By Mark Owen - © 2010
Chapter 20 - Into all the world
Missionaries, my dear! Don't you realize that missionaries are the divinely provided food for
destitute and underfed cannibals? Whenever they are on the brink of starvation,
Heaven in its infinite mercy sends them a nice plump missionary. (Oscar Wilde)
Reading Oscar Wilde's comment I am reminded of a tale told me many years ago. My wife and I were at the time members of a 'faith' mission; my salary being 'as the Lord provided'. It seemed that the workers of the Church Missionary Society, an Anglican group operating in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), who received regular salaries, always knew when the funds had run out at a certain nearby 'faith' mission - they received a fraternal visit from the hungry workers.
Missionaries, their missions, and their motives - what a fascinating area to study. From Umfundisi Missioner to the Zulus, by Father Thomas M. Calkins, O.S.M., carrying the Imprimatur of William E. Cousins, Archbishop of Milwaukee, 1 July 1959, comes this revealing comment:
Native kids are missionaries' meat. They are the seeds of the Church, the pillars of the parish, little grinning black ragamuffins with running noses and dirty hands. It pays for missionaries to work on them. They are not yet barnacled with paganism, have not been steeped in the superstitions of their elders. They're open-minded, pliable, game for anything - even white-skinned priests with their tall tales [my italics] about a Man named Jesus.
And again, later, another insight into the missionary mind:
There is nothing like a mission boarding school for training good Catholic native children. It can't be beat for grounding these shiny black pagan kids in Catholicism. When you have them in tow twenty-four hours a day for nine months of the year, they're bound to absorb something.
Yes, substituting one form of superstition for another, one might well add.
What can one say of the missionaries? Much! They go right back to the earliest days of the Church. Paul himself was effectively a missionary, tramping long distances helping build the edifice of Christianity, or so we are told. The apostle Thomas, known as 'doubting Thomas' on account of his questioning of the Resurrection, was thought by some to have gone to India to evangelize that country. In the 3rd or 4th century a documents known as the Acts of Thomas surfaced, purporting to describe at length Thomas' journey to India and his subsequent martyrdom there. This has never been proved, even although some Christians in the Indian state of Kerala claim Thomas as the source of their allegiance. If Thomas founded this church did he instruct them to retain adherence to the shameful Hindu caste system, especially its treatment of the Untouchables (later known as dalits or harijans)? One looks in vain for support for such views - which that Church holds - from the teachings of Jesus. The Kerala Christians form a branch of the Syriac Christian Church; a Church whose doctrines greatly inspired Muhammad. Meanwhile in the 4th century Christians at Edessa, in Mesopotamia, asserted they held the relics of Thomas.
On and off through the years the chief centres of Christianity sent forth missionaries, as in the case of Rome sending Palladius and Patrick to Ireland in the 5th century (although one of the myriad forms of Christianity was already established there at this time). Pope Gregory 'the Great' (6th century) reportedly saw some fair-haired Anglo-Saxon boys in the slave market at Rome, so sent a mission to Britain, headed by St Augustine. Incidentally, it is not recorded that he objected in any way to the very fact that children were being sold as slaves! But then the Church even had its own slaves for many centuries.
From time to time we are regaled with the claim that Christians were at the forefront of the movement to abolish slavery, William Wilberforce being a notable figure in this push. And there were others. But it is only in relatively recent times that the Christian Church has condemned slavery. It was thought to be part of the natural order of things. After all, the Old Testament endorses it and St Paul counselled: 'Let each man abide in the calling wherein he was called. Wast thou called being a bondservant [i.e. a slave]? Care not for it . . . ' (I Corinthians 7: 20-21). Paul 'converted' a runaway Phrygian slave, Onesimus, then sent him back to his master bearing a note (Philemon 12). Paul approved of slavery; his supposed divine inspiration evidently failing him when it came to human rights.
And there is more. Ignatius, writing late in the first century to Polycarp: 'Despise not slaves of either sex; yet let them not be puffed up, but serve more faithfully for the glory of God . . . Let them not desire to be set at liberty at the charge of the church, lest they be found slaves of lust.' St Augustine drew attention to the fact that Christian slaves had the opportunity denied to other people of practising the virtues of obedience, humility, forgiveness, patience and modesty! How nice for them. And how thoughtful of the saint to draw attention to these benefits.
To be fair, one must note that while the churches were actually holders of slaves in this era, some Christians decried slavery and ecclesiastics often gave runaway slaves shelter in their churches, demanding that if they returned to their masters they should not be punished. There were also on occasions purchases made by Christians, after which the slave was set free. Ambrose of Milan sold the rich ornaments of his cathedral in order to rescue captives. On the other hand, in the Middle Ages the Church was prominent among serf or slave owners. And ecclesiastics often showed no more mercy towards their vassals than anyone else. A Norman bishop of the 12th century found he had a partial insurrection of serfs on his hands. He promptly seized a number of them, had them stripped naked and bound them with iron to stakes. There they were left exposed to die slowly from the effects of hunger, the sun and attacks from insects. Nobody dared aid them for fear of suffering a like fate.
As we shall see, when the Christian missionaries began riding on the coat-tails of the traders and conquerors fanning across the world from the 15th century on, their attitudes to slavery were ambiguous and in some cases they even held slaves themselves. The waves of Westerners penetrating Africa, Asia and the Americas brought with them two types of pestilence. And who can say which was the most devastating - the physical diseases of the white Europeans or their religious superstitions? But then their superstitions were far superior to the degraded religions they encountered in those far parts, weren't they? Never mind that many of the primitive elements of the religions of the Asians, Africans and native Americans were also present in Western religion in a more 'advanced' form.
It has been rightly said that the three chief exports of Africa were gold, ivory and slaves. Thus when the New World began to open up and with it a great demand for labour to work the farms and mines, it was natural for attention to be turned to that continent, for so long the source of an almost endless supply of slaves. The chief countries engaged in this commerce were the great 'Christian' nations of Spain, Portugal, Britain, Holland, Denmark and France.
To the Catholic Portuguese goes the doubtful distinction of being the first European nation to enslave Africans. Raids down the west coast of Africa by Portuguese seamen took small numbers of Africans captive from 1441 onwards and in August of that year the first slave market was conducted at Lagos. By 1448 more than 1,000 African slaves had been taken by the Portuguese. But soon other nations joined in the scramble for the easy riches to be derived from the human cargos. In 1631 Charles 1st granted English slave-traders the exclusive right to trade in Benin, Guinea and Angola for the next 31 years. The peak of the trade was reached around 1825. At about this time the Jesuit Fathers in Angola were operating three ships continuously in the trade. Let me repeat that statement - the Jesuit Fathers!
Then, as was to happen over and over in the Americas, no regard was paid to family units by these good Christians. They were ruthlessly separated one from the other. No hint of 'family values' here! An observer of the scene wrote:
Then, as though the more to increase their suffering, came those who were commanded to make the division; and they began to part one from the other, in order to form companies, in such a manner that each company would be of equal value; and for this it was necessary to separate the children from their parents, and women from their husbands, and brothers from brothers. There was no law in respect of kinship or affectation; each was compelled to go whither fate drove him . . . Consider how they cling one to another, in such a manner that they can hardly be parted! Who, without much anguish, could have made such a division?
So soon as they had been led to their place the sons, seeing themselves removed from their parents, ran hastily back towards them; the mothers clasped their children in their arms, and holding them, cast themselves upon the ground, covering them with their bodies, without heeding the blows which they were given!
In the Congo the Portuguese priests were as zealous as the adventurers and traders in subduing the people. It was reported that often when they settled in a region and sought to impose the Catholic religion on the natives they literally resorted to the whip to enforce their will. One priest even took to a chief's wife in this manner when she failed to respond to the Gospel message. A record of the times comments laconically, that 'every successive blow opened her eyes more and more to the truth and she eventually declared herself wholly unable to resist such persuasive arguments.' In such charming ways has the Church of the Christ-god been enlarged.
Although the Catholic invaders thought of the natives as having immoral standards, in fact some had severe laws directed against what might be termed sexual 'misbehaviour'. For example, the Bakongo people punished rape, adultery and incest severely. The culprit was either sold into slavery or wrapped in banana leaves and set alight. But Christians sometimes have moral standards of a lower order than those around them. In Ethiopia the Coptic Church looked the other way while slavery flourished. James Bruce, 18th century Scottish traveller, writing of his African experiences, told an interesting story involving an elderly priest of the Coptic Christian Church, in the town of Dixan, a place notorious for trafficking in children:
Two priests of Tigré had long been intimate friends. The youngest was married, and had two children, both sons; the other was old, and had none. The old one reproved his friend one day for keeping his children at home idle, and not putting them to some profession by which they might gain their bread. The married priest pleaded his poverty, and his want of relations that could assist him; on which the old priest offered to place his eldest son with a rich friend of his own who had no children, and where he would want for nothing.
The proposal was accepted, and the young lad, about 10 years of age, was delivered by his father to the old priest to carry him to his friend, who took the boy to Dixan, and sold him there. Upon the old priest's return, after giving the father a splendid account of his son's reception, treatment, and prospects, he gave him a piece of cotton cloth as a present from his son's patron. The younger child, about 8 years old, hearing the good fortune of his elder brother, became so importunate to be allowed to go and visit him, that the parents were obliged to consent.
But the old priest had a scruple, saying he would not take the charge of so young a boy unless his mother went with him. This being settled, the old priest conveyed them to the market at Dixan, where he sold both the mother and the remaining child.
Returning to the father, the old priest told him that his wife would only stay so long, and expected that he would then fetch her upon a certain day. The day being come, the two priests went together, and, upon their entering Dixan, it was found that the old priest had sold the young one, but not to the same Moor to whom he had sold his family. Soon after, the two Moors who had bought the Christians becoming partners, the old priest was to receive forty cotton-cloths for the husband, wife and children.
It occurred to the Moorish merchants that there was some profit, and not more risk, if they carried off the old priest likewise. They prevailed on him to accompany them outside the town, threw him down, and bound him . . The woman and her two children were sold to Arabia.
(Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (London 1790, available in an Abridged Edition reprint published by Horizon Press, New York, 1964).
The Protestants vied with the Catholics in extracting riches from the people of Africa. In 1562 Englishman John Hawkins, a pious Christian, helped launch for England this appalling trade in human misery. Hawkins did, however, give his slaves a break; they were allowed on deck each day to participate in Christian worship. Well, it would never do for them to miss that. At first Queen Elizabeth denounced the trade as 'detestable' and believed divine vengeance would be the punishment of the participants. But soon she too had cast her lot with the slavers and actually participated financially in the trade. The Anglican Queen ever had an eye for profit.
Meanwhile the Americas were being invaded by the Spanish and Portuguese and eventually several other European nations. Central and South America were to become scenes of great cruelty, the destruction of native culture and the wholesale slaughter and enslavement of the native peoples. And the Church was in many places deeply involved. In Paraguay, for instance, the Jesuit fathers were not averse to employing the whip on the people.
Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, a 16th century Spanish historian and missionary, denounced the genocide practised by his own nation against the Indians of South America. His work, Breve relato de la destrucción de las indias recorded his observations. In his writings he described scenes such as one in which he observed a Spanish lady 'whip an Indian girl so hard that the girl died before the lady had the opportunity to tire of her efforts.' From the beginnings such of the the Indian population as had not been killed off immediately were enslaved. In 1524 the Council of the Indies authorized slavery, although it was in fact already operating by then. The Catholics had no objection to slavery, provided only that the slaves were Protestants or Muslims or members of other religions.
Fray Batolemé de Las Casas criticized the actions of the Hieronomite fathers, who were supposed to be acting as protectors of the Indians but who, he thought, were failing them, and gave up his own slaves and sold off his farm. Las Casas then returned to Spain to plead the cause of the Indians. Cardinal Ximenes took up the problem and Las Casas was designated 'Protector of the Indians'. He returned to South America but was so unhappy with what was happening there that he travelled back to Spain, where he addressed the Council of the Indies. The Bishop of Darien asserted that Indians were 'by nature slaves.' Las Casas now proposed what was a strange solution to the problem, coming from one with such a humanitarian outlook: that the planters be allowed to buy Negro slaves to replace the Indians! Each Spanish resident should be allowed to have eight Negroes in his service. This idea was taken up, one which was to give Las Casas cause for deep regret in later days. The Spanish India House proposed to send 1,000 blacks to each of the four islands, Hispaniola, Porto Rico, Cuba and Jamaica. The Genoese were sold the rights to supply these Negroes, for which franchise they paid the sum of 25,000 ducats.
In Latin America, as elsewhere, the Church of Rome has continued through the years, to try to assert its tyranny over people. Take the nation of Colombia. Under the country's 1886 Constitution Catholicism was declared the State religion. In 1887 a Concordat was signed between the Vatican and Colombia, further enslaving the people. Under these arrangements, for example, divorce was absolutely forbidden, even in the case of those who had been married in civil ceremonies. Marriage was henceforth to be indissoluble and legally binding for the couple and their descendants.
In 1924 the notorious Law 24, sponsored by Colombian President Concha, specified that anyone contracting a civil marriage was automatically excommunicated. It went even further than that. Not only did the couple get thrown out of their Church but any judge, witness, secretary or other person involved in such a ceremony was also ipso facto excommunicated. This was in direct conflict with Article 53 the Constitution which declared: 'The State guarantees all citizens freedom of conscience, belief and worship within the bounds of Christian morality and the law of the land.' So powerful was the influence of Rome that, nevertheless, the new edict went into force. There was indeed a provision in the country's rules that allowed people to opt out of the Church prior to marriage, known as abjuration, thus avoiding the stigma of excommunication. However, this entailed a humiliating process. The couple had to submit to extensive interrogation, to state in writing their intentions to a magistrate, and then the declaration was made public. The abjuration was incorporated into the marriage banns, posted up in the town hall and parish and had to be ratified during the marriage ceremony.
The Catholic Church continued also to exercise political power in Columbia as in other Latin American countries. A typical example occurred in March 1975, when the Bishops of Risaralda vetoed the appointment of Dora Luz de Botero as Governor of the Departement on the grounds that she had married a second time. The official Catholic statement denounced this as 'social behaviour offensive to a people's dignity.' President M. Lopez caved in to the Church fathers with this amazing statement, which appeared in the newspaper El Espectator (March 5, 1975):
The scandal has damaged the reputation of a wife and mother; the Government has perhaps injured [the lady] by appointing her in her capacity as a literacy expert to carry out the Government's experimental literacy program in Risaralda . . . If, after having been subjected to such unchristian treatment, after having been refused nomination merely because she had been divorced and then contracted a civil marriage, rather than remain single and live with someone unofficially, [the lady] prefers not to accept the position, I will gladly replace her with another citizen, male or female.
Because of the control exercise by the Church of Rome over Colombian society (and in many other countries) abortion has always been carried out, except in very exceptional circumstances, in clandestine back-street operations, endangering the lives of the poor who mainly resort to such establishments. Yet in the early 1970s it was estimated that somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 such operations were occurring each year. In 1971 an average of two women died each week as a result. Further, the powerful Church influence resulted in many families literally throwing their teenage daughters onto the streets should they become pregnant, where they ended up as prostitutes. Because of these conditions illegitimate births were also widespread. (All of this sounds very familiar!) Cohabiting couples represented in various parts of the country anything from around 20 percent of the population up to more than 70 percent! The lay people themselves evidently rejected Vatican strictures on sexual activities outside formal marriage. Such rejection continues in many parts of the world today.
It was not until 1976 that new laws were drawn up, allowing greater freedom to Colombians in the matter of divorce, although even then it was an extremely difficult process. The Concordat between Rome and Colombia remained in force in many respects, in particular in allowing special privileges to the ecclesiastical courts. The power of the Catholic Church in Colombian society remained, seen clearly exercised in the constant persecutions, sometimes fearsome and leading to death, experienced by members of the various Protestant denominations working in the country following World War 2.
Turning now to North America, we have already met with the Puritans and other Protestant groups in the country that was to become the United States and we have touched upon some of the cruel laws of those societies, inspired by religious superstition. Both the Protestants and the Catholics of North America were fully involved in the institution of slavery. Even some of the peaceable Quakers who, as a persecuted people, should have known better, traded in and held slaves, including George Fox himself, who employed them on his plantation on Barbados, although they were treated well. However, many in the movement were opposed to slavery and were in time active in demanding its abolition. By about 1783 most slavery had effectively ceased among the Quakers. But not among many other believers.
Captive Indians from the earliest times were often turned into slaves by the good Christians from Europe. Iroquois were forced to work on French ships and in Canada itself Frenchmen enslaved Pawnees. The Natchez suffered from enslavement in the Mississippi region and indeed, before the arrival of the African captives, the colonists made extensive use of Indians as forced labourers. As with the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, the Indians provided an essential boost to the economic well-being of the settlements and were not easily given up. The Indians also suffered greatly from introduced diseases. The Wampanoags of Massachusetts originally numbered some 10,000 people but by the time the Pilgrims arrived in 1620 they had been decimated by smallpox, introduced by traders, and numbered about one-tenth of that figure. The pious Puritans actually praised God that the scourge had wiped out so many Indians! When Metacom (known as 'Prince Philip'), leader of the Wampanoags, rebelled against his oppressors and attacked New England settlements, a bloodbath ensued. The Puritans fought back, killing without mercy men, women and children. The severed head of Metacom was displayed with pleasure before his captive widow. And thousands more died as a result of infections, many coming from the white man.
The Christian clergy in the USA in the 18th and 19th centuries mostly acquiesced in the slave trade, some reluctantly, others quite actively. In a large coloured-only 'sabbath school' the children were exhorted to be good. 'What a comfort it will be to your masters and mistress,' the speaker added. It was common on plantations for masters to teach children their duty of obedience as 'the way to salvation'. The words of St Paul, enjoining slaves to 'obey their masters,' (Titus 2:9) were frequently and approvingly quoted. And anyway, the slave could look forward to a better life in the hereafter, a great comfort, I am sure.
It should be noted here that the Catholic Church of Latin America had a better record than the Protestants of North America. The Catholic Church exerted considerable pressure on governments and settlers to ameliorate the lot of the Indian slaves in those countries and the Jesuits in particular had a specially good record in this regard. Few Protestant Christians in the north even questioned the institution of slavery, let alone concerned themselves with the terrible abuses apparent on every hand.
An Anglican Bishop, William Meade of Virginia, once preached what must have been one of the most hypocritical sermons ever heard in a church. He exhorted the slaves with these words:
Poor creatures! You little consider, when you are idle and neglectful of your master's business, when you steal, and waste, and hurt any of their substance, when you are saucy and impudent, when you are telling lies and deceiving them, or when you prove stubborn and sullen, and will not do the work you are set without stripes and vexation - you do not consider, I say, that what faults you are guilty of towards your masters and mistresses are faults done against God himself, who hath set your masters and mistresses over you in His own stead, and expects that you would do for them just as you would do for him. And pray do not think that I want to deceive you when I tell you that your masters and mistresses are God's overseers, and that, if you are faulty towards them, God himself will punish you severely for it in the next world.
(I mention in passing that these same words have also been attributed to a South Carolina minister, the Reverend Alex. Glennie.) As we have already seen, one of the chief sources of heartache for the slaves was the separation of families, in particular the great anguish when a small child was taken from his or her parents. An ex-slave, William Craft, complained that his master, who had a reputation as a devout Christian, 'thought nothing of selling my poor old father, and dear aged mother, at separate times, to different persons, to be dragged off never to behold each other again.' This same good Christian 'sold a dear brother and sister, in the same manner as he did my father and mother.'
The slave had no rights whatever and slaves were even forbidden to teach other slaves to read and write. A white lady, Margaret Douglass, of Norfolk, Virginia, fell foul of the law when she took it upon herself to teach a slave girl, Kate, to read the Bible. A court tried her and found her guilty of 'one of the vilest crimes that ever disgraced society . . .' The judgment continued: 'No enlightened society can exist where such offences go unpunished.' The court seemed to forget that Christians were supposed to preach the Gospel to all people! The lady's punishment is not recorded.
Christian morality, such as it is, seems also to have been conveniently forgotten in the matter of sexual liaisons between whites and slaves. In Kentucky 'in the kitchen of a minister a slave man was living in open adultery with a slave woman.' She was a church member. But while this went on, the man's wife was on the minister's farm in another place. The pastor of an Alabama church had two families of slaves, one pair of whom had been married by a Negro preacher. The pastor seduced one of the Negro women. The other pair lived in 'concubinage,' as it was then described; they were both church members.
A Baptist association in the South formally declared that a slave might lawfully have several wives. If a slave were sold off to a plantation 10, 20, or 30, miles away, and took another woman into his bed, it would not injure his standing in the Baptist Church. One pastor added a phrase to the marriage ceremony when using it for slaves. After 'to death do part' he inserted the words 'or some other cause beyond your control.' Four allegedly 'pious' Negro women in one household, all church members in good standing, bore children, although none had a husband. There was only one Negro man in the same household, also a church member. It was common then for a female slave to change husbands but still retain her church membership.
The arrant hypocrisy of the southern Baptists is exemplified in a statement by one of their number, W. Noël, who wrote in 1863: 'If a pastor has offspring by a woman not his wife, the church dismisses him if she is a white woman, but if she is coloured, it does not hinder his continuing to be their shepherd.' In a Sabbath school in Mississippi around the year 1870, after the Civil War, it was observed that many unrecognized children of 'first citizens' attended. These included the offspring of governors, politicians, lawyers, justices of the peace, sheriffs, judges, doctors, teachers, tradespeople and ministers of religion.
A southern Methodist preacher in 1888 proposed that the parents of mulatto children should be sent to the chain gang. At about the same time a correspondent to the newspaper Advance, urged every coloured woman giving birth to light-skinned children to be compelled to disclose the father, who should forthwith be hanged.
Following emancipation Negro men and women of 'good repute' in northern churches often travelled to the South to procure handsome Negro girls for sex. In the churches many Negro preachers at this time were said to owe their promotion to the fact that they prostituted their wives to the men further up in the hierarchy. William H. Thomas in his book American Negro (1901) said: 'A large majority of our Negro ministry is conspicuous for its licentious indulgence with the female members of Negro churches.' A physician who specialized in Negro work declared that Negro preachers were frequently treated by him for syphilis and gonorrhea. Abortion was also commonplace, young Negro women getting rid of babies conceived to white fathers, at the latters' insistence.
To be fair, there were Christian preachers who were active abolitionists. The Reverend Thomas W. Higginson actually led a group of blacks and whites assaulting a courthouse in Boston in which were imprisoned some fugitive Negroes. But the legacy of those times remains in many ways; even today one can find occasional segregated churches. And certainly the fundamentalist Christians both in the southern United States and other parts of the country have among their number many errant ministers. Freethought Today magazine ran for some years a regular section called Black Collar Crimes, an extensive catalog of clerical malfeasance (also reproduced on its web site).
Not all the stories in such a catalog feature Catholic child abusers! Many do, though, but then perhaps it doesn't matter all that much. When the Reverend John Calicott, a Catholic priest, returned to his church, Holy Angels, in Chicago, after admitting sexual misconduct with minors, he was roundly cheered and applauded by the forgiving parishioners! And Sister Helen, Principal of Holy Angels School, said the good father was 'an excellent example of Christian living.'
In recent years we have heard much about Catholic offenders; time to take a look at a few non-Catholic malefactors. Here are a few headlines recording the activities of some non-Catholic offenders in recent years These are all real cases . . .
Pentecostal Clergy Couple Suspected of Sex Ring and Welfare Fraud.
Woman Settles [child molestation] Lawsuit With United Methodist Church.
Christian Academy Teacher Guilty of Fondling [13-year-old] Girl.
Baptist Minister Charged in Murder Plot.
Religious Fanatic Brother and Sister Had Eight Children [incestuously].
Popular Preacher [Baptist] Used Scare Tactics to Victimise Boys.
Seventh Day Adventist Minister Used Computer to Lure Child.
Kansas Money Laundering Pastor Sentenced.
Church of God Minister Charged With Killing Wife.
Bible College Teacher Sentenced on Molestation Charges.
Missionary Church Minister Arrested for Drunken Driving.
It is no exaggeration to say there are hundreds more cases like these.
All manner of abuse occurs - sexual, emotional and physical, along with fraud and outright robbery. Sexual abuse involves all ages, from small children through to older married females seduced by clergy and involves activities ranging from touching through to outright rape. Physical abuse crops up in too many reports. In October 1995 an 18-year-old youth alleged he had been tied to a timber barrel and whipped on more than one occasion by members of the Canadian Mennonite Church. He had refused to adhere to the church's strict beliefs in that he possessed a transistor radio. Obviously sunk deep in sin! And elsewhere we learn about the physical abuse meted out in a number of cults. The term 'abuse' has in fact come to be synonymous with religion.
