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The Ugly History of Christianity
I am making a specifically historical argument about Christianity.
The Dalai Lama is not a historian. He has no responsibility for knowing what I know about the horrors of Christian colonialism around the world, starting with Columbus. When he says that the foundation of Christianity is compassion, just like Buddhism, he takes Christians at their word, which is only polite.
The huge problem for anyone who does know what I know about the history of Christianity and the colonialism it inspired is that compassion has been notably absent from how good Christians have treated the various indigenous populations they encountered when they started trying to conquer the world.
Columbus sailed east, in the name of Isabela, most holy Catholic Queen of Spain, but ended up going west and finding people good Christians did not know existed. His first impulse, which he unleashed in a paroxysm of violence that continues to the present, was to rape, pillage, enslave, and murder the people he found.
Information about the horrors Columbus wreaked on the Natives who had lived in “the Americas” for untold thousands of years from the moment he stepped on an island in the western hemisphere is easy to find:
“On his way back from his first voyage he penned a letter to ‘Their Catholic Highnesses; Ferdinand and Isabella,’ promising ‘as much gold as they want …spices and cotton, as much as their Highnesses shall command … and slaves, as many as they shall order, who will be idolators.’”
Spanish conquistadors would force Natives in “the Americas” to mine gold and silver to send back to Spain. The arrival of Christians brought zero benefit to the Natives in “the Americas,” nor to the Africans they later began to import as slaves.
The priests who came along with the conquistadors inflicted Christianity on the Native population, despite zero indication that the they had any interest in this new religion. Many Natives died of diseases that they lacked immunity to, so manslaughter, not murder, but none of it would have happened had the Christians just stayed home.
In the early 16th century, about 10 years after Columbus showed up, one priest did have a change of heart, sold his slaves (!), and returned to Spain to condemn…
