For many Canadians, Pope Francis’s recent apology for the treatment of some indigenous persons by those representing the Catholic Church was not enough. Murray Sinclair, the lawyer who chaired Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission declared: “It was more than the work of a few bad actors — this was a concerted institutional effort to remove children from their families and cultures, all in the name of Christian supremacy,” reported the Washington Post.
That opinion appears to be the default of the entire commission. The American Conservative’s Declan Leary observed in an article at The Lampearlier this year that “the commission seems to oppose evangelism as a matter of principle.”
Would that this opinion were limited to government bureaucrats of our northern neighbor. Yet this is an era of reappraising everything about our Western civilizational inheritance. The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ May 2022 "Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report," which Helen Andrews cites in her recent TAC article on Indian boarding schools, speaks disparagingly of missionary activities among American Indians, including encouraging them to abandon their tribal religious beliefs in favor of Christianity. The Australian government has issued similar reports criticizing missions down under as being “designed to erase peoples’ cultural identity.”
Every anti-Christian, pro-pagan example offered employs the same general talking points: narrow-minded Christian missionaries since the Dark Ages have upended traditional beliefs and practices, coercing indigenous peoples to abandon their pluralist worldview in favor of the coercive monolith that is institutionalized, doctrinally intolerant and constrained Christianity. “Pagan beliefs differ, but many uphold the pluralistic view that there are many valid religious paths,” explains the Pluralism Project at Harvard University. It continues: “Today, many people are drawn to Paganism for its affirmation of female, LGBT, and queer people.”
In the case of Christianity (and by extension Christian missionary work), our elites now say its practitioners must conform to the doctrines and taboos of our aggressive (and self-assured) secular regime. You can have your church, but unless it tows the line on the latest racial and sexual dogmas, it will be labeled bigoted and backwards, its adherents scorned, censured, and hopefully canceled by our elite institutions. You can have your missionary work, as long as it is focused solely on providing non-parochial medical, social, or educational services, and carefully avoids evangelization or any attempt to impose your peculiar beliefs on others. Otherwise it's “Christian supremacy” and should be bullied into oblivion with all the force the state can muster.
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