Chapter 3: What would Jesus have done? Jesus never gave any specific commandments to his followers that address the question of establishing colonies in other lands. But he did give a number of specific commandments about how his followers must treat others and interact with other people. One of the first mandates he gave us was, "Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them" (Matthew 7:12).
Let me ask you, how would the English have liked it if a group of settlers from another country landed on the English coast and then began building a village in an uninhabited English forest? The English would have either killed or imprisoned such audacious adventurers, or else forcibly driven them out, wouldn't they? However, the English refused to treat the Indians as they would have wanted to be treated themselves.
They expected the Indians to meekly accept tens of thousands of foreigners invading their lands, even though the English never would have accepted such an incursion on their own land. In short, if the English truly wanted peace with the Indians, they needed to treat the Indians as they would have wanted to be treated themselves. They couldn't just move onto the Indians' land without permission or through trickery. Wishing peace isn't enough. Christians have to behave in a manner conducive to peace.
Ironically, one of the reasons the English felt they had the divine right to help themselves to the land in America was that the people who inhabited it weren't Christians.
For example, in granting the patent of Massachusetts, the king added the following provision in the charter: "Provided always that the said islands or any of the premises by the said letters patent intended and meant to be granted are not then actually possessed or inhabited by any other Christian prince or state." In other words, it would be wrong to take land away from other Christians, but not from heathens.
As the English king correctly pointed out in the Massachusetts charter, the gospel message doesn't consist merely of theological doctrines. It teaches a whole way of life. That's why Jesus emphasized that his disciples had to teach others to "observe all things that I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:20). Jesus never authorized his disciples to grab land wherever they traveled. Jesus passed through Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, but he never helped himself to the land where he preached.
It was the same with his apostles. They took the gospel to many lands both inside and outside the Roman Empire, but they came as ambassadors of God's kingdom, not as colonizers. In contrast, the English and other Europeans tried to mix evangelism with colonization. But taking land owned by someone else violates God's law against stealing. The English were claiming a right they didn't have. What the Christian way would have been.
So am I saying that it was absolutely wrong for Christians to come to America in the first place? Not at all. Before the coming of the English, North America was sparsely settled in comparison to England. Geographically speaking, North America definitely had enough room for both the Indians and a reasonable number of English settlers to live side by side. So it was not wrong for Christians to come to America, so long as they first obtained permission from the Indians to plant their settlements.
Furthermore, obtaining such permission was quite achievable. That's because English settlements offered a number of benefits to the local Indians. There was a huge market in Europe for beaver pelts and other furs. So the English settlers were eager to acquire furs from the Indians. And in exchange, they were willing to trade copper or iron kettles, metal ladles, knives, axes, tinderboxes, woolen blankets, and other items prized by the Indians.
The English thought they were acquiring furs at low cost, and the Indians felt they were acquiring European goods at bargain prices. So it was a win-win situation. The tools obtained from the English made numerous daily tasks much easier for the Indians. Metal pots were much more durable than fragile clay pots. With metal axes, the Indians could chop firewood and make canoes in a fraction of the time it had taken formerly.
The European tinderbox, with its flint and steel fire starters, revolutionized fire building for the Indians. Before obtaining such tinderboxes from the English, the Indians had to carry live coals and tortoise shells in order to start a fire in a place distant from their villages. This was a cumbersome method, and the Indians rarely used it unless the entire village was relocating.
However, as a result of tinderboxes and metal kettles, Indians could for the first time enjoy hot meals and warm fires at their hunting and fishing camps. The local Indians not only made use of the European items themselves, but they also traded them with other Indian tribes living farther west.
One historian has written, "Wherever Europeans settled, intercultural commerce flourished, and even in areas far from colonial centers, expanded trade not only reordered native economies, but dramatically reshaped native cultures." For that very reason, many Indian tribes did grant European colonists permission to establish settlements in their lands. This was true not only of the English settlers, but also of the French and Dutch.
If God was truly behind the English settlements in the New World, and I think he was, then those settlements could have been planted without violence, using Christian means alone. Men such as Roger Williams and William Penn proved that to be so. Blessing others. As Christians, the English settlers should have gone beyond merely dealing fairly with the Indians. From the very beginning, they could have come to America with the thought of being a blessing to the Indians.
To be sure, the English felt this is what they were doing by bringing Christianity and civilization to the Indians. And, of course, there is no greater gift any people can bring to another than the gospel of Jesus. But when we bring the gospel to other people groups, we can't do it with an attitude that they owe us a favor for doing so. We must never imagine that we're automatically entitled to take their lands because we're bringing the gospel.
As for civilization, most Indians didn't want the white man's civilization. They preferred the lifestyle they already had. So the blessings I'm talking about are practical blessings that would have made the Indians want to be friends with the white men. To illustrate, William Bradford mentions in Plymouth Plantation that the local Indians could grow much more corn once the English supplied them with metal hoes in exchange for furs.
Before the coming of the English, the Indians planted their corn using wooden sticks. They had to weed their crops by pulling out the weeds by hand or by using crude wooden hoes. Imagine the goodwill the English would have created if they had come to America with stockpiles of metal hoes, copper kettles, and tinderboxes to give to the Indians, rather than stockpiles of weapons. Offering the wrong blessing.
Although the English settlers could have offered many legitimate gifts of material blessings to the Indians, such as metal hoes, they generally chose not to do so. Rather, the one material blessing they almost always offered to the first tribe they encountered was to enter into a military alliance with that tribe. In these alliances with the Indians, each side agreed not to attack the other. In the case of war with the other Indian tribes, each party agreed to come to the defense of the other.
Because the English had superior weaponry, it was to the great advantage of any given tribe to enter into such an alliance with the white settlers. This gave such allied tribes immediate ascendancy over rival tribes. Although there was no Machiavellian scheme behind this policy, its net result was that it destroyed the delicate balance of power among the Indian nations. It allowed the white settlers to divide and conquer the Indians, even though that was not their intent.
The Indian tribes who aligned themselves with the English settlers would invariably rise above their enemies. Eventually, wars with other Indian tribes broke out, and the English would join in the wars on behalf of their Indian allies. Typically, in such wars, the English ended up either annihilating the enemy tribes or forcing them to abandon their lands and move to another area. The sad part is that in the long run, the tribes who allied themselves with the English didn't fare much better than their enemies.
As more and more English settlers kept coming, the allied tribes themselves were forced to move off of their own lands. Or if they decided to fight rather than to move, the English ended up decimating them as well. When Jesus sent out his disciples, he told them, "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves." (Matthew 10:16). So Jesus likened his followers to sheep and doves.
He didn't send them out with military power so they could be wolves among wolves. His disciples didn't form military alliances with the Jews, Romans, or any other nation. Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you." (Matthew 5:43-44).
Therefore, instead of forming alliances with specific tribes to help them defeat their enemies, the Christian settlers should have taught the Indian tribes to love and bless their enemies. They should have taught them to exchange their instruments of war for instruments of peace. But, of course, it's hard to teach someone else to obey commandments of Jesus when you aren't practicing them yourself.