Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Bias in Religion

I have been absent for a long while and decided to celebrate my return with a question that has been puzzling me that I have been reading up on at the local (woefully paltry) library.

Do you think that many pagan religions were discounted/ignored/persecuted with the advent of Christianity more from the racial make-up of their believers than from their beliefs?

I have read how many ministers used the Bible to justify slavery and other things we find distasteful. Any dark skinned or other than caucasian person seemed to be viewed as someone to be saved and then treated forever as still *less than equal*, but yet as saved shouldn't they have been considered equal?

Early American missionaries insisted that all Native Americans were Godless Heathens that needed to be saved from themselves. Native children were forcibly removed from their families and packed into Christian boarding schools. This practice continued into the 1970s in the USA and I have heard that it similarly happened in other countries as well (such as Australia with the Aborigines).

Many pagan/native practices 'blend' into the Christian beliefs and practices with these new converts. In my reading I see little evidence that this disturbed the missionaries much.

Why do you think Christianity took such a view of darker-skinned peoples? Was there/Is there some disturbing thread of prejudice in Christianity that bends the believers of that faith?

Not trying to rile folks up, but after dabbling in Asatru and meeting some folkish folks that left a bad taste in my brain, I got heavy into reading up on race and religion. My insatiable curiousity now wants to know if other folks here have observed this tendency in Christianity. I was raised in a Southern Baptist family (we are talking foot-washers here folks) and I never saw any non-white walk into the churches my parents attended. It was just accepted that "they have their churches and we have ours". The first church I ever walked into that had people of all races was a Catholic church.

So what do you think?

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