An intriguing and significant article in the current (September-October, 2023) edition of Smithsonian Magazine, was revelatory of yet, another profoundly, infuriating, instance of the invidious and repugnant blemish on the body of “Civilized Humanity,” viz., religious evangelism. Although we have designated it, as the “Eighth Deadly Sin,” for recognizable, literary purposes, considering the horrific extent of its temporal harm, in combination with the implicit arrogance upon which it is founded, in our view, it is deserving of “FIRST” place, in any listing of human degradation.
As prologue to this essay, we would contextually, refer to an American travesty, best known in historic literature, as “The Trail of Tears,” in which more than 60,000 Native Americans, largely, people of the Choctaw Nation, were removed from their ancestral homes in the fertile lands in the south-east portion of the country to “more suitable lands for the ‘injuns’” to the arid land of Oklahoma. This outrageous period in our history (1830-1831, under the flawed Presidency of Andrew Jackson) saw upwards of 2,500 peaceable Choctaw Indians die along the forced march. Certain odious, but, “upstanding,” “God-fearing,” powerful members of the Federal government, hatefully, stated that the “red man” was beneath contempt, “even more than the black man.”
Recent historical research has revealed that the Native American families, forcibly, uprooted from their fertile, ancestral homes and exiled to the windy, barren Oklahoma Territory, were, thereafter, prey to an arrogant and perverse, evangelical program to proselytize, and thereby, humanize,” the “savage redskins.” This delusional and inhuman program, consisted of the forcible, kidnapping of young Indian children from their families and installing them in designated foster institutions so that they might be, “properly,” converted to Christianity.
Various public relations efforts of late, have been undertaken to apologize and effect some limited reparation for such inhuman policies, but history, attests to the lasting, if not permanent, damage, done by such evangelical, “humanizing,” transgressions. The rich culture and nature-oriented religious belief and traditional folkways, of such first Americans, were permanently damaged by ignorant, cruel, and contemptible religious ethnocentrism and misguided sense of propriety. History is replete with instances of great cruelty and irreparable harm done by such short-sighted ideation, most especially regarding the promotion of irrational and biased belief in religious salvation.
The mid-19th Century saw the autocratic and heartless treatment of Ireland by England; the latter, a deluded, self-proclaimed paragon of religious rectitude, advanced human civilization, supported by formidable, military (naval) power. Dominant and heartless, England deprived the Irish of its entire production of food, including meat and vegetables, only permitting the retention of its potato crops; the latter, an inadequate source of nourishment for the primitively, housed, Irish people. In the historic potato famine, the Smithsonian article reminded the reader that more than one-eighth of the 19th Century Irish population, died of malnutrition. Unfortunately, the only crop that failed in the Irish Nation at this time was the potato; wheat, barley, corn, oats and grazing land for livestock were flourishing; but these were “cash crops,” mandated for export, by the “admirable, and civilized” people of the religiously, pious Nation of England.
As reported, a certain Irish -American citizen, friendly with the people of the greatly, impoverished Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma, communicated to the Choctaw people that mass starvation and land evictions were taking place in Ireland, (half a world away) and of the dire condition of the Irish people. The indigent Choctaw people, were greatly moved, and despite their own dire poverty, managed, somehow, to raise a substantial sum of money to assist the starving Irish. It is to be, especially, noted, that at the time of their humanistic donation, less than one decade had passed since the Federal Government’s forced, tragic and heartless dispossession, of the Choctaw Nation from their ancestral lands in the southern United States, known as the “trail of tears; most of whom, as stated, were, themselves, living in extreme privation and poverty. It is difficult to imagine people less well-positioned to act in a philanthropic manner.
This example of empathy and humanistic generosity, is a moral lesson indeed, an instructive avatar, for the arrogant, ego-centrism of the universe of misguided believers in arrogant, self-delusional, religious evangelism.
-p.
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