DeVos acolyte justifies the Crusades, genocide and Islamophobia in an article entitled, When Did We Stop Subduing the Earth?

I am always fascinated by what people will justify in the name of religion.

I am also appalled and disgusted, which is why I wanted to share a recent article posted on the DeVos platform known as the Believe Journal a site that Doug DeVos created within the past year to honor his father’s book by the same title.

The article that caught my attention is entitled, When Did We Stop Subduing the Earth? Before we jump into the content of the article, it is important that we come to terms with the Judeo-Christian notion of “man having dominion over the earth.” Dominion theology has justified not only making humans the most important species on the planet, but has allowed for the endless justifications for what humans do to other humans, other species and all ecosystems. It is what some philosophers refer to as anthropocentrism.

The article in question is written by someone anonymous, who says they are, “a Christian Industrialist, raised in the Middle East and based in the Midwest, building companies that subdue the earth.” No surprise here.

As for the content of the article, here are some points I want to draw attention to. First, the author of this article attempts to point out the two main reasons why people have an aversion to subduing the earth:

First, we are so often worried about appearing arrogant—being seen as building tools of domination, rather than dominion–that we have largely abandoned and stigmatized “subduing the earth.” Second, we are worried about how being “boring”, polite Christians might impact our competitive edge, and because of that we often become boring, polite seculars.

So, arrogance and losing a competitive edge are his arguments. Interesting since the very notion of having dominion is arrogant and the opposite of being competitive would be cooperative, which is an attribute I want to cultivate.

Another interesting point in the article is when the writer uses the label Luddite in a negative way, which is a common mistake when talking about Luddites. Luddites were not anti-technology, rather they were against technology that took away their own agency. Many early Luddites were cobblers, but when mass production of shoes began they had their livelihood taken away from them. An excellent book on the Luddites is Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age, by Kirkpatrick Sale.

In a section of the article with the heading Dominion Versus Domination, the author writes:

“So why have we found ourselves backing out of long-held positions in the front rank? We have, in many ways, caved to the respect of men (Acts 10:34-35). America’s westward expansion was reframed as genocide, half a million American deaths in the Civil War as being political, the overflow of American missionaries as being imperial.”

It would appear that the author has issues with calling the westward expansion in the US as genocidal and American missionaries as being imperialists. I certainly would refer to the US as a settler colonial state that implemented genocidal policies against Indigenous people (see An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States) and that the function of US missionaries has often gone hand in hand with US imperialism. (See Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon : Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil)

The last thing I want to draw attention to in this article was the author’s blatant Islamophobia:

“Christianity is unique among the world religions, being only one of two which has a global commission. The other, Islam, stands in stark contrast. The expansion of Islam via Jihad is a directive to world domination, not stewardship via dominion. It is in many ways the anti-dominion mandate. Islam even has special admissible moral compromises when expanding, including lying and deception. (Based on the Hadith). A large portion of the Quran describes how and when to wage holy war as opposed to the crusades, which was a circumstantial and for its time, quite normal war that had no directive in the bible, especially not the New Testament.”

Holy shit! The writer really likes to convey the notion that Christianity is good for the world, while Islam has brought noting more than pain and suffering. Hell, the writer even tries to justify the Crusades as “a circumstantial war.” The Crusades were driven by the notion that our God is better than your God, so we will kill as many of you as necessary in order to bring the truth faith to your people.

Of course none of this is surprising coming from a Christian, especially one that is cut from the same cloth as the DeVos family. But just to be clear, this article is justifying genocide, the imperialism of missionaries, the Crusades and a whole lot of Islamophobia and arrogance in one article. Just a reminder of the kind of ideological bedfellows the DeVos family has.