INTRODUCTION
The
Christian missionary mindset is generally depicted
as that of simple religious folk with a pure
desire to peacefully spread their gospel and
message of love. In reality, their methods of
propagation are often anything but peaceful and
usually leave behind a native population stripped
of their culture and often decimated. With Christianity
failing in the west, the evangelists seek new
and greener fields in the poor and uneducated
sections of third world countries, backed by
huge coffers from the less zealous, who are nonetheless
convinced that to bring civilization and religion
to the poor natives is a noble cause, even if
they don't want it. Missionaries often intermix
military campaigns with missionary campaigns
in their fervor to "civilize
the heathens," who are often simple happy
natives, whose only crime is that they are not
Christians. This mood of conquering the heathens
by any means, at any cost, is supported in the
Bible:
"Thou
shalt save alive nothing that breathest. But
thou shalt utterly destroy them..." (Deut 20)
"But those
mine enemies, which would not that I should
reign over them, bring hither, and slay them
before me." (Luke 19.27)
In the words of
one resident of Thailand, “They [Christian missionaries]
seemed that they did not show any interest for
our culture. Why? They are just eager to build
big churches in every village. It seems that
they are having two faces; under the title of
help they suppress us. To the world, they gained
their reputations as benefactors of disappearing
tribes. They built their reputations on us for
many years. The way they behaved with us seemed
as if we did not know about god before they arrived
here.”
“Why do missionaries
think they are the only ones who can perceive
God?”
In fact, most
of the civilizations which were overrun by zealous
Christians in their conversion fervor, were highly
evolved in their moral standards, with complex
social structures, high standards of cleanliness
and hygiene, decorative art and evolved sciences,
and content with their own religion.
The arrival of
Christianity actually caused these civilizations
to move backwards. In this regard we need only
look to Europe, for the Dark Ages of Europe is
a time when the Church was in control. The Age
of Enlightenment (Renaissance) began when the
common people were freed from the tyranny of
the Christian church.
Christian
missionaries have oppressed many cultures, building
churches atop temples, mosques and shrines. For
example, the major churches in Rome are built
atop pagan temples and many historians say that
the Vatican itself is built on the ruins of a
Mithra (the Roman Sungod) temple. The major Christian
holy days are all taken from the pagan holy days.
In fact, it is claimed by many historians and
religious scholars that the entirety of Christianity
is borrowed from other religions and cultures
and is fraudulent — Christ is an amalgamation
of a number of personalities existing prior to
the [presumed] time of Christ. [ See also: The
Borrowing Theory ]
CHRISTIAN
JUSTICE SYSTEM
Because Christians
believe that Jesus Christ suffered for the sins
of others, they use this belief for their own
purposes by "letting Christ suffer while
they, the Christians, go on committing sin and
crime." That is why the Christians go on
slaughtering the Non-Christians, totally worry-free
and with a totally clean conscience, because
Christ will take care of their sins and crimes,
and because they don't have to face the laws
of Karma and Re-incarnation or the veritable
consequences of these laws. It does not even
occur to an average Christian to ask himself/herself
a simple question, that if a person commits a
murder and he tells the court that his Father
will suffer in his place, will the court accept
the substitute to suffer the sentence? An average
Christian does not even think that if any court
accepted this kind of substitution, then the
justice system of the world, as we know it, would
be totally destroyed and chaos would ensue.
History is witness to the mass destruction
of countless cultures, and the almost complete
genocide of entire races at the hands of Christianity.
History is now proving that most cultures destroyed
by Christianity far outweighed in morals and
dignity what they were replaced by.
Since the effects of much missionary
work, the cultural traditions of a people being
replaced by some form of Christianity, are intentional,
this means by definition (according to the United
Nations) that genocide is the missionary profession:
converting other peoples to Christianity and
thus destroying them as an ethnical group, and
denying the right of native peoples to exist
as what they are, with their own culture, language,
and religion. For a variety of reasons a massive
depopulation, in other words the death of a large
percentage of the native population, follows. And
this so-called righteous work continues even
today around the world in the name of [Christian]
humanitarian work.
The plain and simple truth
is that people never give up their religion,
any more than they give up their children or
their parents...except when they are pressured
with use of force or are offered attractive allurements.
The Christian Slogan that "Faith in Jesus
is the only way to Salvation," besides being
totally false, is also totally ineffective, in
gaining converts. Trickery, treachery, bribery,
and bayonetry, therefore, has to be used to obtain
converts. The Christian Missionaries know this
blatant truth and Christianity's brutal and barbaric
record of twenty centuries in winning converts,
is a testament to the savage methods of Christianity.
' The Christian resolve to find the world
evil and ugly, has made the world evil and ugly.'
– Friedrich Nietzsche
CRUSADES
Many
people think that the crusades were holy wars
to liberate holy lands from non-Christians. But
few are informed that many of the crusades were
against other Christian sects, that many of these
Crusades were launched for other purposes, such
as the drowning of almost 6,000 Protestants by
Spanish Catholic troops in the Netherlands in
1568, the sacking of the German city of Magdeburg
in the 17th century, slaying 30,000 Protestants,
followed by a 30 year war between Catholics and
Protestants in which more than 40% of the population
(mostly Germans) were decimated.
Probably the most revealing
event was the capture and pillage of the Orthodox
Christian bastion of Constantinople by the members
of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, creating an animosity
between Catholics and Orthodox Christians which
has lasted into the 20th century.
In reality, the Crusades were the most
ambitious Christian war enterprise and its most
conspicuous failure. It was the attempt to force
together all the known world and all mankind
under the bishop of Rome, the Catholic Pope.
The
Christian Crusades inspired the most bloodthirsty
cruelty, and the greediest vandalism of medieval
men. Politically motivated and fanatically aggravated,
usurping all land and decimating all peoples
who would not surrender to the Vatican. The Crusaders
rolled over all who could not withstand their
pillage and carnage like bloodthirsty conquerors.
By the end of the crusades,
most European Christians believed the unfounded
blood-libel myths — the rumor that Jews engaged
in human sacrifice of Christian children. A long
series of Christian persecutions of the Jews
continued in Europe and Russia into the 20th
century. They laid the foundation for the Nazi
Holocaust.
WITCH
BURNINGS
Of
course we have all heard of the Salem Witch Hunts
of 1691-1692 and the burning of a number of "witches" alive
at the stake by the Puritans. But did you know
that the Salem witches were all proven innocent?
Of course, this was found out after they were
burned. Did you also know that this witch burning,
carried out all over the world to the tune of
several hundred thousand dead (80% women), was
initiated by the Catholic church to rid their
dominion of so-called heretics and was directly
related to their mandate to re-populate Europe
after the Black Death or plagues of the 1300's,
because their serfs were decreased by one third,
thereby reducing the Church's profit by one third,
since they owned about 30% of Europe's lands. The
ladies (midwives) were accused of impeding the
birth rate — all birth control knowledge was
vigorously erased, so much so that 20th century
scholars believed birth control was a modern
invention. The Inquisitors wrote, "No one
is more dangerous and harmful to the Catholic
faith than the midwives."
Pope Innocent VIII's infamous Witch Bull
of 1484, launched several centuries of persecution
of so-called witches. Several hundred thousand
women, children and men (about 20%) were tortured
and burned at the stake or hanged. The Malleus
Maleficarum (the Witches Hammer or Handbook
of the Inquisitors), available online here as
a pdf - http://www.burningcross.net/crusades/malleus-maleficarum.pdf],
written by two Dominican monks, was perhaps responsible
for more widespread bloodshed than any other
publication (Christian or otherwise). The policy
of torturing, burning and hanging of supposed
heretics has been the church's policy for centuries,
whenever they could get away with it. Between
the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries about
a half a million people were executed for witchcraft,
most of them women.
PERSECUTIONS
OF THE JEWS
There
is a long history of the persecution of Jews
by Christians, starting with the burning of synagogues
in the 4th century, to numerous killings of Jews
who would not convert to Christianity, to the
extermination of Jewish communities in many European
countries, all the way to a number of extermination
camps during World War II in Yugoslavia, headed
by a Franciscan Friar and run by Catholics, which
were the equal of the German kilns of Auschwitz
— killing about half
a million people alone in this small country[5.5].
Hitler Himself justified the extermination
of the Jews citing the Bible and Jesus:
"My
feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord
and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the
man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by
a few followers, recognized these Jews for what
they were and summoned men to fight against them
and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer
but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian
and as a man I read through the passage which
tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might
and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple
the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific
was His fight for the world against the Jewish
poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with
deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than
ever before in the fact that it was for this
that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross.
As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself
to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter
for truth and justice.... And if there is anything
which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly
it is the distress that daily grows. For as a
Christian I have also a duty to my own people....
When I go out in the morning and see these men
standing in their queues and look into their
pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian,
but a very devil if I felt no pity for them,
if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years
ago, turn against those (the Jews) by whom to-day
this poor people is plundered and exploited. ":
(Adolf Hitler, in
his speech on 12 April 1922)
[Note, "brood of vipers" appears
in Matt. 3:7
& 12:34. John 2:15 depicts Jesus driving out
the money changers (adders) from the temple. The
word "adders" also appears in Psalms
140:3]
GENOCIDE
IN RWANDA
Have
you seen the Rwanda movie? Do you know that a
substantial number of priests, nuns and even
Bishops were indicted and a great many were convicted
(by war crimes tribunals) for being directly
responsible for the senseless slaughter of thousands
of innocent Tutsis? Many clergy turned over those
who had taken shelter in their churches to the
machetes of the Hutu militia. The hatred and
division between the Hutus and Tutsis was propagated
by the missionaries as favorable for their objectives
of conversion to Christianity.
One priest even burned down his own church
to kill hundreds of Tutsis who had taken sanctuary
there. Two priests were sentenced to death in
1998 for their roles in this genocide and two
Benedictine nuns who supplied gasoline for the
burning of Tutsi civilians sheltered in their
church fled to Belgium where they were later
convicted of complicity to murder.
“Sister
Maria Kisito, who received 12 years, and her
Mother Superior, Sister Gertrude, who received
15 years, were convicted of aiding in the slaughter
of some 7,000 people who sought refuge at their
convent in southern Rwanda. Prosecutors argued
that they called in Hutu militiamen to drive
people out of the convent knowing they would
be killed, and later provided gasoline that militiamen
used to set fire to a garage in which about 500
Tutsis had taken refuge.” (Washington Post, June
9, 2001)
Of
course the Catholic Church has claimed their
clergy were acting independently of the church,
even though much of the most notable genocide
occurred in churches and it is well known that
the church's policy has been for centuries to
divide and convert, to sew dissention between
ethnic groups and then move in and take advantage
of the chaos to offer Christian solace and conversion.
In the end nearly one million civilians
were butchered.
TAHITI
& THE PACIFIC
We
all remember the story of Captain Bligh and the
Mutiny on the Bounty. However, hardly anyone
knows that the crew mutinied because they were
so attracted to the idyllic life on Tahiti —
the crew was determined to return to Tahiti and
not go to England. Captain Cook himself wrote
of
"these happy islands and the good people on
them. " Further, he later wrote, "It
would have been far better for these poor people
never to have known us."
In 1797, the London Missionary Society
put its first missionaries on the shores of Tahiti.
Fourteen years later they had not made one convert,
even though the happy Tahitians provided them
with servants galore, built their houses and
fed them. Finally the Christians devised an ingenious
plan, which ‘converted’ the entire island in
one day. According to a letter written home by
brethren J. M. Orsmond, one of their own members,
they reduced the local chief, Pomare, to an alcoholic
and backed him in a war against other island
chiefs, supplying him with firearms, to be used
against the other islanders clubs. The understanding
was that with his victory all would be forced
to convert. Then, a reign of terror followed
where non-believers were killed. It was declared
illegal by the Christians for anyone to decorate
themselves with flowers, to sing (other than
hymns), to surf or dance. Within 25 years the
native culture of Tahiti and the entire Pacific
was extinguished.
The attempt to make the Tahitians into
service growers of sugar cane failed and the
good Christian Mr. Orsmond, deciding that "a
bountiful nature diminishes men's natural desire
to work," had all the breadfruit trees cut
down. Such practices, as well as diseases (brought
from outside), such as syphilis, tuberculosis
and smallpox reduced the original population
(estimated by Cook at 200,000) to 6,000 after
thirty years of missionary rule.
Their power base firmly established in
Tahiti, the missionaries moved swiftly to the
outer islands, using the same techniques. They
introduced a local chieftan to the bottle, crowned
him king and induced him to carry out the Christian's
work of conquering and converting at sword point.
The Polynesians and Melanesian people
were also very cultured and intertwined with
the processes of creation. They decorated everything
with intricate wood carvings and flowers and
produced many beautiful things. Yet by 1850 all
this was gone, the only remaining vestige of
these great cultures were the grass skirts and
swaying hips for the tourists. Prior to the Christianization
of Polynesia and Hawaii the local dances were
mostly performed by men of the priesthood, the
Christians turned such dances as the Hula into
a sex show for the tourists. The Christian conquest
of the Pacific was complete.
HAWAII
Not
only did the missionaries and the Europeans bring
the Bible to Hawaii they also brought diseases
to the native population. The British explorer
Captain James Cook's visit to Hawaii in 1778
is generally credited with the 'discovery' of
Hawaii but history reveals that others had been
there before. Many missionaries followed.
The
Hawaiians, like the American Indians, had no
idea what private property meant. The missionaries
decided the land belonged to them and not the
native Hawaiian population. With the help of
the American diplomatic representative at Honolulu,
the Hawaiian capitol, and the aid of the United
States warship Boston, a coup d'etat was implemented.
The Boston landed Marines and sailors. The American
missionary party formed a provisional Government
and endeavored to make a treaty with the United
States looking for annexation. Later, when President
McKinley came to office the request of the rump
Government for annexation was undertaken.
The original missionaries to Hawaii ended
up large landowners. Although the missionaries
were a small handful of the population they ended
up with vast land holdings to the exclusion of
the native Hawaiians, who had lived there for
thousands of years. Put simply, the missionaries
stole their land.
The missionaries did everything possible
to destroy the ethnic Hawaiian culture, from
banning all Hawaiian religious practices, walking
barefoot, and even banning a faultless sport
like surfing. Christians [according to the Hawaiians]
are said to have introduced the mosquito into
Hawaii in the hopes that this would force the
natives to wear more clothes. Only in modern
times has pride in Hawaiian art, song, dance
and religion been revived.
“When the Christians came to these islands
they said, take this Bible, close your eyes and
pray, so we did; when we opened our eyes all
we had was this Bible and the white man had all
our Islands.” Hawaiian Kahuna
COLUMBUS
& THE CARIBBEAN ISLANDS
Christopher
Columbus, a trader of African slaves, is best
known as the ‘so-called’ discoverer of America.
In his personal log, Columbus wrote that, his
purpose in seeking undiscovered worlds was “to
bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the heathens.”
[Columbus' Book of
Prophecies]
On his first voyage
Columbus described the natives as follows:
"The people of this island and of
all other islands which I have found and
seen, ... all ... are so artless and free with
all they possess, that no one would believe it
without having seen it. Of anything they have,
if you ask them for it, they never say no; rather
they invite the person to share it, and show
as much love as if they were giving their hearts..." But
Colombus' mission was to take the land for Christendom
and convert all these peoples to Christianity
or exterminate them and replace their culture,
hence:
In whichever island he touched (on his
second voyage) his men killed indiscriminately
whatever animals and natives they found,
"looting and destroying all they found," as
Columbus' son Fernando put it. The natives were
either killed or enslaved. Columbus commented in
this regard, that the natives "ought to be
good servants... and would easily be made Christians,”
because he saw his affairs as the "fulfillment
of prophecies in Isaiah." To any objections
from the natives, Columbus responded with, "…with
the help of God, we shall … make war against you
in all ways and manners that we can, and shall
subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church
and of Their Highness. We shall take you and your
wives and your children, and shall make slaves
of them."
Eyewitnesses recalled, "Once the
Indians were in the woods, the next step was
to form squadrons and pursue them, and whenever
the Spaniards found them, they pitilessly slaughtered
everyone like sheep... So they would cut an Indian's
hands and leave them dangling... Some Christians
encounter an Indian women, and since the dog
they had with them was hungry, they tore the
child from the mother's arms and flung it still
living to the dog..." After all, the Indians
were only infidels.”
Of
Columbus’ second voyage, it has been further
written: “The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing
all kinds of odd cruelties… They built a long
gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the
ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen
[natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Savior
and the twelve apostles… then, straw was wrapped
around their torn bodies and they were burned
alive.”
In less than a decade after Columbus'
first landing the native population of the island
of Hispaniola (Santo Domingo & Haiti)— and
thousands and thousands of people — had dropped
by a third to a half. Before the next century
ended, the populations of Cuba and many other
Caribbean islands had been virtually exterminated.
NORTH
AMERICA
VIRGINIA
The Charter for
the Virginia Colony stated that its purpose was
to bring the Christian religion to those in ignorance
of true knowledge of God.
Historian
Edmund S. Morgan compiled the following description
from Christian accounts of events occurring
in one of the earliest settlements of English
Christians, in Roanoke, Virginia in 1580:
"Wingina
[the local chief] welcomed the visitors, and
the Indians gave freely of their supplies to
the English, who had lost most of their own when
the Tyger [their ship] grounded.”
“Indian
openness and generosity were met with European
stealth and greed. Ritualized Indian warfare,
in which few people died in battle, was met with
the European belief in devastating holy war.
Vast stores of grain and other food supplies
that Indian peoples had lain aside became the
fuel that [later] drove the Europeans forward.”
“Indians
who came to the English settlements with food
for the British (who seemed never able to feed
themselves) were captured, accused of being spies,
and executed. Peace treaties were signed with
every intention to violate them: when the Indians
‘grow secure uppon the treatie,’ advised the
Counsel of State in Virginia, ‘we shall have
the better advantage both to surprise them & cutt
downe theire Corne.' "
Arthur Barlowe,
one of the first Christians ever to set foot
on Virginia soil, described the natives he encountered
in 1584 as follows:
"...we were
entertained with all love and kindness and with
as much bounty, ...as they could possibly devise.
We found the people most gentle loving, and faithfull,
void of all guile and treason ... a more kind
and loving people there cannot be found in the
world, as farre as we have hitherto had triall."
Their supposedly
Christian treatment of these friendly native
Americas was that:
"...we
burnt, and spoyled their corne, and Towne, all
the people beeing fledde."
MIDWEST
Greed
drove over a hundred thousand intruders into
the area by 1825, few of whom were ever expelled.
Though protection from intruders was a guarantee
to the Cherokee by treaty, which the State of
Georgia and the federal government were supposed
to uphold it was never given the slightest honor
by white interests. Forts were established to
police against intruders but what they did was
to harass the Cherokee and provide safety and
protection for whites from those who tried to
protect their families.
The
State of Georgia insured no Cherokee would ever
receive justice by forbidding the testimony or
presence of any Native American in a court of
law, period, just like the Nuremberg Laws of
1936 against Jews in Germany. This gave all whites
free rein to terrorize, steal and kill any Native
person they wanted to. No Cherokee "removed" because
they wanted to, it was because the protection
they were assured by treaty obligation was never
provided.
The
missionaries who entered Indian country were
sent there to "civilize" the native
people. They acquired this position by negotiation
through treaty and were given vast amounts of
land and guaranteed subsidies administered by
the federal government out of tribal money. This
money never touched the hands of the Cherokee
and most often none was left after missionary,
Indian agents, superintendents and corrupt tribal
government leaders got done with it.
In 1832 Congress
appropriated $12,000 dollars to begin the fight
against smallpox in Indian country, 20 years
after they did the same for whites. Significantly,
actual vaccination expenditures that first year "for
smallpox and certain other things" amounted
to only $1,786, as opposed to $5,721 for "missionary
improvement" and $9,424 for the "civilization
of the Indians." One year later, in 1833,
actual expenditures were down to $721.
This is why most
Native Americans today who are knowledgeable
of their history are pointing out that the United
States Government waged genocide against their
people. When medicine to heal children and families
from a deadly and mortal disease is withheld,
that agency which does this crime against humanity
is committing genocide.
"Civilizing" meant
taking children away from their parents at the
ages of 5-12 years and forcing them to live without
father, mother, sister or brother in missionary
schools, if you can imagine that being done to
a little child. This practice was not exclusive
to the early years of American history but continued
up until the mid 1970's in this country. Children
were beaten and given forced labor during their
stay in school. Participation was "optional" but
missionaries controlled the annuities of food
and trust money through their relationship with
superintendents and the military. Families that
did not surrender their children did not receive
food or payments that were supposed to be guaranteed
to them.
Very young children
caught in this situation were brainwashed to
treat their parents as savages and barbarians
and they suffered terribly under this psychological
torture. By this method through several generations,
Cherokees, like most Native Americans were stripped
of the knowledge of their heritage, religious
beliefs and trust of their family supports.
This is why it is
called a Red Holocaust and fits the United Nations accords
for genocide. Any people whose children are taken
from them in order to destroy the religious,
spiritual, racial and cultural heritage of that
people are victims of genocide.
The pressure to build
a slave based empire on Native Cherokee soil
was highly successful. Thomas Jefferson who wrote
the removal policy and openly supported genocide
of Native Americans declared, "If ever we
are constrained to lift the hatchet against any
tribe we will never lay it down till that tribe
is exterminated, or is driven beyond the Mississippi...
they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all
of them."
Missionary
work was very big business. It afforded the building
of careers, growth of denominational influence
in regions that formed economic bases of support.
Churches were established through lucrative payments
from Indian funds and lands, which were deeded
for use as farms, timber production and for sale
in financing further ventures, not the least
of which was buying selling and working their
slaves. Churches and missionaries were aggressively
competing for government contracts among the
Native American people all the way up until the
1970's when Native American Education legislation
made it too difficult for the government to sever
lands for missionary work without compensation.
To give some insight
into the abuse of law that the State of Georgia
in the early 19th century used to terrorize the
Cherokee, the banishment of "intruders" was
only enforced against whites, who stood up for
the Cherokee by representing their interests.
It was also used by whites through the… spoils
system to get rid of squatters whose land was
coveted by another white. Those whites who took
public stands for Native people in the area were
thrown out. Worcester was one such missionary.
He returned and was thrown into prison for a
year for his stand on Cherokee rights.
It is
especially telling that while almost no Indians
voluntarily lived among the colonists, the number
of whites who ran off to live with the natives
was a problem often remarked upon. Historian
James Axtell has concluded that the whites who
chose to remain among the natives
"...stayed
because they found Indian life to possess a strong
sense of community, abundant love, and uncommon
integrity - values that the European colonists
also honored... But Indian life was attractive
for other values - for social equality, mobility,
adventure, and as two adult converts acknowledged,
'the most perfect freedom, the ease of living,
[and] the absence of those cares and corroding
solicitudes which so often prevail with us.' "
After
a century and a half of permanent British settlement
in North America, even Benjamin Franklin joined
numerous earlier commentators lamenting that
"...when
an Indian child has been brought up among us,
taught our language and habituated to our Customs,
yet if he goes to see his relations and make
one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading
them ever to return.
[But]
when white persons of either sex have been taken
prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while
among them, tho' ransomed by their Friends, and
treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail
with them to stay among the English, yet in a
short time they become disgusted with our manner
of life, and the care and pains that are necessary
to support it, and take the first good Opportunity
of escaping again into the Woods, from whence
there is no reclaiming them."
Since they were uttered
by one of America's founding fathers, however,
the most widely admired of the South's slaveholding
philosophers of freedom, they conveniently have
become lost to most historians in their insistent
celebration of Jefferson's wisdom and humanity." Further
references available.
CALIFORNIA
MISSIONS
The
book, The Missions of California: A Legacy
of Genocide, edited by Rupert
Costo and Jeannette Henry Costo (Indian rights
activists), spells out the apparent brutality
of the California Franciscan missionaries (and
their founder Junipero Serra, who was to be made
a saint) against the North American Indians;
citing numerous contemporary accounts of the
brutality and degrading conditions endemic to
the mission system in California.
Interviews from 1985
with eight scholars (arranged by the Catholic
Diocese of Monterey in defense of Serra) actually
contain the strongest evidence against the mission
system itself. The ethnocentrism of the interviewees
and their at times embarrassing lack of knowledge
regarding Indian ways, leads to numerous questionable
assertions. Serra's supporters generally acknowledge
that the methods employed to convert the Indians
would be unthinkable for missionaries to use
today.
The work of A. L.
Kroeber, Sherburne Cook, Robert Heizer (all cited
in the text) and others establishes that the
arrival of the Europeans was a cultural and demographic
catastrophe for the California Indians. Too often
it is forgotten that Serra aimed not just to
convert the Indians to Catholicism but to eradicate
Indian culture as well. It is in this sense that
the book's subtitle. "A Legacy of Genocide" is
justified.
Many of Serra's fiercest
critics are individuals actively engaged in efforts
to heal Indian society by recovering and honoring
the traditional ways that bound tribes together
for centuries. The attempt to sanctify a man
who dedicated his life to the destruction of
those ways is, understandably, galling to them.
Some accounts shed
further light on the missions activities:
[T]he
Puritan minister John Robinson had complained
to Plymouth's William Bradford that although
a group of massacred Indians no doubt "deserved" to
be killed, "Oh, how happy a thing had it
been, if you had converted some before you killed
any!"
And kill
them they did... At the mission of Nuestra Sentora
de Loreto, reported the Franciscan chronicler
Father Francisco Palone, during the first three
years of Franciscan rule 76 children and adults
were baptized, while 131 were buried... The same
held true at others, from the mission of Santa
Rosalin¡ de Mulegne, with 48 baptisms and 113
deaths, to the mission of San Ignacio, with 115
baptisms and 293 deaths - all within the same
initial three year period.
MEXICO
CITY
Unlike
European cities of the late 1400’s, which were
filled with squalor and disease (most Europeans
never took a bath in their entire life, hence
the invention of French perfume) [D.E. Stannard, American Holocaust. Columbus
and the conquest of the New World, New York/Oxford
1992, pg. 59], Mexico was clean. The twin
cities of Tenochtitlan and Tlateloico, know today
as Mexico City, maintained high standards: wastes
were hauled away by barge and composted for fertilizer,
a thousand men swept and washed the streets every
day. Refined Aztecs, who bathed daily, found
it advisable to hold flowers to their noses when
they met Europeans, who made it a point of being
filthy. Most of Mexico’s streets were canals
and an aquaduct brought drinking water from mountain
springs.
Hernan
Cortez felt that this was by far the most beautiful
city on earth, stated: “All of these houses have
very large and very good rooms and very pleasing
gardens of various sorts of flowers…” The
Christian visitors were astonished by the personal
cleanliness and hygiene of the colorfully dressed
populace, and by their extravagant (to the Christians)
use of soaps, deodorants, and breath sweeteners.
The
Mexicans [Aztecs] were tolerant of other peoples,
such as the Otomi, who lived among them. These
had their own religion, culture, language...
tribal hatreds did not seem to exist within the
Mexican body politic."
As
a consequence of Columbus' ‘discovery,’ less
than a century after his voyage the city had
been sacked by Christians, its buildings and
beautiful gardens burnt and devastated. The city's
inhabitants, who before Columbus had known only
temporary slavery as a means of judicial correction,
were either dead or permanent slaves to a Church-approved
colonial feudal government, or directly to a
Church which burned at the stake any survivors
unwilling to be converted to a religion which
even faithful Christians of today could only
describe as a hopeless medley of absurd or revolting
superstitions - one has only to think of the
reliquaries, collections of skulls, bones, teeth,
or other remains of so-called saints, enshrined
and openly displayed to be worshiped - in any
given Christian Church of the time.
THE
PHILIPPINES
Shortly
after the Spanish American war of 1898, the US
obtained legal right to the Philippines via the
Treaty of Paris. President McKinley stated that "military
occupation of the islands is declared to be to
protect the people." For the president,
American duty compelled the US to "uplift
and civilize and Christianize them [the Philippines],
and by God's grace do the very best we could
for them.” The Filipinos had not requested this,
but their will was ignored as was their revolutionary
government, and new constitution. The Filipino
resistance to this American ‘help,’ was met with
military might. The US command stated that, "it
may be necessary to slaughter one-half of the
rebellious Filipinos in order to bring the other
half into subjection."
Well over 200,000 Filipinos lost their
lives in their struggle against American imperialism.
The Methodist church, great champions of this
war of ‘divine mission,’ did not distinguish
imperialism from the mission of evangelization.
James Henry Potts, editor of the Michigan Christian
Advocate, was so confident of the righteousness
of the cause that the human cost simply did not
matter and we must "conquer the rebellious
Filipinos and give them the blessings of the
best administration possible... Those islands
are ours." Propagandists portrayed the Filipino
resistance leaders as not representing the general
will of the Filipinos, but were dismayed that
they continued to resist. After all, Americans "knew
what was best for the Filipinos," they needed
American guidance, but showed "no appreciation
of the fact that America had lifted the galling
Spanish yoke from their necks..." [replacing
it, unfortunately, with their own yoke.]
The previous arbitrary cruel treatment
of the Filipinos by the Spaniards was repeated
by the American oppressors in their new view,
as necessary measures to subdue the Filipino
rebels. Thus the blame for their violent actions
was transferred from the perpetrator of the action
to the victim. This became clear when the public
learned that U.S. soldiers perpetrated grave
acts against mankind, including the brutal torture and
execution of prisoners, the burning and looting
of Filipino towns and the forced relocation of
civilians.
Six hundred saloons had sprung up in
Manila, which became over one thousand by 1900,
(where formerly there were less than ten) and
the armies’ abuses were blamed on alcohol. The
Detroit Annual Conference of Methodists focused
on temperance and overlooked the heinous activities committed
by the army.
The cries of "God wills it," were
the religious justification for the assertion
of political power fused with missionary zeal.
Reverend William Oldham declared that "the
roar of the (American) cannon was the voice of
Almighty God declaring (the Philippines) shall
be freed."
It was the mission of the Americans to spread the
faith, and like the holy crusaders before, military
conquest was the first step in this "holiest
of wars."
The eyes of the church were resolutely
focused on American Protestant victory against
Filipino independence and Catholicism. How far
astray these Methodist missionaries had gone,
is clearly illustrated by the statement of Editor
Potts who proclaimed that the "worst war
in the Philippines is yet to come," since
the Protestant missionaries encountered deeply
entrenched Catholic beliefs and institutions
which were viewed as opposing American principles
and systems. Patriotism and Christianity had
become indistinguishable and the Filipinos defense
was perceived by these Christian invaders as
unjustifiable resistance operating under the
spell of ‘Satan's Arts.’
BURMA
and THAILAND
Accounts
from local residents claim that:
The American Baptist
Paul Lewis sterilized more than 20,000
Akha Hill Tribe women in Burma’s Eastern Shan
State alone. This was done secretly, and blood
was stolen from these women for resale, taken
during the sterilization procedure. More than
3,000 of the women died.
In Akha traditional
culture, five people serve as the government
in one village. This multiperson leadership system
in villages was eliminated and replaced by single
pastors who rule the villages with an iron fist,
allowing no dissent or return to the traditional
ways. These changes have sewn havoc amongst the
locals.
“There
would be no traditional practices, songs, or
dances at all now, possibly something would be
allowed at Christmas. The woman who practices
the traditional knowledge and medicine for the
village was stopped. She was told that it was
evil and that she could no longer treat people’s
illnesses. In the name of their religious beliefs,
and quite in contradiction with the spirit of
those beliefs, the missionaries are eradicating
Akha culture in village after village.
A Thai speaks
out on mission activities in Thailand:
“Especially in
Thailand, due to the high levels of prostitution,
under the name of safeguarding young women, boarding
schools for girls sprout up. But then the girls
no longer want to marry Akha [non-Christian]
men.”
“Regarding religion,
at the beginning it seemed to be very good. Later,
it turned out to be a division among the people.
Some became Catholics, some Protestants, some
still holding their ancestors offering while
others became Buddists. All these, they could
not face to one another. The missionaries often cause dissention
in the villages without permission of the village
leaders.”
“Now we want to
raise a question, how good is Christianity then?
If that is good enough, why there are so many
groups, teaching about Jesus and yet fighting
one another? First they divided our people now
they are dividing our villages and families.
We seem to be like a prey for them. Better not
to have one of them than having all of them.”
VIETNAM
Perhaps,
you remember seeing the news videos of Buddhists
burning themselves with gasoline in the 1960’s?
Do you know why they burned themselves? They
were protesting the discriminatory treatment
and torture by the fanatical Catholic South Vietnamese
government of Ngo Dinh Diem, installed by the
U.S. military. With the Vaticans influence, led
by Cardinal Spellman, democratic elections were
stopped in Vietnam, and Dim installed. This was
followed by the ill-fated Vietnam war.
Do you think that the government of the
U.S.A. stands for democracy in every country?
Actually they are only for democracies that elect
a government favorable to or are cooperative
with U.S. foreign policies. If they are not agreeable
with and subordinate to U.S. interests, then
covert U.S. forces make arrangements for other
leaders, like Mussaraf in Pakistan, like so many
leaders in South or Central America or Diem in
Vietnam, to take power.
