“Misreading” Calvin: The Question of World-Making in the Texts of Settler Colonialism and Theology

Abstract

ABSTRACT Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s account of European settler colonialism in the United States notably focuses on Calvinist communities as a primary catalyst in rationalizing land seizure, identifying covenantal theology as supporting settler claims to sovereignly held indigenous lands. This article argues that while she rightly identifies a correspondence between divine providence and a settler colonial logic of replacement, a vertical orientation, her analysis of theology as settler colonialism can be completed through a recourse to a rhetorical and literary analysis of Calvin’s Institutes. That is, settler colonialism also possesses a horizontal component, a logic of replicability that describes the temporal and spatial movement of settler colonialism. To make this argument I turn to Michelle Sanchez and Ford Lewis Battles’ respective explorations of literary genre and the language of accommodation. My analysis points to how Calvin’s covenantal theology can conjure the “imagined community” that is then embodied as settler colonialism. I end by suggesting that further careful articulation of the nexus between theology and settler colonialism is necessary for us to reckon the present and ongoing possibilities of inhabiting space and sharing life together, settler and indigenous alike.