A Native American Christian activist decried the “implicit racial bias” of Americans during a recent speech before a Christian development organization. Writer and speaker Mark Charles asserted there was “no such thing as a Christian nation,” blasting Americans for believing in American Exceptionalism and the “absolute lie” that they were “God’s chosen people.”
“The United States of America is not rich and powerful because of God’s blessing. We are rich and powerful because we are inherently unjust and systematically racist,” Charles charged. He continued that if “we are ever going to deal with our history,” Americans had to “begin by lamenting it.”
Charles made the incendiary comments on November 11 at a plenary session of the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) National Conference in Memphis, Tennessee. The Arizona-based activist serves as a board member for CCDA and the Christian Reformed Church of North America.
Charles has employed similar rhetoric before. In early November, he spoke at Messiah College and Dordt College about the “Doctrine of Discovery,” calling hearers to “lament.” Both colleges identify as Christian institutions. The Native American Activist was also a featured speaker in April at the Q Ideas conference in Boston, an influential gathering of Evangelical Christians focused around cultural engagement. Charles regularly writes for the progressive Christian magazine Sojourners, in which he has taken issue with the Declaration of Independence because of a reference to “merciless savages” and questioned Pope Francis for not condemning the “Doctrine of Discovery.”
Active on social media, Charles tweeted on November 7 that the “myth of American Exceptionalism is a coping mechanism for a nation in denial of its systemically racist reality.” In another tweet on November 10, Charles said that early European colonists settling America represented a “flood of illegal immigrants.”
Charles developed similar views in a series of at least 13 tweets in October related to Columbus Day, saying Americans needed “mourn” on the holiday instead of celebrate. “The holocaust is taught in Germany, so that they will never repeat it. USA needs to do the same with #ColumbusDay,” Charles wrote in one tweet on October 10.
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