From Indian Country Today, a weekly newspaper for the Native American Community:
The Episcopal church has led the way for other Christian denominations to renounce the Christian Doctrine of Discovery and urge the U.S. government to endorse the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
A resolution called “Repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery” was passed unanimously by the Episcopal House of Bishops and an overwhelming majority of the House of Delegates during the church’s 76th General Convention July 8 – 17 in Anaheim.
Just two months later, inspired by the Episcopal action, the Indian Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends issued a Minute – analogous to a resolution – disavowing the Doctrine and supporting the U.S. adoption of the Declaration.
The Doctrine of Discovery was a principle of international law developed in a series of 15th century papal bulls and 16th century charters by European monarchs. It was essentially a racist philosophy that gave white Christian Europeans the green light to go forth and claim the lands and resources of non-Christian peoples and kill or enslave them – if other Christian Europeans had not already done so.