With Thanksgiving approaching, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss Christians' treatment of Native Americans during the years of European settlement in the Americas. This is not meant to be some overly-PC disavowal of the Thanksgiving holiday. I, for one, still plan on eating a fine turkey dinner with my family and being thankful for the good things in my life.

However, though all of us probably know something about the cruelty inflicted on Native Americans by settlers, it is truly horrifying to read about the details. And with little surprise to us, these were at least partially religiously motivated by ideas of the natives' pagan inferiority, a "chosen people" conception of Manifest Destiny, and that ever-pesky End-Times thinking.

This excerpt from David Stannard's book, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World, should serve as a good conversation-piece.
http://www.the7thfire...

Also, I will not be at this meeting, as I am attending the annual fundraising dinner at the Thomas Merton Center, though I may come late if things there finish up early.