By the fifteenth century, Christian theology had moved out of the pulpit and into law. It authorized conquest.
In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued Dum Diversas. The language leaves no room for interpretation: Christian rulers were permitted to invade, capture, and subdue non-Christians and reduce them to perpetual slavery.
If the words feel extreme, that’s because they are. They were also enforceable.
That logic expanded with Romanus Pontifex (1455) and Inter Caetera (1493). Together, they formed what became known as the Doctrine of Discovery. Christian nations claimed sovereign rights over lands inhabited by non-Christians.
The structure is simple. Sovereignty required Christianity. Indigenous societies did not qualify. Their political authority was treated as if it did not exist.
No recognition. No standing. No claim.
This wasn’t a breakdown of the system. It is the system, written out plainly.
From papal decree to U.S. law
The doctrine didn’t stay in Europe. It moved into American law.
In 1823, the U.S. Supreme Court formalized it in Johnson v. M’Intosh. Indigenous nations held a right of occupancy. Ultimate title belonged to the discovering power.
Same framework. New court.
The label changed. The outcome didn’t.
Manifest Destiny
By the mid-19th century, the same assumptions appeared under a different label: Manifest Destiny.
Coined in 1845, it framed U.S. expansion as divinely sanctioned. Indigenous land claims, Mexican sovereignty, and competing authorities were treated as secondary.
Providence did legal work here. It established legitimacy before any conflict was resolved.
If expansion is God’s will, opposition becomes defiance.
Chosenness and Hierarchy
The roots go back further.
Puritan theology already carried the idea of a chosen people. John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” marked a community set apart, accountable to God, and distinct from others.
That distinction translated easily into authority.
By the 19th century, that religious framing merged with racial theory. Anglo-Saxon superiority was presented as natural order backed by divine sanction.
The results were concrete. Forced removal of Indigenous nations. The Trail of Tears. War with Mexico. Territorial annexation.
These actions followed from the assumptions built into the system.
They don’t require bad actors. They require the belief.
Continuity
The language changed. The structure stayed intact.
A favored people. A sanctioned nation. A moral claim to authority.
In the United States, this shows up as the belief that the country occupies a divinely favored position.
Survey data reflects it. A significant portion of white evangelicals affirm that the United States was intended as a promised land for European Christians. That belief tracks with denial of systemic racism, dismissal of Indigenous dispossession, and opposition to immigration.
Same pattern. Same outcomes.
If the premise holds, the conclusions follow.
This isn’t confined to the past. The same logic — authority assumed, competing claims dismissed — still shows up wherever power is framed as destiny, mandate, or divine right.
Resistance within Christianity
The abolitionists were reading the same book.
Enslaved people and free Black Christians drew on biblical narratives to argue for liberation. The Black church became an organizing force. Frederick Douglass used scripture to expose the contradictions within slaveholding Christianity.
Same text. Opposite conclusions.
Those conclusions didn’t emerge from the center. They came from people who were being crushed by the system those texts had helped justify.
The Structural Issue
The Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny, and racial hierarchy share a common feature: they assign moral authority in advance.
Once that authority is in place, policy follows.
Land seizure becomes lawful. Displacement becomes justified. Inequality fits inside the system.
If a framework can consistently legitimize domination, the question isn’t how it was misused.
It’s why it keeps producing the same result.
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