Adam DJ Brett

This article argues that what we call “religious nationalism” is best understood as a mythic, juridical, and cartographic project that naturalizes domination. Drawing on Indigenous critiques of borders—summarized in the refrain “we didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us”—and on concepts such as the One Dish One Spoon wampum, the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, and Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s “white possessive,” we show how eurochristian nation‑states transform theology into law, territory into property, and relatives into resources. Maps, borders, and legal categories such as “terra nullius,” “plenary power,” and “domestic dependent nations” function as sacred texts of the modern nation‑state, encoding hierarchies of race, religion, and civilization while erasing Indigenous sovereignty and relational cosmologies. Engaging Patricia Seed, Steven T. Newcomb, Atalia Omer, and others, we frame religion, nationalism, and religious nationalism as second‑order analytic categories that expose the ritualized fusion of faith, law, and political identity. The article juxtaposes eurochristian ceremonies of possession with Indigenous understandings of Mother Earth’s territorial integrity, where sovereignty is rooted not in state borders but in webs of kinship with land, waters, and more‑than‑human relatives. By tracing how religious nationalism operates through narrative, ritual, and institutional power—from colonial papal bulls to contemporary Christian nationalism and Project 2025—it is argued that dismantling religious nationalism requires decolonizing the myths, metaphors, and legal grammars that sustain it, and recovering relational frameworks in which language, land, and sovereignty are inseparable.

A historically variegated emblem of trust and faith, the messianic idea is the offer of religion to the people for salvation from the coming catastrophe. Catastrophic Christianity analyzes the messianic idea in “America.” The foci of the study are popular messianic figurations that serve as heuristic devices to explicate early 20th century U.S. culture, revealing two ideological impulses that encapsulate collective responses to the anxieties of the age: authoritarian-populism and catastrophic-utopianism.

This postscript reflects on two special issues that interrogate religious and legal justifications of domination and argues that questions of sovereignty remain constitutive for the field of Indigenous studies today. In contrast to proliferating carve‑outs such as food, energy, gaming, or cannabis sovereignty, the authors contend that such adjectival sovereignties concede excessive ground to settler colonial frameworks premised on tribal recognition, regulation, and permission. They assert that Indigenous nations are sovereign nations rather than administratively defined “tribes,” and that sovereignty must be conceptualized as a lived, ongoing practice rather than a delegated or derivative status. Accordingly, the postscript calls for an understanding of Indigenous sovereignty as grounded in land, language, traditional governance, and the territorial integrity of Mother Earth. Moving beyond a sole focus on dismantling the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, it advances a vision of healing grounded in a return to precolonial lifeways, the revitalization of intergenerational knowledge, and the fulfillment of Indigenous responsibilities to all living beings. Reconnection to community and homelands is framed not as a source of shame for those separated by boarding schools and regimes of domination, but as a generative process of individual and collective healing.

This conclusion reaffirms the central thesis of the volume: the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (DoCD) is a persistent and pervasive system of domination, shaping legal, theological, and cultural structures that perpetuate Indigenous dispossession and white supremacy. Drawing upon scholarship and activism presented at the 2023 Syracuse University conference, the essays reveal how the DoCD is embedded in law, education, tourism, and national identity, sustaining the authority of settler colonialism. The contributors emphasize that true change requires more than legal reform; it demands metaphysical and cultural disobedience to the ideologies underpinning Christian empire and racial capitalism. Enacting justice calls for decolonial approaches—centering Indigenous cosmologies, fostering relationality, and transforming educational and public discourses. Highlighting both harm and healing, the volume advances pedagogical strategies that challenge erasure and settler innocence, urging a return to Indigenous land and knowledge. Grounded in the Haudenosaunee “Two Row Wampum” method and inspired by global Indigenous resistance, the conclusion calls for a comprehensive reimagining of law, theology, and society. Decolonization, it asserts, is ongoing work: requiring the restoration of land, the honoring of Indigenous law, and the cultivation of right relations.

This introduction sets the stage for an edited volume arising from the December 2023 conference, “The Religious Origins of White Supremacy: Johnson v. M’Intosh and the Doctrine of Christian Discovery,” held at Syracuse University. Anchored in the 200th anniversary of Johnson v. M’Intosh, the project critically interrogates the enduring influence of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (DoCD) and its foundational role in shaping United States Indian Law, racism, land dispossession, and Christian imperialism. Through collaboration among scholars, activists, and Indigenous communities, the volume is organized around three core themes: religion, law, and pedagogy. Essays explore the DoCD’s theological and legal architecture, its entrenchment of white supremacy, and strategies for dismantling legal and educational systems of domination. With contributions from leading Indigenous and allied thinkers, the collection highlights transnational impacts—from North America to Brazil and India—while foregrounding Indigenous epistemologies, sovereignty, and calls for justice. This volume advances the global movement to repudiate the DoCD and reimagines justice through frameworks grounded in relationality, accountability, and decolonization. The introduction honors the memory of Sally Roesch Wagner and situates the collection within a growing intellectual and activist tradition.

This introduction sets the stage for an edited volume arising from the December 2023 conference, “The Religious Origins of White Supremacy: Johnson v. M’Intosh and the Doctrine of Christian Discovery,” held at Syracuse University. Anchored in the 200th anniversary of Johnson v. M’Intosh, the project critically interrogates the enduring influence of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (DoCD) and its foundational role in shaping United States Indian Law, racism, land dispossession, and Christian imperialism. Through collaboration among scholars, activists, and Indigenous communities, the volume is organized around three core themes: religion, law, and pedagogy. Essays explore the DoCD’s theological and legal architecture, its entrenchment of white supremacy, and strategies for dismantling legal and educational systems of domination. With contributions from leading Indigenous and allied thinkers, the collection highlights transnational impacts—from North America to Brazil and India—while foregrounding Indigenous epistemologies, sovereignty, and calls for justice. This volume advances the global movement to repudiate the DoCD and reimagines justice through frameworks grounded in relationality, accountability, and decolonization. The introduction honors the memory of Sally Roesch Wagner and situates the collection within a growing intellectual and activist tradition.

Instead of detailed book reviews, some journals publish book notes. Book notes tend to be shorter snapshots and encapsulated recent books within a particular field. Likewise, we seek to do the same thing here. In recent years, there has been an appreciable upswing in scholarly studies and analysis of topics related to what Shawnee/Lenape scholar Steven T. Newcomb called the Domination Code or Dominion framework. While this list is not the total of recent books on dominion, here are some types we have found to be evocative and germane to the work outlined in this special edition. In alphabetical order by author, here are some of the titles we have found to be generative.

This article examines the Doctrine of Discovery as a theological, legal, and ideological structure of domination that continues to shape international relations, settler colonial governance, and the denial of Indigenous sovereignty. Centering the work of the American Indian Law Alliance, Tonya Gonnella Frichner, Steven T. Newcomb, and Haudenosaunee leaders, it traces how the Doctrine of Discovery became embedded in international law, U.S. property law, Federal Indian Law, and Christian imperial thought. The article argues that repudiation statements by churches and the Vatican, while important, remain insufficient without rescinding the Papal Bulls, returning land, paying restitution, and dismantling the broader framework of Christian domination. It situates Haudenosaunee diplomacy—from the Two Row Wampum and Deskaheh’s 1923 appeal to the League of Nations to contemporary advocacy at the United Nations—as a powerful counter-tradition grounded in sovereignty, treaty relations, and the territorial integrity of Mother Earth. The article also considers the limitations of UNDRIP, especially Article 46, while affirming Indigenous efforts to transform rights-based frameworks into responsibility-based relationships with all living beings. Drawing on seven generation thinking, the Great Law of Peace, and ongoing international advocacy, the authors call for a value change capable of superseding the Doctrine of Discovery. The path forward requires rescinding and repudiating the doctrine, honoring Indigenous self-determination, restoring right relationship with Mother Earth, and building educational, legal, and political movements that make another world possible.

As we wrap up this volume and grant period we would like to express our deepest gratitude to S.B. Rodriguez-Plate and the entire team of CrossCurrents for helping to make this special issue a success. Again, we would like to extend our gratitude to all of our sponsors, funders, friends, colleagues, and of course conference attendees. Together we rise and work together to challenge and combat the Doctrine of Christian Discovery and Johnson V. M’Intosh. As we bring this issue to a close we would like to outline the scope of future work and next steps, inviting all of you to join us in the furtherance of this work. However, our research is going to be going in four main directions moving forward

In 2022 Syracuse University received a Henry Luce Foundation grant to support the work of Philip P. Arnold and the Indigenous Values Initiative's Doctrine of Discovery Project. We received three years of funding for "200 Years of Johnson v. M'Intosh (JvM): Indigenous Responses to the Religious Foundations of Racism." This grant and project has been a collaborative initiative made possible through relationships developed over 30 years between academic and Indigenous communities. At its core, the project seeks to interrogate and critically examine connections between the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (DoCD), the Catholic Papal Bulls that undergird the Doctrine, and the Doctrine's pernicious influence on United States Indian Law today. The 200th anniversary of JvM provided an excellent moment to challenge the theology and jurisprudence of the DoCD and this critical Supreme Court decision. The project delved into a range of products and written works such are included in this volume. The essays, podcasts, conference, and public outreach activities of the project grant have helped to raise awareness about the harmful impacts of the DoCD.

In this essay, we will argue that firstly, the international and national legal framings of religion or belief are limited in scope, and one must ask not only religious freedom for whom but also from whom. Secondly, we will underscore the continued limitations of international human rights-based discourse. Why are Indigenous nations consistently excluded from rights-based discourses? We have the UN Declaration on Human Rights (UNDHR), the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNPFII), the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP), this new report, and so many other reports. We will ask at what stage we move from declarations and reports to protecting and supporting Indigenous nations and peoples. Thirdly, building on the limitations of rights-based reporting, we will highlight what this report gets right and invite activists, lawyers, scholars, and all folks to take up and read the report and follow up on the elements we believe to be most salient. Finally, we will conclude by offering an alternative to declarations that support Indigenous nations and peoples’ inherent right to sovereignty. Our conclusion emphasizes Faithkeeper Lyons' urgent message, “The Ice is Melting in the North,” and provides a framework for how people could respond by explaining the Two Row Wampum treaty and the Two Row Wampum Method.

The Office of the External Special Rapporteur on Religious Freedom or Belief contacted Philip P. Arnold, the Indigenous Values Initiative (IVI), and the American Indian Law Alliance (AILA), and asked us to join a call to give input on a new report on Indigenous Religious Freedom or Belief. Numerous Indigenous NGOs, Indigenous nations, and leaders were on the call. The Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed and his staff were most receptive to the feedback given and received. In this special issue, you will find a copy of the report and a copy of the input provided by the IVI and AILA, as well as from our friends and colleagues Michael McNally, Lars Pharo, Dana Lloyd and Cecilia Titizano. This is a representative sample of the inputs collected for the report.

The Doctrine of Christian Discovery is a series of fifteenth-century papal bulls that served as the theological and legal justification for the colonization of the world and the enslavement of the Original Free Nations, starting first on the African continent before spreading across the globe. In the 1800s, these bulls and other documents like The Requerimiento and colonial charters would be codified and enshrined together in U.S. law as the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, becoming the foundation of property law and international law. Also, considering what Peter d’Errico calls Federal Anti-Indian Law, we will trace and document how this framework of domination began with the Catholic crowns of Europe and transformed into the dominion theology found within Christian nationalist theologies today. Our research highlights how the Doctrine became enshrined and encoded within Protestantism and the imagined “secular” of the U.S. and Canada, countries who rhetorically espouse separation of church and state while justifying land theft, treaty violations, and the abuse of Indigenous nations and peoples through the Doctrine. We craft a genealogy of Christian domination by carefully analyzing primary sources, especially the colonial charters. We will conclude by juxtaposing the domination framework and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s principles of the Gayanashagowa (Great Law of Peace).

A historically variegated emblem of trust and faith, the messianic idea is the offer of religion to the people for salvation from the coming catastrophe. This dissertation analyzes the messianic idea in "America." The foci of the study are popular messianic figurations that serve as heuristic devices to explicate early 20th century U.S. culture, revealing two ideological impulses that encapsulate collective responses to the anxieties of the age: authoritarian-populism and catastrophic-utopianism. Four case studies, encompassing four different genres of media, define and illustrate these ideological impulses: The Fundamentals, Superman comic books, Bruce Barton's capitalist Christianity, and The Wizard of Oz film. These iconic figures reflect respectively: a fundamentalist and nostalgic desire for the past; libidinal authoritarianism; commodification of religion; and the triumph of grift and hucksterism. Together, these figures constellate the messianic idea in "America," a collective investment in an elongated historical present, which, in turn, colonizes psycho-social space with increasingly entrenched images that congeal into icons overtime. The messianic idea in "America" is best understood iconologically rather than theologically. As an icon, messianism's primary contributions to the "American" cosmovision are a paranoid catastrophic-utopianism and religiously inflected authoritarian-populism.