Acknowledging Everything, Solving Nothing

From land to slavery, the ritual keeps growing.

Brian C. Joondeph | August 17, 2026

Not long ago, I attended a Sunday service at a Methodist church in Denver.

Before the service began, the pastor introduced herself, shared her preferred pronouns, and informed the congregation that we were worshipping on stolen Native American land.

I remember wondering why, if the land had truly been stolen, the church still owned it. I wrote about it on these pages. 

Now Denver’s City Council wants to add another public ritual to official meetings.

Not the Pledge of Allegiance.

Not even a moment of silence.

A labor acknowledgment recognizing slavery and its legacy.

Image created by ChatGPT

The proposal is curious for one obvious reason.

Colorado entered the Union in 1876 — more than a decade after the Civil War ended — as a free state. No one currently living in Colorado was ever enslaved, and no one currently living in Colorado owned slaves here.

Yet before city business can begin, elected officials may soon be expected to acknowledge historical events that occurred generations before anyone in the room was born.

The ritual keeps growing.

First came pronouns. Then land acknowledgments. Now slave acknowledgments.

One wonders what comes next.

The central question isn’t whether slavery was evil. It was.

Nor is the question whether Native Americans suffered or inflicted terrible injustices.

Many unquestionably did. Those are historical facts.

The real question is something else.

What purpose do these public confessions actually serve?

When I first heard the church’s land acknowledgment, I asked myself a simple question:

If the land was stolen, why........

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