White Christian Americans owned slaves because they believed in slavery. That belief began in 1452, with the Doctrine of Discovery that provided moral authority for Europeans to seize lands on other continents, and subjugate, trade and breed native inhabitants. The Doctrine of Discovery also provided the Christian evangelists the incentives of free land, free natural resources and free slaves to convert native inhabitants of the lands that they had stolen to Christianity. This motivation is still operating in American evangelical circles today.

In 1852, the United States Supreme Court invoked the Doctrine of Discovery, thereby establishing that religious decree as a precedence in U.S. property law, which included slaves. As recently as 2005, the United States Supreme Court invoked the Doctrine of Discovery to rule against Native Americans.

In March of this year, 2023, the Vatican formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, saying “It renounces the mindset of cultural or racial superiority which allowed for that objectification or subjection of people, and strongly condemns any attitudes or actions that threaten or damage the dignity of the human person."

Inasmuch as American property laws are firmly grounded in a now repudiated religious decree, how the courts will rule on property law cases is a real conundrum. Today’s students need to know and understand this stuff, in order to reconcile these religious and legal conflicts for themselves. Yes? No?