Posted on 10/29/2007 3:59:32 PM PDT by Huber
Maine Episcopalians passed a resolution at their annual convention Friday that calls for England to rescind a charter issued more than 500 years ago.
The resolution calls for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Queen of England to disavow the 1496 royal charter issued to John Cabot and his sons, according to information on the Web site for the Episcopal Diocese of Maine. It passed by a vote of 175 to 135.
The Maine diocese is the first in the nation to pass such a resolution, according to John Dieffenbacker-Krall, a member of St. James’ Episcopal Church in Old Town and the executive director of the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission. He asked the diocesan Committee on Indian Relations to submit the resolution to the convention.
The charter authorized the Cabots "to find, discover, and investigate whatsoever islands, countries, regions, provinces of heathens and infidels ... which before this time were unknown to all Christians." The charter also says that "John and his sons or their heirs may conquer, occupy and possess, as our vassals and governors, lieutenants and deputies therein, acquiring for us the dominion, title and jurisdiction of the same towns, castles, cities, islands, and mainlands so discovered."
This Doctrine of Discovery, set forth by King Henry VII, was relied upon as justification for the dispossession of lands and the subjugation of non-Christian people, according to information on the Web site.
"My objective is universal recognition that the doctrine is repugnant and should not be used to justify the taking of property and other rights from indigenous people," Dieffenbacker-Krall said Sunday in a phone interview. "The more we build consensus, the closer we are to achieving the goal that universal recognition of the doctrine is wrong to justify actions by nation states."
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. Well, that must mean these good folks are going to give back the land and properties they have (and may well have personally developed) to the dispossesed Native Americans. That would be a very good work.
Though it's funny in the context of a local radio talk show I was listening to coming home this afternoon. Dinesh D'Souza was on (from the station's studio), and remarked how glad he was that a previous generation had probably been forced to convert to Christianity by missionaries to his Indian state of Goa (sp?) some 400 (?) years ago, giving him the advantage of a Christian culture.
He noted too a recent debate with Christopher Hitchens ? atheist) during which a member of the audience stood up and said, to Hitchens, "I am from Tonga, and before the Christian missionaries came all we had was savagery and cannibalism. Tell me, what do you offer?"
So who decides who the indigenous people are and how far back we go? Why stop at the fifteenth century? Why not go back to the fifth century? Or to that prehistoric period when the Indians came over here from Siberia? Are the Indians really indigenous?
I want to see the Cro-Magnons return the land that they stole from the Neanderthals.
It was an ISI debate, part of the Cicero’s Podium series. Most of these debates will be available for download (both video and audio MP3 formats) at http://www.isi.org/lectures/lectures.aspx?SBy=browse&SFor=&SSub=speaker&SM=B8464C41-CF4D-4EC8-8420-55509E1793E0
While you are at the ISI site, why not buy a book? http://www.isi.org/books/index.aspx
Thanks for the links.
I might just get that “Choosing The Right College” book for my brother.
I’ve got a niece that he (and my sister-in-law, of course!) are gonna’ have
to pick a college for...down the road.
Not a bad idea to pay attention to the best and worst colleges early on!
I cannot recommend it highly enough! You will be doing a real service to your niece!
You're too soft, the invading party's descendents need to pack up and go back home to England. Of course, property improvements such as hospitals, schools, courts of any law, colleges, etc. will have to be abandoned as there won't be hardly any native Indians that can fill in the all the newly opened job positions.
Oh well, the Mainiacs have put up with 30,000 near-stone age Somalians being planted on them because Georgia wouldn't up with them, and they are scared to death of being called racist if they mention that those welfare Muslim Neanderthals really don't fit in.
If Hitchens were honest, he'd reply, "Drunkenness and lechery."
I guess if it’s rescinded, we can give North America back to the French and Spanish.
“...according to John Dieffenbacker-Krall, a member of St. James’ Episcopal Church in Old Town and the executive director of the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission.”
What is this person’s connection, if any, to former Canadian Prime Minister John Dieffenbaker?
The New English came to a land without people that had been depopulated by plague and war. The colony at Plymouth set up shop in a conveniently empty Indian village whose people had perished before the New English ever showed up.
There's nothing to give back, because the land was vacant, and its former inhabitants are long since expired without heirs.
I quite agree. Sorry for leaving off the sacrcasm tag.
Something’s weird about this story.
Old Town, Maine is a famous mission town among the Penobscot Abenaki—who were throughout their history very strongly Catholic. When rioters in the 1800s threatened to burn down the Catholic Church at Bangor and far outnumbered the scant few white Catholics there, the Indians came from Old Town with clubs, knives, and tomahawks and dared them to try. The rioters backed down. These same Indians also started the first liturgical choir at Bangor and Salamon Swassin, a Penobscot, was its first director.
Now I dunno if many of the Penobscot have lost the faith or what, but I know one who is a third order Carmelite and very devout.
Maybe they are objecting to not so much the Christianity that was brought by the Church, but the dispossession of lands that was brought by various governmental agencies.
And truth be told, I can’t say I blame them for that.
Not England. England is named after the Angles who stole it from the Britons.
The Anglo-Saxons were from somewhere in Germany. Of course, as a Germanic people, their original home would have been, oh, Denmark or some such. Of course, that isn't really their original home either, as the proto-Germanic people only wound up there after they left the Proto-Indo-European homeland perhaps somewhere above the Caspian Sea. ;)
>> Of course, as a Germanic people, their original home would have been, oh, Denmark or some such. <<
Would you believe Iraq?
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