Original Sin
I am not planning to read the book Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, but I do want to use the occasion of its publication to share my prayers for Joe Biden and his family as they cope with a difficult diagnosis.
What is America's original sin? This is how Joe Biden put it in an August 2022 statement marking Slavery Remembrance Day:
More than 400 years ago, twenty enslaved Africans were forcibly brought to the shores of what would become the United States. Millions more were stolen and sold in the centuries that followed, part of a system of slavery that is America’s original sin.Great nations don’t hide from their history. They acknowledge their past, both the triumphs and the tragedies. Today is a day to reflect on the terrible toll of slavery, and on our nation’s profound ability to heal and emerge stronger. Despite the horrors they faced, these men and women and their descendants have made countless contributions to the building of this nation and the continuous effort to realize the American ideal. I was honored last year to declare Juneteenth a national holiday, another moment to reflect and rededicate ourselves to becoming a more perfect union. And it’s why my Administration will continue the hard, ongoing work to bring true equity and racial justice to our country.I’m grateful for the efforts of Congress—in particular, Representative Al Green and Senator Elizabeth Warren—to recognize the significance of this day.
I don't see the sin of slavery as original to the United States of America, nor would I call it this nation's original sin, but I see the merit in the argument, and I think President Biden here made a good speech.
Many of us voted for Trump in 2024. Many of us voted for Harris in 2024. Both sides have much to learn from honest internal reflection and constructive bipartisan dialogue as we journey together through the next four years. Tapper and Thompson invite us to participate in that reflection. Did Democrats overplay accusations of misogynistic white supremacy in 2024? To this day, apparently, Joe Biden blames Kamala Harris’ loss on sexism and racism and rejects concerns about his age. But when then President Biden made the decision to run again - instead of supporting Vice-President Kamala Harris in an open primary - is it possible he put his own paternalistic version of misogynistic white supremacy ahead of the greater good? Did he prove that the Democratic case against the alleged white male supremacy of the Republicans is in fact the original sin of the Democratic Party? Does the Republican Party really have a misogynistic white supremacy problem, or is the Democratic Party projecting its own hodgepodge of racial animus, perhaps intentionally stirring the racial pot in order to drum up political support from its African American base (cf. Barack Obama, Ever the Racial Arsonist | The Heritage Foundation)?
I am not comfortable agreeing with this last line of argument because I am not comfortable focusing on the worst in the Democratic Party. I think we need to see and debate the best in both the Democratic and the Republican Parties. Paradoxically, that means acknowledging that we all have a bit (or more) of implied bias. But from an orthodox Christian theological perspective, the problem is even deeper than implied bias. Paragraph 397 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way:
Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. This is what man's first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.
There is no mention of God in the Preamble of the UN Charter (cf. Constitutional references to God | Wikipedia). The founding fathers did not establish Christianity as America's official religion or even acknowledge the existence of God in the US Constitution. That may have been our nation's original sin. The United Kingdom, acting to some extent in the name of Jesus Christ, abolished slavery in 1834. Perhaps the United States of America should have fought against slavery first, and then for independence. Perhaps it never should have fought for total independence from the responsibilities of a Christian crown.
Christianity may seem to have a mixed track record when it comes to the problem of slavery. Christians in American history have used the Bible to justify both slavery and abolition. The apostles, including Paul, describe themselves in the epistles as the slaves of Jesus Christ. There is considerable debate in New Testament study circles about just how subversive of worldly slavery this radical juxtaposition was meant to be. If Jesus had set off an overt slave revolt, the Romans would have crushed it, and where would we be today? But from another perspective, Jesus did set off a slave revolt, and it is still being fought in the heart of every honest Christian. Matthew 6:24 requires careful application no matter our state of life: "No one can be a slave to two lords; either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot be a slave to both God and money."
At the great power strategic communications level, the Foreign Ministry of China seeks to delegitimize America by describing the genocide of the Indian as the original sin of the United States:
According to international law and its domestic law, what the United States did to the Indians covers all the acts that define genocide and indisputably constitutes genocide. The American magazine Foreign Policy commented that the crimes against Native Americans are fully consistent with the definition of genocide under current international law.The profound sin of genocide is a historical stain that the United States can never clear, and the painful tragedy of Indians is a historical lesson that should never be forgotten....In 2019, Gavin Newsom, governor of California, issued a statement to apologize to the indigenous population in California, admitting that the state’s actions against Indian tribes in the mid-19th century were genocides.However, the reflection of the U.S. government looks more like a “political stunt.” It has not officially admitted that the atrocities against Native Americans are acts of genocide. Real changes still seem a long way off.To sum up, successive U.S. administrations have not only wiped out a large number of American Indians, but also, through systematic policy design and bullying acts of cultural suppression, thrown them into an irreversible, difficult situation. The indigenous culture was fundamentally crushed, and the inter-generational inheritance of indigenous lives and spirits was under severe threats. The slaughter, forced relocation, cultural assimilation and unjust treatment the United States committed against American Indians have constituted de facto genocides. These acts fully match the definition of genocide in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and have continued for hundreds of years to this day. It is imperative that the U.S. government drop its hypocrisy and double standards on human rights issues, and take seriously the severe racial problems and atrocities in its own country.
This intersects with a global campaign by the Hamas axis to delegitimize the State of Israel by casting the world's one and only Jewish state as the newest bastion of genocidal and/or apartheid settler white colonialism. Iran presumably sees South Africa, Israel, and America as three links in a chain. South African apartheid has been overturned by the resistance narrative, as Iran sees it, and now Israel and America need to be overturned, as well.
Standing against all of this are America's decent Christian Zionists - including Joe Biden. Have we applied enough pressure on Netanyahu since 2 March 2025 to protect civilian lives? Have we applied enough pressure on the UN Security Council since 7 October 2023 to solve the Hamas problem using Chapter VII of the UN Charter?