Another P.S.:
The conquest of the Americas is saturated with religious motivations at every level. In North America, it was the obdurate disinterest of the original inhabitants in converting to the Christian religion that led the religious spokesmodels of that period to conclude that they had no souls, therefore were demonic, and thus could be exterminated with a guiltless heart.
Religious fantasies, in addition to lust for gain, guided Columbus, in his first essays at genocide, and they continued to play a commanding role among the enslavers and destroyers who conquered the Southern Hemisphere for Jesus. It is true that, late in the day, in tune with the awakening of humane values proceeding from the Enlightenment, groups within the master religion drew back from slavery (calling, for the most part, for its modification, not its abolition.)
I'll tell you what's not worth speculating about: what percentage of this behavior was primarily religious, and what percentage was only secondarily religious, serving as rationalization. The reason it isn't, is that it doesn't really matter to the victims; and it was allowed; and try as you might, you can't "disappear" the association by defining all the bad guys, the vast numbers of them, as not what they thought they were.
But now that I think of it, I'm sure there must have been many atrocities carried out for purely religious motives. For example, the bonfires of the sacred and irreplaceable codices of the Aztecs and other indigenes lit personally by the padres. That's just one that comes to mind. |
