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.
CHINA
Although
most everyone has heard of the Boxer Rebellion
in China in 1900, few know that this rebellion
was directly a reaction of the Chinese people
to the Christian missionaries
who swarmed into the country in order to convert
the poor, illiterate, and defenseless Chinese.
The rebellion was of course suppressed by the
countries that were patronizing the converting
missionaries.
In October of
2000, over twenty Chinese scholars, experts on
history and religion, held a symposium, exposing
the crimes committed by the then recently "canonized" foreign
missionaries and their followers. Scholars listed
a number of facts to illustrate that in modern
history the activities of Catholic missionaries
were closely linked with the invasion of China
by foreign forces.
Prof.
Dai Yi said, "Lots of foreign missionaries
followed the warships of foreign aggressors to
China in and after the Opium War, and actually
foreign aggression and missionaries' activities
are combined into one. That is, missionaries'
activities were an integral part of invasion,
missionaries acted as guides and tools for foreign
aggressors and in return, aggressors paved the
way for the missionaries' activities." It
is the foreign missionaries that should answer
for the consequences to their actions because
their monstrous evils exasperated the Chinese
people and eventually fused the outburst of the
Yi He Tuan (known as Boxers) Movement.
Participants in
the symposium pointed out that foreign missionaries
executed in certain "religious cases," such
as Auguste Chapdelaine, Franciscus de Capillas
and Albericus Crescitelli, had only themselves
to blame for still being hated by people today,
because they had stopped no evil.
The Holy See,
disregarding the strong opposition from the Chinese
people, "canonized" these infamous
missionaries, which reveals the Vatican's “vicious
intention to intervene in China's internal affairs
through religious activities,” the scholars said,
pointing out that the "canonization" tramples
on the sovereignty of the Chinese Catholic Church,
as well as a severe provocation to the 1.2 billion
Chinese people.
The scholars all
voiced their protest over the perverse and vicious
deeds of the Vatican, saying that the present
China is strong enough to protect its national
security and national dignity and any attempt
to distort history and humiliate the Chinese
people is doomed to failure.
The Chinese government’s obvious reaction
to such Christian preaching activities over
many centuries has been to ban all conversion
efforts in China.
INDIA
India's
first major contact with Christianity began when
Vasco da Gama, from Portugal, landed with gunboat
and priests in 1498… The newcomers were not only
merchants but also devout Christians ordered
by the Pope: "... to invade, conquer, and
subject all the countries which are under rule
of the enemies of Christ, Saracens (Moslems who
fought against the Christian Crusaders in the
middle ages) or Pagan...."
Hindus were forced
to convert or faced torture and death. Thousands
had to flee Goa in order to keep their culture
and religious beliefs.
The historian Gaspar
Correa described what Vasco da Gama did, thus:
"When all the
Indians had thus been executed, he ordered them
to strike upon their teeth with staves and they
knocked them down their throats; as they were
put on board, heaped on top of each other, mixed
up with the blood which streamed from them; and
he ordered mats and dry leaves to be spread over
them and sails to be set for the shore and the
vessels set on fire... " Before killing
and burning the innocent Hindus he had their
hands, ears and noses cut off.
…"When the Zamorin
(head of the Hindu population) sent another Brahmin
(Hindu Priest) to Vasco to plead for peace, he
had his lips cut off and his ears cut off. The
ears of a dog were sewn on him instead and the
Brahmin was sent back to Zamorin in that state.
The Brahmin… had brought with him three young
boys, two of them his sons and the other a nephew.
They were hanged from the yardarm and their bodies
sent ashore."
Francis
Xavier, a Jesuit Priest, came soon after Vasco
da Gama, with the firm resolve of uprooting Hinduism
from the soil of India and planting Christianity
in its place. His sayings and doings have been
documented in his numerous biographies. Francis
Xavier, wrote back home,
"As soon as
I arrived in any heathen village, when all are
baptized, I order all the temples of their false
gods to be destroyed and all the idols to be
broken to pieces. I can give you no idea of the
joy I feel in seeing this done." The Church had a special way of dealing
with converted Hindus who were suspected of not
observing Christian rites with appropriate rigour
and enthusiasm, or even of covertly practicing
their old faith: “…the culprits would be tracked
down and burnt alive.”
Xavier
called for an inquisition, recorded by historians
as being more horrendous and barbaric than any
prior to that. Thousands were tortured mutilated
and killed. Thousands had to flee Goa in order
to keep their traditional culture and religion.
It
is recorded that between 600 and 1,000 Hindu
temples and shrines were destroyed, but many
consider these numbers to be on the conservative
side.
Many
types of brutal torture were employed by the
Inquisitors, such as mutilation of body parts,
fire torture and drownings. The details of this
torture are too ghastly and horrid to contemplate
for any sane human being.
”Children
were flogged and slowly dismembered in front
of their parents whose eyelids had been sliced
off to make sure they missed nothing. Extremities
were amputated carefully, so that a person could
remain conscious even when all that remained
was a torso and a head.”
The archbishop
of Evora, in Portugal, eventually wrote, "If
everywhere the Inquisition was an infamous court,
the infamy, however base, however vile, however
corrupt and determined by worldly interests,
it was never more so than in Goa.
No
body knows the exact number of Goans subjected
to these diabolical tortures; low estimates put
the number in the tens of thousands, high estimates
are in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even
more. The abominations of these inquisitions
continued from 1560 until a brief respite was
given in 1774, but four years later, the inquisition
was introduced again and it continued un-interruptedly
until 1812 — the inquisition in Goa wend on for
over two-hundred and fifty years. At that point
in time, in the year of 1812, the British put
pressure on the Portuguese to put an end to the
terror of the Inquisition and the presence of
British troops in Goa enforced the British desire.
Dr. Trasta
Breganka Kunha, a Catholic citizen of Goa writes, "Inspite
of all the mutilations and concealment of history,
it remains an undoubted fact that religious conversion
of Goans is due to methods of force adopted by
the Portuguese to establish their rule. As a
result of this violence the character of our
people was destroyed. The propagation of Christian
sect in Goa came about not by religious preaching
but through the methods of violence and pressure.
If any evidence is needed for this fact, we can
obtain it through law books, orders and reports
of the local rulers of that time and also from
the most dependable documents of the Christian
sect itself."
A proposed
celebration for the 500 year anniversary of Vasco
de Gama’s arrival in India was fiercly proposed
and successfully stopped, bringing together a
surprising alliance of Hindus, Muslims, left
wing campaigners and environmentalists.
The Gaur-Sarasvata
Brahmins were one such sect who had to flee at
the hands of the invading fanatics. Now their
sect is situated in the state of Karnataka. Leaving
everything behind and starting from scratch they
are now a very well to do and prosperous community.
Their temples rival any in the world. Still practicing
their ancient Vedic religion, the Gaur-Sarasvata
Brahmins are recognized for their dignity, honesty
and contributions to society. This soundly nullifies
the idea propagated by the Christian zealots
that Hindu religion is heathen and pagan.
Frances Xavier is
commonly known as 'St. Francis Xavier,' 'the
Patron Saint of the East.' He is still worshipped,
prayed to and honored as the pure representative
of Jesus Christ and his gospel by Christians
all over the world. There are innumerable hospitals,
schools, and other institutions in India named
after him. Even today the archdiocese of Goa
boasts,
"The glorious
chapter of the expansion of the Catholic Church
in the east can be said to have begun after the
European 'discovery' of the sea route to India
in 1498. This helped the coming of the European
fathers to these lands, one of them being St.
Francis Xavier, the great Apostle of the East
and Patron of the Missions. Goa is privileged
to have been the starting point of his Church
work labours and the place where his sacred remains
are preserved. Goa was called the "Rome
of the East" due to the central role it
played in evangelization of the east."
India today is ruled
by a secular government modeled after the western
democracies. What many Indians do not understand
is that the idea of secular government, first
seen in the United States of America, was a reaction
to the theocratic tyrannies that pervaded the
Dark Ages of Europe all the way to the founding
of the American nation. Separation of religion
and government were an effort to ward off and
prevent any Christian theocracy from taking control
in modern times.
Now the Christian
tactics have changed, but their underlying premise
that ‘Christianity is the only true religion’
nullifies all their attempts of portraying themselves
as tolerant and loving. The reality is that Christianity
has not changed its theology, it has only changed
its techniques of conversion. Christian evangelists
are now using vast amounts of wealth (billions
of US dollars) to spread their propaganda. Mission
activity in India comes in the guise of helping
the downtrodden, sick and helpless. In reality
the aim is the same — to convert all to Christianity
and in the wake destroy all the cultures and
religions that lie in the way. There is no need
to abuse, attack, or condemn the Non-Christian
religions. The plain truth is the Christian Missionaries
work with usage of lies, falsehood, and hypocrisy.
The social improvement facade is only a camouflage
or disguise for conversion work.
Why should the
Christian Missionaries want to collect converts?
Because it is in the nature of the religions
of exclusivity (Islam and Christianity) to try
to make every one like them in terms of religion.
They have no use, whatsoever, for pluralism or
respect for other religions; in fact what they
have is pure contempt for other religions. Further,
this exclusivity attachment and attitude comes
straight from the horse's mouth i.e. from their
scriptures. For instance, in the Bible Matthew
28:19-20, Mark 16:15-16, and Luke 24:46-47 every
Christian is commanded to make converts and it
is the duty of every Christian to uphold these
commands of the Bible.
A glance at their
activities in India clearly reveals that the
Christian Missionaries denigrate and demonize
the Hindus every single day. Hinduism is equated
with Devil Worship and Hindus are described as
Heathens, as workers for the Devil, and as lost
souls who are headed straight to hell.
Now-a-days, in most
civilized countries, open and outright utterance
of ignoble and unflattering slurs and put downs
on the basis of race, religion, creed, or other
affiliation is not tolerated because it has been
legislated as illegal. But in Pseudo-Secular
India, Hindus can be freely insulted, abused,
degraded and dragged into mud, by the Christian
Missionaries with impunity, without any fear
of lawsuit. They freely broadcast their Hate-Hindu,
vile and vituperative propaganda into Indian
villages and cities.
Because the
preacher of Christianity single-mindedly believes his loathing
gospels of hate, seeing them as divine commands
from his religion, he utters venom and vindictiveness
against the Hindu with zeal and with [in their
estimation] a clear conscience.
Nearly every single
day, rhetoric similar to the words below confirm
the reality that Christianity, while posing as
a religion of love, peace and tolerance is anything
but that.
"These Hindu
Heathens have their idols and their superstitions,
their idol-bearing temples and shrines where
they conduct their noisy foolish rituals and
ceremonies. They generate a lot of evil. They
are totally ignorant that Jesus Christ came to
overcome death. There is a great need to propagate
the Christian Gospel amongst them."
Only now is India
beginning to realize what the Christian Mission
activity is really all about. This is evidenced
in states like Nagaland, Mizoram, Assam,
Arunachal Pradesh and in other areas in Northeast India. As soon as
Christians become a majority in a given area,
they sow the venom of hatred and strife, turning
family member against family member, villager
against villager and instigate their Christian
followers to ask for self-determination and a
Christian Homeland. This is virtually the same
technique that the Moslems continue to use with
success.
As soon as a convert
is made, they are greatly encouraged to vehemently
and publicly denigrate their previous culture,
traditions and everything related to it. This
greatly disrupts the entire community and its
normal social and economic activities.
Militant
Christians in several of these Northeastern Indian
provinces have been forcing non-Christian residents
to either convert to Christianity or face capital
punishment. With
death staring at their face, most of the adult
members have fled the villages to escape torture,
resulting in disruption of agricultural activities.
Buddhist leaders of both the states of Assam
and Arunachal Pradesh have strongly condemned
the heinous carnage committed by the militants
on the peace-loving Buddhists and tribal cult
followers.
Because Hindus now
know what the Christians are up to, it is time
to take some serious steps to counter the Christian
propaganda and instill pride in Indians across
the nation for their glorious past and distinguished
Vedic heritage.
For Additional Information
on the Goan Inquisition, please visit:
The
Portuguese Invasion of Goa
Details
of the Goan Inquisition
Hindu
Genocide in Goa
CONCLUSION
Christians have always
portrayed non-Christian civilizations as backwards,
underdeveloped, superstitious, and barbaric.
What really underlies all of their criticism
is that these cultures do not accept Jesus, the
Bible and their western way of life. This is
what, in the Christians’ opinion, deems these
cultures as needing their help, when in fact
the their fervor to destroy any theistic
conception other than Christianity or any temple
other than a church shows that they
are really the ones who are showing the qualities
of barbarians.
Today,
many are uninformed and believe that mission
excesses only took place in prior times and
today's preaching works are a 'good thing.'
But as long as the basic premises and theology
that underly all the abuses that took place in
the past are not corrected, the result of mission
activities will remain the same: Genocide and
destruction of all that lies in its way, replacing
it with the 'superior religion and culture' that
most missionaries believe they are delivering.
In retrospect, these
various ethnic cultures were far better off before
the introduction of Christianity, as it
had nothing better to offer them. In reality,
these cultures were decimated, their histories
were erased, their cultural traditions eradicated,
their former religions destroyed and they were
left more unhappy than before the arrival of
Christianity.
There have been many
revisions in the teachings of Jesus Christ since
it first took hold some 2,000 years ago. But
until the xenophobic and iconoclastic teachings
of the Bible are corrected, mission activity
will yield the same catastrophic results. As
taught in the Bible, 'we can know a tree by its
fruit,' these evangelists need to adopt a more pluralistic
theology, recognizing the divinity in other religions
and the contributions of other cultures and further
recognize that theirs is not the only path
to salvation. Suffice it to say, until these
things have been corrected, that to label such
endeavors for Christ as good works or pious activity
is wrong.
Otherwise, in this
modern age, those deemed with good intelligence,
who are advanced in philosophy and science, have
no other choice than to condemn these
preaching activities worldwide, which seek to
destroy ethnic cultures. Mission activities
need to be monitored and the conversion agenda
needs to be reconsidered.
