The Queen must apologize for the wrongs committed by Henry VII and repudiate the “Christian Doctrine of Discovery,” the 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church has declared.On July 17, the triennial meeting of the Episcopal Church’s synod endorsed resolution D035: Repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery.
The doctrine, “which originated with Henry VII in 1496, held that Christian sovereigns and their representative explorers could assert dominion and title over non-Christian lands with the full blessing and sanction of the Church,” the resolution explained.
The principle of the “Doctrine of Discovery” arose in 1493 when Pope Alexander VI gave Spain and Portugal the right to claim non-Christian lands in the new world and Africa, while Henry VII authorized John Cabot to take possession of all lands discovered for the Crown. Beginning in 1823 the US Supreme Court held that Henry’s charter provided the legal basis for the American government’s ownership of Indian lands as Indian tribes were not independent nations, but “domestic dependent nations”.
This doctrine, the resolution argued, had led to the “dispossession of the lands of indigenous peoples and the disruption of their way of life,” and as such, was a bad thing.
The General Convention directed its presiding officers to “write to Queen Elizabeth II, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, requesting that her Majesty disavow, and repudiate publicly, the claimed validity of the Christian Doctrine of Discovery,” as made by the Tudors.
Rising to speak in support of the resolution, the Bishop of Maine endorsed the proposal, saying it would be a symbolic righting of wrongs.
There was no debate, and the resolution was adopted on a unanimous voice vote.
Hundreds of special interest non-Church related resolutions are brought to General Convention at each session.
Those that make it out of committee to the floor are usually adopted with little or no debate on voice votes.
Resolutions of General Convention have no legal force under US canon law.
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