Slides: The Shameful Side of History

The Shameful Side of History

By David Feddes

Charlemagne’s swordpoint baptisms and massacres

First Crusade

At Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II preached, "God wills it!"

Conquest of Jerusalem

• Butchered unarmed Muslims after surrender
• Massacred many Arab Christians
• Burned Jews in their synagogue

Fourth Crusade: Sack of Constantinople (1204)

Inquisition

Martin Luther, On the Jews and their Lies

“Set fire to their synagogues… I advise that their houses be destroyed… They must be driven from our country… They are full of the devil’s feces… We are at fault in not slaying them.”

Salem Witch Trials

Opium Wars

Apartheid

• South African system of racial segregation
• Some missionaries said each race should stay separate and develop its unique identity.
• Some theologians and churches officially defended apartheid.

Rwanda

• Hutu majority murdered 800,000 minority Tutsis, as well as Hutus who helped Tutsis
• 95 percent of Rwandans claim to be Christians
• Some pastors and priests aided in genocide

The shameful side of church history
• Charlemagne’s swordpoint conversions
• Crusader atrocities
• Inquisition tortures and burnings
• Luther’s tirades against Jews
• Witch trials
• Opium wars
• Apartheid
• Rwandan genocide

The shameful side of American history

• Conquest of native Americans

• Enslavement of Africans

• Imperialism in relation to other nations

Columbus the Christian

• “[The Holy Spirit] with marvelous rays of light consoled me through the holy and sacred Scriptures” and gave “the sweetest consolation.”
• “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.”
• “There are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.”
• Gave captive girl to one of his men, who beat her into having sex.

Greedy for gold

• Natives age age 14 and up had to bring gold dust or 25 pounds of cotton to their Spanish conquerors every 3 months.
• “Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper token which he must wear about his neck as proof that he had made his payment.” (Ferdinand Columbus)
• Any native found without a token would have his hands cut off.

Cortez    
“Let us go forth, serving God, honoring our nation, giving growth to our king, and let us become rich ourselves.”

King James Version of Thankgiving

King James thanked “Almighty God for his great goodness and bounty towards us” for “this wonderful plague among the savages.”

Genocidal General

• In 1763 General Jeffrey Amherst approved sending smallpox-infected blankets as gifts to Indians.
• He wrote of “measures to be taken as would bring about the Total Extirpation of those Indian Nations” and “put a most Effectual Stop to their very Being.”

The first Thanksgiving

Pilgrims seeking religious freedom held a feast to thank God, joined by Indians.

Some untold truths:

• Harvest celebrations were an Indian custom.
• Settlers couldn’t survive without Indian help.
• Most colonists had financial, not religious motives.
• That cordial feast was far from typical.

A less famous feast

• In 1623 British officials in Virginia made a treaty with natives near the Potomac River and proposed a toast symbolizing eternal friendship.
• The chief, his family, advisors, and two hundred others drank the toast—and dropped dead of poison.

Enslaving Africans

• In 1618 the Dutch Reformed Synod of Dort banned the sale of Christian slaves and said they “ought to enjoy equal right of liberty with other Christians.”
• Some Dutch Reformed people took this decree seriously. So what did they do?
• Many of the Dutch Reformed dialed back evangelism in slave colonies so that slaves would not convert to Christianity and thus become candidates for liberty.

America’s founding fathers

• The first colony to legalize slavery was not Virginia but Massachusetts.
• In 1720 about one of every four residents of New York City was a slave.
• More than half of those who signed the Declaration of Independence owned slaves

Thomas Jefferson

• Blasted King George for the slave trade
• Said of slavery: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.”
• Tried everything to deal with the problem of slavery—except freeing the 200 slaves that he himself owned.

Patrick Henry

• Called slavery “as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible and destructive of liberty.”
• Still he kept buying slaves and never freed them.
• “Would anyone believe that I am a Master of Slaves of my own purchase! I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them.”

Yelping for liberty?

• Samuel Johnson: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”
• Montesquieu mocked the way Europeans and Americans denied the full humanity of black people: “It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men, because, allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christian.”

Confederate foundations

“Our new government’s foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.” (Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens)

The North’s motivations

• Some wanted to stop slavery and free black people on moral grounds.
• Others wanted to limit the spread of slavery in order to keep Western lands free of blacks. One said, “The negro race already occupy enough of this fair continent; let us keep what remains for ourselves and our children.”
• Lincoln fought to preserve the Union, not to free slaves.
• Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed only slaves in enemy territory, not in border states.

Lincoln the liberator

“I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people… there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality… and I as much as any man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

U.S. relations to other nations

• Is the U.S. “the last best hope of earth” (Lincoln), “a city on a hill” (Reagan), and “the light of the world, as Christ called us to be” (Bush, Sr.)?
• When Jesus said, “You are the light of the world,” he was speaking to his disciples, not to American politicians.
• Are U.S. troops always nobler, U.S. leaders more idealistic, U.S. policies more freedom-oriented and less imperialistic?

 
U.S. foreign relations

• In the 1950s the CIA arranged the killing of Iran’s leader and installed the Shah.
•  In the 1980s the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein in Iraq even while he was gassing opponents.
• The U.S. helped Muslim militants like Osama bin Laden against Russians in Afghanistan.
• The U.S. has done much good. It has also used political assassination, military force, and financial bullying to shape other nations.

Planning Study 23

Proposed “a union of Western European nations [to] undertake jointly the economic development and exploitation of the colonial and dependent areas of the African Continent.”

“We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population… In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security.”

“We will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction… We should cease to talk about vague and … unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”

“For a truly stable world order can proceed, within our lifetime, only from the older, mellower and more advanced nations of the world—nations from which the concept of order, as opposed to power, has value and meaning.”

This was written right after World War II, when the “mellower and more advanced nations” had just convulsed the world with the two bloodiest wars in history.

The shameful side of church history

• Charlemagne’s swordpoint conversions

• Crusader atrocities

• Inquisition tortures and burnings

• Luther’s tirades against Jews

• Witch trials

• Opium wars

• Apartheid

• Rwandan genocide

The shameful side of American history

• Conquest of native Americans

• Enslavement of Africans

• Imperialism in relation to other nations

Responsible Remembering

• Forgetting the past may doom us to repeat it.

• Recalling the past resentfully can fuel ongoing hatred, conflict, and violence.

• Seeing “our people” in the past as oppressors can trap us in chronic and useless guilt.

• Seeing “our people” in the past as victims can trap us in a victim mentality of excuse-making and playing the blame game.

• Jesus helps us to face the past honestly without being trapped by it.

Redemptive remembering

• “Large areas of ‘the World’ will not hear us till we have publicly disowned much of our past. Why should they? We have shouted the name of Christ and enacted the service of Moloch.” (C. S. Lewis)

• Confessing sins of others in past generations can make us self-righteous. We congratulate ourselves that we are much better than they were.

• The cross enables a kind of remembering that produces repentance rather than arrogance, gratitude rather than bitterness, reconciliation rather than revenge, hope rather than despair.

History lessons

• Some who claim to follow Jesus are not really Christians at all.

• Even genuine Christians still have many sins and blind spots.

•   God can bring good out of evil.

✞ Many slaves came to know Jesus.

✞ European and American imperialism was evil but resulted in many more people having access to the gospel, and enriched the worldwide church with much diversity.

• We are responsible for our actions now.