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The Clash of Civilizations: What are we to do with October 12?

To be honest, I don’t remember anything special about October 12 when I was growing up. We may have had a school holiday. We may have sung or recited a poem about Columbus sailing the ocean blue. We certainly were taught that American history began in 1492. Otherwise, I have no specific memories of the day.

Today, the date is embroiled in a clash of commemorations. In the fight between Columbus Day vs. Indigenous Peoples Day, the latter seems to be gaining a foothold in the date-naming contest.

In my adopted state of Oregon, Columbus Day is most famous for a typhoon-strength storm that blew in from the Pacific Ocean in 1962, cutting a swath through forests, homes, lives, and impaling itself in the memories of Pacific Northwesterners. Metaphorically, the explorer Columbus was such a hurricane force five centuries before, battering the New World from the Atlantic side of the hemisphere.

There had been earlier encounters between the Old World and the New – for sure the Vikings came from the lands of the Norse a half millennium prior to Columbus. And there is evidence of Polynesian explorations on the Pacific side as well. Previously, several distinct waves of peoples migrated over millennia from Asia through the Bering Strait, ethnicities we today refer to variously as Indigenous Peoples, First Nations, Native Americans, and American Indians.

But none of these earlier encounters or waves were like what hit the eastern shores with the arrival of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, the Spanish-invested flotilla commanded by the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. The initial encounter – Columbus landing in the Bahamas and meeting some of the Lucayan, Taino, and Arawak peoples – was a minor traffic fender-bender compared with what was to come.

That the earth is a sphere and not flat had been verified since the time of the Greeks. What was not known by people in Afro-Eurasia is that there was significant, inhabited land in the vast expanse of ocean between the far edges of their continents. Columbus’ most famous miscalculation was thinking the earth’s sphere smaller than it was, the correct size having been determined as early as 200 years before Christ. As it turned out, Columbus had only enough provisions to make it to a land no European knew existed.

The world Columbus “discovered” was anything but vacant land. As many as 60 million people lived in the New World from the northernmost Arctic Ocean to the Tierra del Fuego archipelago at the southern tip of modern-day South America.

I remember talking with a white South African when I lived in China. His interpretation of his nation’s history irritated me, explaining to my kids as he did how the Dutch settlers supposedly found virgin land without African inhabitants. Such are the history rewrites of those who come after, hoping to claim another’s land as their own.

But Columbus did not expect vacant land at all. He intended subjugation, exploitation, and conversion. His arrival was only the beginning of a global convergence in peoples, creatures, fauna, diseases, cultures, technologies, ideas, and conflicts now called the Columbian Exchange that would forever transform the entire world.

Certainly, Columbus contributed his share of destruction and oppression of indigenous peoples he encountered. But the conquest and trade that followed in his wake over the ensuing centuries was a tsunami. Deliberately and inadvertently – the latter through the spread of disease and the loss of habitat – wiped out many of the original peoples, replacing or mixing them with Europeans, Africans, and Asians.

The Columbian exchange was not the first large-scale clash among civilizations. People groups and empires have been bashing into other people groups and empires throughout human history. Think of the Persians, Alexander the Great, the Han, the Romans, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Mongols, and the Ottomans. All these empires – and more – advanced cultures even as they displaced and devastated peoples and lands. And there were significant clashes among the New World’s pre-Columbian indigenous peoples as well. As with these earlier cultural seismic shifts, much good and evil ensued with Columbus’ arrival.

Another Italian explorer, Americus Vespucci, posthumously gave his name, and not Columbus’, to this New World. Yet Columbus’s name is plastered all over nations, cities, rivers, companies, and hemispheric myths. For the first century after his death, his legacy lay in tatters, the result of his failures as a colonial administrator. But over time he grew to become an icon of epic proportions. He is celebrated throughout the Americas.

By the late 1800s and early 1900s, beleaguered Italian immigrants in the U.S. were elevating Columbus as an ethnic hero, even as members of the Ku Klux Klan were killing Italian Catholics and attacking their icon as a symbol of the hated Catholic religion. In 1934, the U.S. Congress designated October 12 as Columbus Day, though it did not become an official U.S. holiday until 1971. For Italian Americans, Columbus Day remains a celebration of ethnic heritage as much as of the man himself.

By the 500th anniversary of his “discovery,” his iconography was no longer shining. In our time, Columbus Day has become the epicenter of modern-day culture wars.

Some bemoan the loss of the First Peoples and their heritage, seeing a direct link between Columbus and the erasure of nations. Others bemoan the shaming of European heritage as the image of Columbus is metaphorically torn down. Still others bemoan the ongoing “invasion” of new generations of immigrants following in the footsteps of everyone else who has come to live in the New World. On and on the conflicts swirl.

Whether you celebrate Columbus Day or, as I do, Indigenous People’s Day – or neither; whether you observe October 12 or the second Monday of October (the official holiday in the U.S.); whether you are Italian American or Native American clinging to your heritage; whether you are angry with others changing the world that you think you know, this day is a reminder of what happens when people get in each other’s faces.

The book of Genesis speaks of peoples being separated by God at the Tower of Babel so they could not assume the role of gods, and thus were the distinct nations formed. But these distinctions were ever changing as these people groups interacted with each other time and again. Modern human DNA analysis attests to these endless encounters, even as it reminds us that we all share a common ancestry.

This old globe grew far too small way too long ago for us to avoid tensions between peoples. Certainly, with 8 billion humans on this planet now, there is no way for us to escape one another. That said, Genesis tells us that human tensions led to murder when the human population on earth numbered a mere 4 individuals.

So, the issue is not overpopulation, though crowdedness can exacerbate tensions. No, the issue is human sin, pure and simple. Wherever two or more are gathered there will be conflict. And so we have to learn to live with each other.

Maybe that is why Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day precedes Christmas. Maybe we must recognize what has divided us before we can embrace a Savior who has come to reconcile us to God and to each other.

This year I will call this day the Clash of Civilizations Day in recognition of what we have done to ourselves.

I will remember the Clash of Civilizations in recognition of all the good, the bad, and the downright ugly that occurs when we forget that we are all made in the image of God.

I will remember on this Indigenous Peoples Day the people who were here first – and their illustrious heritage.

I will remember those who came later out of good or ill will, and sometimes both.

I will remember those who fled to the New World to escape oppressions and poverty in the Old.

I will remember those who were tricked, tyrannized, and trafficked here, mostly from Africa, but also Europe and Asia, enslaved, indentured, or otherwise.

I will remember the work of those who have endeavored to spread God’s good news to every people group on earth.

And I will remember, as a cautionary tale, those who inflict pain and suffering in the name of Christ.

I will remember the countless immigrants – including Italian Americans – who have been so maligned by those who got here beforehand, and who have contributed so much good to the world.

I will remember that my very existence is due to this Clash of Civilizations.

I will remember that I bear responsibility to right wrongs, fight injustices, and extend mercy wherever I go – that I have been called to restore what my forebears have ruined.

I will remember that God’s preferred vision for us as human beings is that all peoples will be represented around the Throne of Grace.

And I will remember that I have been called as a recipient of that grace to do my utmost to ensure that all peoples are represented around God’s throne.

Better yet, I will call this day Imago Dei Day, reminding us that we are all made in the image of our Creator.

In our fallen state, we have come to see ourselves as gods who can place value (or lack thereof) on other human beings, usurping a role only the Creator can claim, a Creator who deemed all creation good. In our sin, we dismiss, debase, and destroy others around us – all with the hope of elevating and enriching ourselves.

God, through His Son, Jesus Christ, comes to redeem and restore us, reconciling us with our fellow human beings. We might not – we surely will not – achieve world peace in our lifetimes. But we are called to be people of peace, people ever working for God’s shalom both now and in eternity to come. Working and praying that God’s Kingdom will come on earth as it is in Heaven.

When I was young, my parents pastored a church in a town nicknamed “The Holly City,” famed for its holly tree farming. My father said his goal was to drop one of the “Ls” on the welcome sign by working to make it a “Holy City.” When I think of our collective legacy, this “Clash of Civilizations,” my heart’s desire is to see that “clash” transformed into the “Conciliation of Civilizations.”

“Conciliation,” not a street-level word, has good meaning: the action of mediating between two disputing people or groups. Ah, there is the heart of the Good News – bringing us back to God and into harmony with one another!

On this day, I offer a four-point prayer to recite throughout the day:

Eternal Creator God,

In the morning, we remember the Clash of Civilizations. We ask you to forgive us and our forebears for how we have warred against one another, how we have debased, demeaned, and destroyed each other, erasing your people, your creation, and condemning so many to eternal lostness.

Midday, we pray for Conciliation. Heal and restore our likeness to you and our fellowship with each other; remind us that we are brothers and sisters, one and all, and that you have called all of us together to worship You.

As evening comes, we declare this day Imago Dei Day. Remind us that we are made in your image, all of us; that though we are not God, we reflect God; and that we never meet another human being without seeing your face.

And at the close of the day, we pray the prayer your Son taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”1

Amen!

You are welcome to join me, wherever you are on this vast globe, as I pray this prayer throughout the day – today or the official holiday.

On social media, in the comments section below, or via this contact page, let me know how you are participating. Thank you!

Public domain print (1914): “The Coming of White Man”


  1. Matthew 6:10 ↩︎

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Published inIntercultural