Christianity and Brutality.

[catlover]

How can we Christians have the "perfect" religion when churches participated in acts such as the Indian Residential Schools in Christ's name??





A 2001 report by the Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada documents the responsibility of the Roman Catholic Church, the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the federal government in the deaths of more than 50,000 Native children in the Canadian residential school system.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/amnestynow/soulwound.html

Settlements could snowball into billions of dollars, devastating the financial resources of Canada's four old-line Christian churches: Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and United Church. By the end of next year, the Canadian government forecasts, 16,000 Indians will have entered some form of claim; that number is equal to 17 percent of the living alumni of the boarding schools. Already there are four class-action suits against
http://www.incite-national.org/news/lawsuits.html

"After a lifetime of beatings, going hungry, standing in a corridor on one leg, and walking in the snow with no shoes for speaking Inuvialuktun, and having a heavy, stinging paste rubbed on my face, which they did to stop us from expressing our Eskimo custom of raising our eyebrows for 'yes' and wrinkling our noses for 'no', I soon lost the ability to speak my mother tongue. When a language dies, the world it was generated from is broken down too."

Mary Carpenter
1995


http://www.irsss.ca/history.html

 

[HypnoToad]

How can we Christians have the "perfect" religion when churches participated in acts such as the Indian Residential Schools in Christ's name??http://www.irsss.ca/history.html

Because you can't judge a philosophy by those who abuse it.

Christianity didn't do those things, sinful people did those things.

 

[Piedpiper123]

How can we Christians have the "perfect" religion when churches participated in acts such as the Indian Residential Schools in Christ's name??

What is your definition of a "perfect religion"? One whose adherents live perfect faultless lives?

 

[catlover]

Because you can't judge a philosophy by those who abuse it.

Christianity didn't do those things, sinful people did those things.

How can that be the case when the churches involved believed these actions to be good?

 

[catlover]

What is your definition of a "perfect religion"? One whose adherents live perfect faultless lives?

Adherents of Christianity should know the basics of compassion and not abuse children.

 

[Piedpiper123]

Adherents of Christianity should know the basics of compassion and not abuse children.

I agree but you avoided the question. Nothing is implied by the question I just wanted to understand what you mean by "perfect religion".

 

[BigNorsk]

You would think so wouldn't you? But mix colonialism with christianity and the christianity was pretty hard to find. Though there certainly were a lot of well meaning individuals, they seemed themselves to be unable to change or help a system that was designed as one more step to making a people disappear. I really think many involved considered the Indians not really human. But it's actually hard to tell. Beatings, whippings, and such continued in many of the schools run by those same churches for non-Indians until very recently. You still see more than a few middle aged Catholics talk about the num with the ruler or stick and how any child better shape up or he or she would feel it's sting. Some consider them the good old days, where a teacher had authority or at least fear on his or her side.

Anyway, the same basic thing happened in institutional boarding schools as it did in Abu Ghraib. The boarding schools were fundamentally prisons. You could argue they needed to be to stop the frequent runaways. But children were taken from their parents. Thrown into barracks with only a few supervisors. Supervisors had power, really power of life or death, and complaints were ignored, except maybe to bring down more punishment. Absolute power does indeed corrupt and while it didn't corrupt everyone, it did many, and abuse was basically ignored. There seemed to be no alternative once the whole thing was set in motion.

They were imprisoned, tortured, starved, shamed and any stepping out of line or complaints meant more of the same.

Should we note that more than a few of the supervisors were twisted Christians who thought the mortification of the flesh and vows of poverty, celebacy and such were the way to heaven? In many ways, the children experienced the cloitured life of monks without taking the vows or assenting to participate. They were really kidnapped.

Do you know why those mainline churches were involved? They were the ones who had been around long enough to establish missions among the natives. So they were the ones connected with the BIA officials and their leadership thought that the whole idea would be a great way to win souls for the Lord.

We can be self prideful and say we would never do such things. But I tell you, when I see the government faith based initiatives, I think neither the government nor the church has learned a thing. Why does government want to do faith based initiatives? Because they fool themselves and think that that way they can do a dollars worth of good with a dime. Underfunding is part and parcel of the whole idea.

And the church, when will the church ever learn that uniting the church, which is not of this world, with government is a really, really bad idea. One which destroys the witness of the church, often destroys the church itself and leaves the church with sin all over its face. I don't know a single time it hasn't, not one.

Yet people stand in the churches today, and they cry give us vouchers, give us the social funding, give us the power of the government.

They should do a little traveling and go to a few reservations and ask a few of those people just how such an idea works.

Frankly, I'm not sure why the assets of those denominations in this country hasn't been seized for partial payment to those they hurt so. Shameful really that criminals can pretty much get away with it if they are from the government of from a church. I guess it wouldn't really pay for sins anyway.

A real mess. Much of it done in the name of God. Truly a sad April's Fool joke if there ever was one.

Marv

 

[catlover]

I agree but you avoided the question. Nothing is implied by the question I just wanted to understand what you mean by "perfect religion".

Isn't Christianity the perfect realigion? We must convert everyone from their evil ways?

 

[catlover]

. I really think many involved considered the Indians not really human. But it's actually hard to tell. Beatings, whippings, and such continued in many of the schools run by those same churches for non-Indians until very recently.

Yes, the last of those schools were closed in the 90's. Very frightening.
I suppose if you dehumanize a person it is easy to abuse them.

. You still see more than a few middle aged Catholics talk about the num with the ruler or stick and how any child better shape up or he or she would feel it's sting. Some consider them the good old days, where a teacher had authority or at least fear on his or her side..

It's sad that brutalizing a child is the good ole days. Perhaps the good old days weren't that great. Lynchings, these schools, segregation etc.

.Anyway, the same basic thing happened in institutional boarding schools as it did in Abu Ghraib. ..

It's funny there are those who believe that was justified. More brutalization of "non humans".

.

. But I tell you, when I see the government faith based initiatives, I think neither the government nor the church has learned a thing. Why does government want to do faith based initiatives? Because they fool themselves and think that that way they can do a dollars worth of good with a dime. Underfunding is part and parcel of the whole idea.

And the church, when will the church ever learn that uniting the church, which is not of this world, with government is a really, really bad idea. One which destroys the witness of the church, often destroys the church itself and leaves the church with sin all over its face. I don't know a single time it hasn't, not one.


A real mess. Much of it done in the name of God. Truly a sad April's Fool joke if there ever was one.

Marv

Too true Marv.

 

[ContentInHim]

Isn't Christianity the perfect realigion? We must convert everyone from their evil ways?

Jesus was perfect. Sadly, we believers are not.

 

[GorrionGris]

Isn't Christianity the perfect realigion? We must convert everyone from their evil ways?

Just ask Jesus, from the very begining, his very own chosen disciples. Even St Augustine (hardly a modernist) said that the Church was a Holy Prostitute (his words).

However even 5 centuries earlier Fr. Bartolomé de las Casas made the Kingdom of Spain to promulgate laws to counter such kind of abuse (how those laws - or any law to be realistic - were implemented is another matter).

Before WW1 almost every country considered itself to be the norm that everybody else should follow. Germany, the UK, the KüK, France or even the US had some version of a manifest destiny in their history, a grandeur... and of course minorities were to be assimilated one way or another. But the root of the problem is not Christianity, it is nationalism; an ideology which pervaded not only Christians, but even "International" singing socialists which forgot their nationalism with the first shots of WW1.

There is no perfect religion, because religion is, in its proper sense, a relationship between human and the Divine, and hence it is subject to human fraility.

 

[catlover]

Just ask Jesus, from the very begining, his very own chosen disciples. Even St Augustine (hardly a modernist) said that the Church was a Holy Prostitute (his words).

However even 5 centuries earlier Fr. Bartolomé de las Casas made the Kingdom of Spain to promulgate laws to counter such kind of abuse (how those laws - or any law to be realistic - were implemented is another matter).

Before WW1 almost every country considered itself to be the norm that everybody else should follow. Germany, the UK, the KüK, France or even the US had some version of a manifest destiny in their history, a grandeur... and of course minorities were to be assimilated one way or another. But the root of the problem is not Christianity, it is nationalism; an ideology which pervaded not only Christians, but even "International" singing socialists which forgot their nationalism with the first shots of WW1..

It makes sense. Nationalism is a pestilence.
I am surprised St. Augustine wrote such a thing!

 

[HypnoToad]

How can that be the case when the churches involved believed these actions to be good?

What do you mean, "how can that be the case?"?

People screw up, people sin. How "good" they "think" they are is totally irrelevant. Simply "believing" something doesn't automatically make it so.

The flaw is not Christianity, the flaw is sinful people.

I can "believe" 2+2=5 all I want. Does that mean math is flawed? Or is it just me using math incorrectly?

 

[hosea6v6]

Because you can't judge a philosophy by those who abuse it.

Christianity didn't do those things, sinful people did those things.

Could you clear up a couple of questions I have on what you are saying here. Your name for Chirstians churches does not fit mine and you lump many so called christians into the same pot. I diffine christians not as a religion. I diffine religion as mans way to God.

I am not trying to be rude here and would love to fix blame were it belongs, but the world calls Christians who really do not know Him, but having a cross on their neck, which paint a name on an empty building.

So Catlover, who is a christian to you? Christ is perfict and His ways are perfect, it is us that are not perfect....yet

Hosea6v6

 

[Merciel]

It's clear from the book of Revelation that some churches were screwed up even then.

 

[HypnoToad]

H6v6 - I don't understand what you are asking of me.

 

[Fuchsia]

And the church, when will the church ever learn that uniting the church, which is not of this world, with government is a really, really bad idea. One which destroys the witness of the church, often destroys the church itself and leaves the church with sin all over its face. I don't know a single time it hasn't, not one.

Sad, yet true. Governments are flawed, man-made things and to unite them with the Church practically always ends up corrupting and destroying the Church. You cannot bring heaven down on earth.

 

[UberLutheran]

Well — the thing is, that hasn't been the Church's only failing.

Many churches, both Protestant and Catholic were actively involved in promoting the social conditions which encouraged slavery (and made it possible); and then were equally active in promoting and enforcing the Jim Crow laws in the U.S. which were active until the 1960s.

Many Catholic and Protestant denominations headed by Hutu clergy (and bishops) in Rwanda were directly responsible for a goodly portion of the 900,000 deaths which occurred in 1994 during the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda didn't have anything the U.S., Europe, Asia or the rest of Africa really needed, so few people lifted so much as a finger to stop the genocide.

Did the Church protest much when 1/4 of Cambodia's population was killed by the Khmer Rouge? No.

The Church is making some very half-hearted efforts to stop the genocide in Darfur and the Sudan. Then again, what does Sudan have that we need? Sand?

And do we really think we won't be judged for these "sins of omission"?

 

[billwald]

This demonstrates the doctrine of our sin nature. Sin contaminates all human activity including the visible church.

 

[HypnoToad]

Well — the thing is, that hasn't been the Church's only failing.

Many churches, both Protestant and Catholic were actively involved in promoting the social conditions which encouraged slavery (and made it possible); and then were equally active in promoting and enforcing the Jim Crow laws in the U.S. which were active until the 1960s.

Many Catholic and Protestant denominations headed by Hutu clergy (and bishops) in Rwanda were directly responsible for a goodly portion of the 900,000 deaths which occurred in 1994 during the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda didn't have anything the U.S., Europe, Asia or the rest of Africa really needed, so few people lifted so much as a finger to stop the genocide.

Did the Church protest much when 1/4 of Cambodia's population was killed by the Khmer Rouge? No.

The Church is making some very half-hearted efforts to stop the genocide in Darfur and the Sudan. Then again, what does Sudan have that we need? Sand?

And do we really think we won't be judged for these "sins of omission"?

Sure. But again, this is not Christianity's fault - it's the fault of imperfect believers.