Framing the rationale for genocide

Robert Williams writes:
At the dawn of Renaissance Europe's discoveries in the New World and conquest of the American Indian, Europeans already enjoyed the singular advantage of possessing a systematically elaborated legal discourse on colonialism. This discourse, first successfully deployed during the medieval Crusades to the Holy Land [and , I should add, eventually to the English colonization of Ireland] unquestioningly asserted that normatively divergent non-Christian peoples could rightfully be conquered, and their lands could be lawfully confiscated by Christian Europeans, enforcing their particular vision of a universally binding natural law. This is to say that for centuries our churches have been involved in the colonization and conquest of the world on behalf of Europe.

Contemporary religious liberals too often disparage systematic thinking, rationalizing their retreat from the task of articulating their values to the vagaries of post modernism. But as Lakoff and others have pointed out unless those who hope for a more open, and humane society begin to articulate where they stand on moral and ethical questions, those who advocate authoritarian. sectarian and corporate values will win the battle of "framing" the big questions of the day. The moral value expressed above, a.k.a. Christian triumphalism is alive and well in our country today. What is the religious liberal response?

The churches of New England preached the rationalization that Williams cited above to justify the genocide of the Natives that the Pilgrims and Puritans encountered. These Christians saw themselves as the children of God coming into the Promised Land, and the indigenous people of what they called the New English colonies as "Canaanites." Such is the first chapter in the history of the "free church" in America.

Williams quote is from his The American Indian in Western Legal Thought; The Discourse of Conquest (Oxford University Press, 1990) and can be found on p.1. I followed a foot by George Tinker, whose article in Soul Work: anti-racist theologies in dialogue refers to Williams.