Suppose a celebration was given in your name, but you weren’t invited. In fact, you were told to stay away because others were going to use the day to villify your memory.
This is how Columbus Day has been observed in recent years. The quincentenary year of Columbus’ voyage to the New World, 1992, was marked with the Rose Bowl Parade, during which some Native Americans rode into the parade on horseback to protest Columbus and the Spanish Conquest. (I understood their point, but to be historically correct, they should have left their horses behind because the conquistadors brought horses to the Americas.)
Over a dozen states now observe Indigenous Peoples Day or American Indian Heritage Day, some in place of Columbus Day, others in addition to it. Still others call it Discovery Day, remembering both Columbus, Leif Erikson and others who voyaged to the Americas.
As an American with Norwegian ancestry, I fully support honoring others who came to America, and as an American with Lakota relatives (although with no Lakota ancestry so far as I know) I fully support honoring First Nations people. I also support efforts to educate and inform about First Nations people and discoverers, provided they are based on sound history rather than political and ideological propaganda.
But I oppose the culture war that is stripping America of its heritage and erasing from memory those who settled this continent and built this nation and its civilization. I oppose the toppling of monuments, whether they be of Columbus, those who fought for the Confederacy, Washington and Jefferson because they owned slaves, or Lincoln because his views on race were not sufficiently progressive.
Critics who say Columbus came to America for gold and glory simply do not understand that Columbus lived in the Age of Faith in which people believed their eternal destiny, and others’ eternal destiny, depended upon faith in Christ or belief in Islam. As Henry Morton Robinson said in his book “Stout Cortez”:
We shall fail to comprehend one of the chief objects of the expedition, and quite misunderstand the psychology of the Spaniards, unless we can contrive to catch, at its later and colder date, something of the religious enthusiasm that motivated Cortez and his followers. There is nothing in our anemic contemporary life that we can compare with it. The only emotions comparable to the religious zealotry of the sixteenth-century Spaniards are the militant instincts of the twelfth-century crusaders, and the faith of the early Christian martyrs. … Faith was the paramount consideration with him – faith that God was merciful, that Christ died to reopen heaven’s door to man, that He offered His body and blood in the sacrament under the appearances of bread and wine, and that the most abject heathen in the forests of the New World could be saved if these instrumentalities were presented to him.
Christians of Columbus’ time feared the Islamic Empire, especially the Ottoman Turks who had taken Constantinople only recently in 1453. Many believed the Great Khan had asked Marco Polo to send Christian missionaries to China, and they wanted to reach Asia with the Gospel to build a worldwide Christian alliance against Islam. Columbus agreed, but he argued that the best way to reach Asia with the Gospel was to sail west from Spain. It took some persuasion, but finally, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella agreed.
Like many in his time, Columbus believed the return of Jesus Christ was near. In his “Book of Prophecies,” Columbus wrote:
It was the Lord who put into my mind (I could feel His hand upon me) the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. ... There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because He comforted me with rays of marvelous illumination from the Holy Scriptures....
Our Redeemer Jesus Christ said that before the end of the world, all things must come to pass that had been written by the prophets. … Isaiah goes into great detail in describing future events and in calling all people to our holy faith. …
These are great and wonderful things for the earth, and the signs are that the Lord is hastening the end. The fact that the gospel must still be preached to so many lands in such a short time – this is what convinces me.
And when Columbus first landed in October 1492, he named the newfound island San Salvador (Holy Savior), finding friendly people known as the Taino or Arawaks. He wrote of them in his Oct. 11 journal entry, saying that they “made them so much our friends that it was a marvel to see. ... I believe that they would easily be made Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no religion.”
Several days later he wrote, “I don’t recognize in them any religion, and I believe that very promptly they would turn Christians, for they are of very good understanding.”
Things did not always work out according to Columbus’s good intentions. Hostilities sometimes occurred, and during his frequent absences on new voyages of discovery, those who ruled in his place often practiced slavery and other abuses. Epidemics of smallpox and other diseases broke out, and while it is difficult to attach moral blame for these, the results were tragic.
Today, many reject Columbus’ belief that Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross is the only way of salvation. But let us at least give him credit for believing what almost every Christian of his day believed, what the Church has consistently preached throughout two millennia of church history, and what many Christians (including me) believe today: that without Christ people face a lost eternity, and that Christ commanded us to go into all the world and teach all nations (Matthew 28:16-20).
That doesn’t mean Columbus didn’t care about gold. Outfitting and provisioning an expedition of three ships and a crew of 90 for a voyage that could last for years was expensive, and to interest the king and queen in financing future expeditions, he had to show them how they could get a return on their investment. (Ivory-tower academics, if this bothers you, try thinking of it as a “research grant.”)
Should Columbus Day be celebrated or mourned?
Ultimately, your worldview will determine your answer to this question. If you believe all cultures are equally valid, then cannibalism is only a matter of dietary preference, and human sacrifice might be either good or bad depending on which end of the sacrificial knife you happen to be facing. But if there are no absolutes, what’s wrong with Canibs (or Caribs) displacing Arawaks, or with Aztecs displacing Toltecs, or with the Lakota displacing the Cheyenne, or, to take this argument to its logical conclusion, with the Spanish Conquest?
But if you believe in moral absolutes revealed in God’s Word, if you believe God sent His Son to die for our sins and that “whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16), then the voyage of Columbus must be viewed as part of God’s plan to use flawed instruments like Columbus, Cortez, and you and me to bring salvation to this Western world.
Col. Eidsmoe serves as Professor of Constitutional Law for the Oak Brook College of Law & Government Policy and as Senior Counsel for the Foundation for Moral Law (morallaw.org). He may be contacted for speaking engagements at eidsmoeja@juno.com.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819news.com.
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