's not, but it's almost as if there's an intention to say, no, no, we're you know, we're we're we're doing some stuff, we're taking the left, but but this is not what we're doing in terms of Joshua. So that expands the role of this creation mandate, at which it just becomes surprised.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

That's so that's so interesting. You learn something new every day, Dan. Thank you. I mean, that's it's crazy, man. It's so funny.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Yeah, you know, Dan, I I I'm curious, like how how do ideas like this actually spread? I mean, uh if if there's one thing I've learned in the recording of the series, is that faith leaders really have played a humongous role kind of over the course of American history, because if there is an idea and then that idea gets brought to church, and that pastor or faith leader believes in that idea, like he's gonna tell the congregation about it, and then they're all gonna believe it as well. So I'd love for you just to kind of help us understand, like, I mean, an idea like Manifest Destiny, you know, may have been derived by some person in Texas, you know, but sort of the the effort was, you know, involved more than just one person. So, like, how did it get from just sort of this one idea to kind of this huge thing that that we're now talking about?

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Because it was convenient. And it it it gave a biblical legitimization to what we were doing. So let me take the creation mandate. So be fruitful, multiply, take dominion, so on and so forth. So, what does it mean to subdue? What does it take to make the land fruitful? Well, and this this is from the very beginning. This is John Winthrop and and some of the early Puritan leaders who are saying, who are interpreting this mandate and saying, well, to replenish, and sometimes you get that language, to replenish the land, to take dominion, means to impose a divine order on the land. So transform the land into property, start constructing fences and boundaries, populate the property with domestic rather than wild animals, cultivate the land so that the land can be fruitful. So a piece of that then is ownership. I mean, you you can't cul uh in the in the colonial mind, you can't cultivate land you don't own, and you can't improve land. That you don't own. So what we've got to do, and and you're absolutely right, this is like a deep, deep conviction. This is a mandate. This is not just you know from God, and it is the overriding first mandate that applies to all human beings. So what we need to do is reclaim, and so we're looking out as you know, in the in in in uh in Puritan New England, and we're seeing the land around us, it's it's a wilderness. There's no order. The people that we see there are lawless, they don't have laws, and they don't own anything, they wander around. So from the Puritan mind, this means, and and they're under the domain of Satan, you know, wild, chaotic, so on and so forth. So, what we need to do, what we are called to do, is to expand God's order, take dominion over this wilderness. And and and another piece that comes and fits into this a little later is the idea that if nobody owns a land, then it's empty. And it's available for anybody to come in and take. As a matter of fact, there's an obligation. If there is vacant land that people don't own, then you not only have the right, but you have the mandate to go in and take it, because the people who are there who are just kind of wandering around and not cultivating it, they're selfish. And they're, you know, they're they're taking they're they're taking all this land that could be cultivated and rendering the earth fruitful and multiplying and and expressing God's dominion. So, and and these ideas, I mean, they're they're just so powerful that they just uh after a century or so, they just become part of the the assumption, the set of convictions that are assumed. And and it really kicks in in the 19th century, especially when uh indigenous peoples are resisting, you know, violently or resisting, you know, dispossession and all of this. There's a very strong stream that says we need to move the indigenous people out of here because they're resisting. It's not just that they're an impediment, they are resisting what God has called our nation and the Christians in it to do, which is take this land, develop it, and it's got its secular manifestations by that time, but everybody assumes that it's it's important and it's a vital mission for the United States to take this land and order it, not only for the extension of Christian Christendom, but for the betterment of all humanity because of the civilization we're going to build on this land.

unknown 25:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

And Dan, how do how is ownership kind of classified? Like when you say, you know, if somebody doesn't own it, I mean, I I I don't know enough about like, you know, people had mortgages. But yeah, I'd love like to just kind of maybe uh clarify that. Like, so when you say that, you know, if if people don't own it, then it's basically ours.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Yeah, so there's a basic dichotomy of perspective that begins again in New England and and and just begins to configure the the entire colonial project. And and so ownership is a big deal. So when when when Puritans and and later just white settlers as they're expanding, as they're they're looking to what what they're doing, they're they're basically saying ownership. We need to establish some form that we can validate ownership. So people people need to own land in order to improve it or to to fence it off and uh improve it and cultivate it, so on and so forth. So there's this idea in the in the in the Puritan mind that that that's what taking dominion looks like. It it means basically recreating an English Eden without the mess. And and as they look, now that is so different from the way that the indigenous peoples around them related to the land. They're part of the land, they they basically often they they cultivate the land, but they have their own ways of cultivation, which are actually better for the soil than European plow agriculture. But they're wandering around. They don't have a concept of ownership. From their perspective, they are they are partners with the land, they're giving what the land yields, and so they'll they'll plant crops, they'll settle in the spring, and they'll stay there through the summer, harvest in the fall, then they'll go to winter camps and you know subsist by by hunting. And so they're part of the land, they care for the land, but they don't own it. And they don't have a piece of paper that says this property belongs to you. So it's it's basically it's a transformation of land into real estate. And so they're looking around and they're saying they don't they don't have any laws, they don't have any structures. It is exactly there for the taking. And we have every right. Matter of fact, we have again, we have a divine commandment that so this whole verse just gets blown up into this whole ideology that then in the 1700s gets taken up by secular authors whom the founding fathers read and and there's just no by the time we get to the founding of of the United States, there's just no there's no questioning that this is this is the right thing to do, and this is what we are doing and should do.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Yeah, it's it's it's amazing because we had Malcolm Foley on, and his big thing was racism can basically basically be traced to the origin, its origin is in greed. Ultimately, he hit his idea was that the origin was in greed. You know, it doesn't make sense that these people would be treated as less than humans unless you can figure out a like unless greed essentially gets to the place where it's like, well, we really need to find justifications because we want this money and we want this profit and we want this land, or we want whatever it is, right? So it's like this is exactly what is happening, you know, and how how often do we have, you know, I'm challenged myself because how often do we have theological justifications behind things that are really are just our desires that we want? You know, like we want this, so we're gonna say God wants this. So because wouldn't it be nice if what God wants and what we want are in alignment? I mean, what better justification than that, right? To take what you want than that the creator is telling you it's okay. And so it's understandable why this is such an important justification for people and why the incentives like why the internal our internal mechanisms actually get us to convince ourselves and pretty pretty easily actually to do pretty horrific things or to allow horrific things or to overlook horrific things or wrong or or or immoral things because we have a higher higher calling or or higher. And so I would love for you to help dispel the myth that that America and Christians in America are Old Testament Israel. Being an Old Testament scholar, obviously you're a historian as well, those skills are very transferable, and your expertise has allowed you to come into this topic of manifest destiny. But I would love for you to put on your old testament scholar hat and tell us why this, why Christians are not ancient Israel. And yeah, kind of help us dispel that myth because that gets thrown around a lot even today, that we have these same kinds of rights, that this conquest is ours, those kinds of things.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Yeah, well, first thing I would ask was was when was this when was the United States dedicated by covenant to God? I mean, when when did we align with Israel as a covenant people where all of the population followed a leader and said, Yes, we will be, we will be your people. I mean, so there's there's really, I don't see anything in the Hebrew Bible that really gives kind of this idea in in the 21st century, this idea that we're the new Israel. I mean, other than that we've just believed that all the way through, and and we've we've grabbed hold of that when it's convenient and we've ignored some of the other elements when it's not. But I mean, when we look at biblical Israel, this was not a template. I mean, one of the things we like, a lot of Christians like to do with the Old Testament, I've discovered in in the popular arena, is to read the Old Testament as a template. So this is what it means to be a Christian nation. Or there are there are a lot of people I'm sure you know, arguing right now that the United States has a covenant with God. And therefore, we need to, you know, we need to get our acts straight as as as we define it, because as a covenant people, we're standing under the and risking the judgment of God. But there's there's never been a time when we've done this. There's never been a, I mean, church attendance was hovering around 17% during the time of the revolution. I mean, this so you've got that, and then you've got this idea that that the founders established what what Robert Bella called an American civil religion. I mean, so we take a lot of these symbols, Christian symbols, and we reorient and we we use them to instill love of country. So so love of God is replaced by love of country. Mission to bring salvation becomes a mission to bring liberty and democracy, so on and so forth. So but I would simply just say two things. One is again this idea, this was not a template. What God did in and through uh the nation of Israel was a one-time-only, unique, non-repeatable event with a particular people. I think the New Testament picks that up, recognizes and values that, and and but uses that that idea simply to say, and God is now extending what God has was doing in the in the nation of Israel, biblical Israel, into a new time. So that that we we live on, we Christians live under a new covenant. We we hear this too, right? We live under a new covenant, we're not bound by any old old covenant. So it just to me it just seems like there's no foundation. There's there's some stinking biblical thinking going on, but and which again just conveniently helps to advance certain ideological ends, but you just can't take scripture and say, well, here's here's a similarity I see between scripture and the common good, so wow, there's a connection. You read the Bible as the narrative of God's mighty works through Israel and through the early church, and let that be the trajectory that orients thinking and practice and belief rather than this crazy idea that somehow we're rewinding the tape and we're gonna develop a Christian nation based on the Old Testament. I mean, that's that's that's an old tactic, by the way. It began with Charlemagne and Alcuin of York. Charlemagne wanted to create a Holy Roman Empire and ask Alcuin, well, what does that look like? And Alcuin said, well, okay, let me go back to the Old Testament because I can't use the New Testament. Let me go back to the Old Testament. And so this is an impulse that goes way back, but doesn't make it any less valid.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

You know, and in a lot of the uh study and just research and even just the conversation that we've had for the series, we've seen the Bible use in a lot of different ways. And I think that you've already touched on some of them here, but but with regards to the Bible being used against black people, there is a an interpretation of, you know, blacks are descended from the line of ham, like they call it the curse of ham. And then they also use the Bible to support like segregation, right? Like, okay, God made all these different races and they put them all over the place, and so God wants to keep them separate. Like, was there a biblical explanation for why like indigenous people look different than than many of the white settlers that were moving west?

SPEAKER_00 36:59

Yeah, that's that's a really good question. My sense is well, I'll say two things, and if I could cycle back, Josh, just to a point you made earlier. My sense it was it was you know, they did notice the differences, but they were some of the differences well, they were differences that that don't always kind of continue into the present day. For example, the Europeans noticed that indigenous people, uh the uh again, these are the earliest, you know, wondered why they they were so tall, first of all, and and they took baths a lot, which was the and these were not true of the of the white, so so it's it's you know, appearance isn't a big part of it, but it's it's their ways. I mean, it's it's we need we need them we need to create a binary in which we maintain our identity over against an outgroup who is everything that we are not. So we can say that we are ordered and rational and godly, and they are ungodly, lazy, pagan, so on and so forth. So I I think cleaner though, right? Cleaner, oh yes, most definitely, and probably smelling better. But so so you you've got a whole complex of ways that indigenous identities are constructed so as to kind of illustrate in the negative what we are not, and again, conveniently also bolsters our claim to the land. And and this this racism is is like Joshua were saying earlier, is deeply, deeply embedded in in greed. And it it is this insatiable and and gred for land, and one of one of the ways that we construct denial mechanisms around that is is to say, well, they're not civilized. And and the uh Christians throughout the 19th century, one of the ways they justified taking the land was to say, well, we're giving them Christian civilization in return for their lands, which is a huge blessing, and they should be glad that we're doing that. But what gives the lie to that particular argument that we construct concerning ourselves is that even when certain indigenous peoples began to adopt some of the practices, not necessarily traditions or forms of beliefs, but practices, clothing, agriculture, so on and so forth, technology. For example, the Cherokees established their own institution and their own mechanisms, uh, their own laws. And so even when that happens, and as indigenous peoples are as as the whites think, you know, progressing toward civilization, even when they're doing that, people like the Georgia legislature can say, this is a problem, get out anyway. Which is a way of saying we don't want Indians, period. We and that's that's where the the the whole denial mechanism breaks down. It's when again, indigenous some indigenous people start you know down that road. And and and literally, there there are there are statements by high-level government officials early in the in the 19th century that said this is a problem. They're becoming too much like us, and that won't give us the the impetus we need to remove them. They look too similar. To do similar.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

Exactly. They have to look scary, they have to look different, they have to look uh oh, it's the boogeyman, it's too, it's too it's too different for us, it's too strange, too taboo. Right? That is that is that that is a basic part, I think, of human psychology. If you want people to hate something, you have to make them ugly. You have to make it so like you can't, you know, there's an ugliness to it that you you don't like looking at or whatever it is. I think that's what they try to do with the color of people's skins, right? They try to make it look ugly so that people couldn't see the beauty in people, and so they had to, right? Um, and if you can get to that as we're j as Jonathan Height fanboys here talking about uh elephants and and riders, if to the elephant, the part of the people that is just emotion, then you've basically won at that point. If you can ignite disgust within them or or whatever it is, right? Ignite disgust and then ignite what covetousness on the other side of what they what they have, then you can get a pretty good uh recipe for people to do whatever you want, or at least do horrible things. And this is kind of where I want to get to and thinking for a few minutes about the horrible things. Now, obviously, we know that they push people out, you know. There's a lot of different ways to do that. There's a lot of different ways to take the land. I'm assuming that there's more humane ways and more inhumane ways, more violent ways and more less violent ways. And we know from our last conversation where we talked about this and and people who in this conversation that violence was a part and parcel of what happened. And even in our last conversation, I remember talking to you about some of the most horrific things that remember some of the most disturbing things that you had seen, and and they are indeed disturbing. And people who are Christian should uh understand these accounts, and we'll get to that in a minute here, but understand like and do some self-reflection. How is it that people that proclaim the name, like the name of Christ and the love of Christ can do these kinds of things? And that's kind of what I want to get at. How were the settlers able to like what did they need to believe about the indigenous peoples? Like, we know that they believed that they were pagan. Is there more that they had to believe about the indigenous peoples? Like, how is it that they could come and do such violence and find it morally acceptable? Essentially, like, even it's absolutely mind-blowing to me that they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that conquest stuff. Whoa, Joshua, that's that's a little crazy. And then yet you have the accounts of them literally hammering and beating to death, bashing people's heads in, children, women, you know, it's like the kind it's just mind blowing to me. So, how how do they do it? How what what else needed to happen for settlers to see the way that they saw indigenous people to to allow this kind of violence?

SPEAKER_00 43:59

Well. We've got a lot buried under the rug. And one of the the stark truths is that we have this kind of image of the sturdy and valorous, you know, pioneer who, you know, imposed order on the land and so forth. And reality is that the greatest preponderance of frontier violence was perpetrated by settlers who are just motivated by race hatred. That's you know, a lot of them. And and and they're thinking about how we can get this land, so we're squatting and and and on on land that has been reserved for treaty. We don't care. A lot of times they want to provoke a race war so that the government will come in and remove the people. So yeah, how how do you you you you how do you get people to to endorse you know atrocious things? I I would say in passing, that's not just a a an issue for the past, but but let's just keep it there. How how do you get people to one of them is just to, as you said, make them ugly and and and validate as as the government did most of the time, just kind of turn a blind eye to the violence that's going on. And when it's when it's strategic to bring the military in and take those those lands, it just continue to hold to any belief that's convenient, that justifies what you're doing, whether it it makes sense or not. And on the other side, you've got Christian philanthropists who are saying we need to help the poor Indian. And they're developing all these schemes to civilize the indigenous people who don't want to be civilized and haven't been asked if they want to be civilized. But we're concocting all of these schemes to civilize them so that we could prevent their sure and certain extinction. You know, we want to continue. So what happens is things like boarding schools and allotment and termination and all kinds of things get developed by people with humane and Christian intentions who believe that indigenous people are children or primitive or just need some help to see the beauty and virtue of American civilization, but ending up in all cases passing legislation that looks helpful but deprives the indigenous peoples of another huge amount of their land base. I mean, so it's just really complicated. You've got you've got the people that just want them out, and you got the people who are saying, you know, Jesus is really kind of you know tugging on our heartstrings. He doesn't quite want you to bash the baby's heads in with a hammer. He wants you to we're better than that. And you have people saying that, and you know, we're better than that, and and we have national honor at stake. You know, we've got to be consistent with our values, but the way we are consistent with our values in some cases is we're still gonna erase them, but we're gonna do it beneficially in ways that will be for their own good because they don't know any better, and they're resistant, and we need to find ways to help them, you know.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

Very paternalistic, very paternalistic, yeah. Yeah, to say the least.

SPEAKER_02 47:48

So I mean, Manifest Destiny is, you know, it belongs in the 19th century, or maybe that's kind of the period in which like we're we're discussing, but like, do you see any, you know, any possibility of the the echoes of Manifest Destiny showing up in the present? Because a lot of the the the stuff that that we've been talking about, it's you know, I don't have to think very hard, but it's like I I I I feel like I can see remnants of it, you know, when I turn on the news, when I look at global politics, you know, when I when I look at that. So is is Manifest Destiny making a comeback, I guess, is my question.

SPEAKER_00 48:27

Yeah. Well, that's a great question. And and I I wonder if it ever really left. I I I think it's probably, again, part of that subliminal subterranean script that just runs in our operating system. I mean, when think of this historically, when when when when the United States succeeded in taking all of the land to the West Coast, we didn't stop there. We kept going west to overthrow Hawaii, to take the Philippines, to go into Southeast Asia, Vietnam. I mean it we may not be giving lip service cultural recognition to it, but it strikes me that that that script is still running, and where we've really seen it in the last couple of years. I mean, interesting, I thought it was really fascinating where Donald Trump in his 2025 inaugural address actually invoked Manifest Destiny. He said, We're gonna take our Manifest Destiny to the stars, and we're gonna plant the American flag on Mars. So my sense is he wouldn't have said that unless there was some kind of connection and deep kind of emotive resonance with that. And then you've got the talk, right? We're gonna annex Canada. We're gonna, we're gonna take Greenland because we need it. I mean, that's 1840s. You can't get more 1840s than that. Is he?

SPEAKER_01 50:05

I mean, we're gonna annex Edrew Jackson or is he Donald Trump?

SPEAKER_00 50:08

I'm trying to figure it out. Yeah. I mean, so it's it's here. And it's it's one of those, I would argue it's one of those complexes of deep-seated ideologies in the American psyche that we don't acknowledge, but it I mean, if you know our history, you can see it announcing itself in the present.

SPEAKER_01 50:30

So how how does so let's let's speak to the better angels of the evangelical Christians. You and I, Dan, and well, he he he came to know Christ in an evangelical church, although he probably, I don't know. Well, you might break out in hives if I call you evangelical, but you and I, Dan, we probably have very similar views in terms of theology. That's my guess, and basic basic evangelical theology in terms of authority of the Bible, stuff like that, right? I don't want to assume on you, but knowing Ashland and some of your colleagues, right? So my when when I look at this, I'm like, okay, the evangelical world, we're saying that we are like we're we're the true disciples, man. We're we we value the Bible like no one does. We're we're trying to value Jesus, make him, you know, raise him to a degree that no one else does, center, you know, the gospel people uh need to hear the message of salvation, none of this just being bringing, doing nice things, but we need the actual gospel message. We need truth and grace, right? We need mercy and truth spoken at the same time. How does the gospel challenge evangelicals to how does it challenge us in our current iteration and manifest destiny? In our current iteration, right? It's not gone, it's still here, and I think you've made that point well, and I agree with you. You've convinced me. What is it where where do we go from here essentially? But even specifically pointed at evangelical Christians, what do we need to learn from this? And then maybe what should proceed from that.

SPEAKER_00 52:27

Yeah, wow. And we have how much time left? It's what whatever you need. Yeah. So I, you know, I would, you know, I would simply say we need to start taking Jesus seriously. And when I when I think of of you know Jesus encapsulating, you know, God's plans, purposes, desires, inclinations, will, however you want to put it, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second command is just like it, of equal standing, love your neighbor as yourself. So there's a basic vertical orientation to the gospel and Jesus' work, but there's there's also a horizontal aspect that is absolutely connected. I mean, when when Jesus inaugurated and explained to his congregation in Nazareth what God had sent him to do, he spoke of it in overtly political terms. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, you know, release of the captives. I mean, those are all resonating with the Jubilee passages in the Old Testament, so in the Hebrew Bible. So it just seems to me, yeah, one of the things I hear a lot is, well, you know, uh, what's done is done. I mean, I I can't be held responsible for something that happened 20, you know, 200 years ago. And and I agree, but I would say that we are the people who know what sin does to individuals and peoples. We are the people, we are the people who have a theology of repentance that says when we see injury or or you know, or hurt or damage, we have an obligation to to engage in repentance, reconciliation, right? Jesus said, you know, if you're offer bringing your offering to the altar, there remember your brother has something against you, leave your offering, be reconciled to your brother, then present. I mean, we have this kind of thin theology that says, you know, whatever I do is covered by the blood, you know, I'm and and and I'm good. But it that seems to me to to just really fly in the face of the fundamental teachings of of Jesus and of the early church that move us toward justice, being the people who reconcile. I mean, you know, the Apostle Paul, God has given us the ministry of reconciliation. And and why we are not taking this all seriously and talking about them and orienting our lives, our practice, our missions, our beliefs behind this is is it's it's a puzzle. And it's it's it's just wrong. I mean, we we I I'm not gonna I'm I'm gonna hold myself back from preaching, but we you know, we are the people, I mean, we who bear witness to the saving work of God in our time, and we should be about doing the works that Jesus did.

SPEAKER_02 55:40

Yes. Anyway, yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 55:43

Thanks for preaching. As I as I often say, I'm about to get saved. I might get saved today. Hallelujah.

SPEAKER_02 55:52

That's right. Hey, hey Dan, so so this is our our last question, and and it's it's probably one of my one of my favorite questions to ask. So as a part of this series, I've I've been honored to be able to ask uh 17 really smart people about the uh America 250 and our semi-quincentennial. So, you know, here we are at the time this airs, the 4th of July would have been behind us. But actually, no, it would be it would still be coming up. So so I I I'd love for you to uh yeah, just just tell us like what what does this moment mean? You know, 250 years since the signing of Declaration of Independence, you can you can keep it focused on Manifest Destiny or just as Dan Hawk.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

Oh well, thanks. I I just I think this is an opportunity for us as as a nation really to take a look again at the virtues and characteristics and beliefs that define us and unite us as a nation, and then take a hard look and say, How are we doing? And I I think that I think this moment gives us the opportunity really to reunite, to to revitalize, to to rehearse who we are as a nation, and then really take a hard look and say, you know, what where do we need to or where can we move forward in in recapturing our union so that we're a united people? How how do we do that? And Freedom 250 is not that. I mean, so I mean, so it's it's I I think you know, we we just have to, I mean, we've got this incredible kind of manifestation of our toxic, the toxic elements of our history right there. So we have something to say, well, we're not that, we're this. So, you know, instead of getting all wrapped up in that falderall, I I would hope that we have we take the opportunity to think think as individuals and as groups about where we are as a nation and and what what what are the values that truly unite us and how how can we follow these values to to you know uh kind of fulfill our aspirations of who we see ourselves as a nation in the world.

SPEAKER_02 58:27

I love that. Well, thanks so much, Dan. This has been a wonderful, wonderful conversation. Thank you so much. We are truly honored uh to have this conversation with you. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 58:37

Go, go, go, go, go. No, I was just gonna say I so appreciate the two of you. I mean, and the vision that's behind this, and I hope actually, I'm hoping right now I'm gonna I'm gonna put people onto this because this is exact. I mean, this this is the exercise that I was just talking about. I mean, this is a resource for saying this is who we are. Yeah, this is and and here's how we're not doing so well.

SPEAKER_01 59:01

We kind of think uh God might have inspired this a little bit. Dan, just uh let you in a little secret. I mean, Will got very inspired, dude. Something I I've seen it a couple times in my relationship with six months, and there time to time Will will get something in his head, he's like, This has to happen. And he has done an enormous amount of work. I mean, I've been working with him, but he has done, he's been driving this. So I'm really appreciative of you, Will, and for everything because people need to hear what's really going on. And I appreciate your your participation, Dan, and in your care for this project. It's it's a big deal.

SPEAKER_00 59:39

Well, thanks again for the privilege of uh bringing these items to the the level of conversation. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 59:46

Yeah, yeah, thank you. And thank you to our audience that is watching or listening to this. Thanks so much for sticking around for Church and State 250 Years of Faith in America. And make sure you stick around for our other episodes. We have so much more coming. I think, excuse me, you're gonna enjoy all of it. And as always, make sure you keep your conversations not right or left, but up. And we'll see you next time. Take care.