One of my favorite memories of childhood revolves around the children’s rhyme, “In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
I remember my sainted grandmother - whether by confusion or mischief, I never quite figured out - tormenting her teachers by reciting, instead: “In fourteen-hundred and ninety-three, Columbus sailed the deep blue sea.”
Perhaps it was to spare other children this historical confusion that Congress passed a law in 1934 to inculcate the true history into our public remembrance. The law known as 36 USC 107 asks the president to designate the second Monday of October as Columbus Day.
It goes on to encourage government officials to display the flag and to invite all citizens of the United States to observe the occasion in schools and churches, parks and town halls “with appropriate ceremonies . . . befitting the anniversary of the discovery of America.”
The second Monday of October is designed to fall on or near October 12 - the exact day when the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria made landfall in the Bahamas. And that’s why President Trump signed a proclamation designating Monday, October 13, 2025 as Columbus Day.
His proclamation pointedly omits the intentionally competing commemoration that was auto-penned in previous years. That - and Trump’s typically Trumpian rhetoric - made headlines. That was the intention.
The express intent is to focus America’s mind on what is really at stake.
Columbus Day is not a squabble over who was the first human being to set foot in what was to become the United States of America.
The 1934 Congress, of course, was aware that the Bahamas are not U.S. territory. They were aware that numerous tribes were already living on the land.
And historians had long been familiar with the literature that told of Leif Erickson’s discovery of Vinland - over four centuries earlier. It designated Columbus Day to be a holiday of the United States of America, anyway.
What Columbus brought to these lands was Christendom.
Also known as Western Civilization, Christendom is the word that you get when you take the word, “kingdom” and substitute Christ for king. It is a worldview that has at its heart the dignity of every single human being.
This universal human dignity is grounded in three integrated claims:
First, all human beings are a direct creation of the Most High God. They are not the mere pawns crafted by a pantheon of lesser gods and used in their incessant war games.
Nor are human beings the random product of chance and time, like Yellowstone’s famous mud-blurps. On the contrary, the Creator of the universe specifically willed you into existence. And created you in His own image and likeness (Genesis 1:26-27).
God gave you a special place and function in the universe that only you can fill. And He did the same for everyone whom you have ever met. This is the first foundation of human dignity.
Second, as the name Christ indicates, God Himself became a human being in the person of Jesus.
As you can read in the New Testament, this was an astounding and novel claim two millennia ago. But by the time Christopher (which means Christ-bearer) Columbus landed on American shores, the incarnation of God in the man from Nazareth was simply common knowledge. And this is the second pillar of human dignity.
Third, all of Christendom believed that human beings - as evil and flawed as they are through sin - could be made holy through Christ’s redeeming sufferings and death. No one was above the law. But no one was too far gone for God’s mercy, either.
This truth led C.S. Lewis to write one of my favorite passages: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
When Columbus dropped anchor in the Caribbean Sea 533 years ago Sunday, he thought that he had come to India - a place Christianized by St. Thomas already in the first century.
But, in fact, he had discovered a world that knew none of these pillars of human dignity. And - just as was true among the unbelievers in Europe, rejection of these truths makes life nasty, brutish and short.
Columbus and his crew were as flawed and sinful as the people that they encountered in the New World. But they also knew that God had created their counterparts. God had died for their new acquaintances. And God offered redemption and new life even to these strange and unknown people.
And by introducing these truths of human dignity to America’s shores, Christopher Columbus changed the world forever.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com.
