Anti-pagan

  • Libanius’s appeal.
  • Iconoclasm - see separate page.
  • Genocide, partly aided by disease
    • chommorro of phillipines [TW17]
  • Forced conversions
    • South Korea 2018 PP.
  • Ganging up against pagan states: Japanese pre-WW2 example.

Mode of spread

The germs are few to start with.
Main driver against well established religions is elite capture.
For jungle tribes and such - riding on the back of superior economic/ cultural memes.

Normative inversion

I shall not speak of the ancient errors common to all races, that bound the whole of humanity fast before the coming of Christ in the flesh. I shall not enumerate the devilish monstrosities [ʻportenta … diabolica’, which Giles’ translation renders as ‘diabolical idols’] of my land, numerous almost as those that plagued Egypt, some of which we can see today, stark as ever, inside and outside deserted city walls: outlines still ugly, faces still grim. I shall not name the mountains and hills and rivers, once so pernicious, now useful for human needs, on which, in those days, a blind people heaped divine honours [*divinus honor … cumulabatur’).

  • Gildas a British Christian in 540 CE

Doctrine of “discovery”

Doctrine of “discovery” - appropriation of non-christian territory.

  • References: Q, DD

Timeline

  • 11th–13th centuries: Crusades attempted to control the Holy Land. Lands not occupied by Christians were deemed vacant. The Church arbitrated land claims among Christian monarchs.
  • 15th century: Papal bulls (1452, 1453, 1493, and following) authorized only Christian monarchies as sovereign, and encouraged them to vanquish and place in perpetual slavery/servitude any heathens, pagans, Saracens, or other non-Christian peoples. For example, Portuguese developed the slave trade along the west African coast. The Church required “discovery” of land that was not occupied by Christians and to bring it under Church dominion. The peoples in Asia, Africa, and the Americas were not deemed sovereign as they were not Christian. The papacy authorized military conquest to assist conversion to Christianity.
  • 16th–18th centuries: Church-based claims to sovereignty by Spain, Portugal, and France became transferable to other Christian monarchies through treaty. Protestant monarchies, such as the British Crown under Henry VIII, reasserted themselves as Christian sovereigns, a status further bolstered by treaties and dynastic marriages.
  • 1783: The Treaty of Paris between the British Crown and the United States of America recognized the United States of America as a “sovereign” government (though not a monarchy).
  • 1823: US Supreme Court case Johnson v. M’Intosh made “discovery doctrine” explicit in US law. The court denied individuals permission to buy land from American Indian tribes [nations]. Under the doctrine, the court assumed only a sovereign United States could acquire the land, should the Indians choose to sell. In this decision, Indians were given a limited right of “occupancy” without full title to their own land, and could thus lose their land if they could not prove continuous occupancy. The doctrine was reframed in secular terms, in which the criterion for sovereignty became “cultivators of land” instead of “Christians.”
  • 1955: US Supreme Court case Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. United States relied on the doctrine of discovery. The court ruled that because “Tee-Hit-Tons were in a hunting and fishing stage of civilization” they had only a limited right of occupancy, and therefore the US was not required to reimburse the Tee-Hit-Ton for timber harvested from their land.

Subversive missionaries

  • Past: S15.
  • portuguese jesuits in matupa empire of zimbabwe [AJ]
  • “Asian churches have cooperated with western colonial powers or authoritarian governments for some time. But, in many places, Asian churches have been deeply associated with independent and democratic movements in different countries. As a result, Asian churches have a moral authority in nation building and democratisation. Moreover, many Asian theologians have tried to articulate their contextual theologies, such as Minjung theology in Korea, Homeland theology in Taiwan, People’s struggle theology in the Philippines, Water Buffalo theology in Thailand, Dalit theology in India, Buraku liberation theology in Japan and so on.” [From a 2004 Christian Conference of Asia essay - CCA]
  • Missionary activities report
  • Akha people of Thailand: “Prisoners of a white God”. [video]
  • Stolen generation of Australia. [page]
  • Canadian Indian residential school system [wiki]

Cost of “soul-saving”

previously unknown mass graves of children were discovered just this summer on the grounds of Indian residential schools …. the certain fact that souls were saved by the missionaries, the enduring belief of Christians that the Gospel is true and must be spread, is paramount; everything else is secondary. … Whatever natural good was present in the piety and community of the pagan past is an infinitesimal fraction of the grace rendered unto those pagans’ descendants who have been received into the Church of Christ. Whatever sacrifices were exacted in pursuit of that grace—the suffocation of a noble pagan culture; an increase in disease and bodily death due to government negligence; even the sundering of natural families—is worth it.