From “Undoing Manifest Destiny: Settler America, Christian Colonists, and the Pursuit of Justice” by L. Daniel Hawk
The colonial structure, along with the narrative that justifies it, continues to aid and abet a system of unequal relations among the citizens of the United States. Dismantling that structure, I urge, constitutes an essential practice for the pursuit of justice, the ministry of reconciliation, and the creation of a society that seeks the well-being of all members.
But how to start? How do settler Christians like me, and perhaps you as well, face our “complicity in narratives of ongoing colonization and aim at their undoing”? The act of exposure I will undertake stands on the premise that the essential, first step must entail uncovering and rejecting the settler narrative’s denials and fictions of innocence – thus revealing the settler structure as illegitimate. The work of dismantling the settler structure and its legacy must, in short, begin by demystifying the American settler narrative.