The end of Donald Trump's speech at the Republican Convention celebrated an unholy mix of Manifest Destiny and White Supremacy.
In talking about our "American Ancestors," Trump said that, “They loved their families, they loved their country, and they loved their God. When opportunity beckoned, they picked up their Bibles, packed up their belongings, climbed into their covered wagons, and set out West for the next adventure.”What Trump’s version leaves out is the Native American ancestors already living on the continent when European explorers and settlers arrived.
It was the Doctrine of Discovery, a series of papal edicts which many Christian denominations have since ruled to be heresy, that gave Christian explorers the right to claim lands they “discovered.”
It also leaves out slavery.
Overall, the story of American progress is more complicated than Trump made it out to be. Manifest Destiny was deeply informed by the long-standing idea that white Protestant ‘civilization’ must advance Westward. This belief claimed that God gave the continent to Christians and it was their ‘destiny’ to conquer and tame it.
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