Religious Diversity in the Age of Colonial Conquest

Native American, African and European Christian Religious Forms

The European “Lens”

The trope of European Colonialism was the misdiagnosis of foreign cultures as “lacking religion” and thus being uncivilized or in the case of Judaism and Islam, being inferior religiously– Therein lay much of the justification behind their later

conquests Unlike European cultures that circumscribed

religion to the “religious” sphere, Native American and African religion was invisible because it permeated every aspect of life

I. Native American Religion

Native Americans had no word for religion; religion permeated every aspect of tribal life

Myth was a central cultural facet– Myth explains some “basic truth about human life” and a

means of affirming their collective tribal identity (i.e. different tribes held different myths accounting for things in the natural world)

There existed a strong connectedness with the spiritual realm– Native Americans usually found supernatural reasons for

given trials and triumphs

I. Native Americans

Native Americans felt tied to the land– Since all were connected to a common origin,

descending from ancestors who arose from the earth- as versions of the creation myth stated- none had a private claim to the land

There were those who were seen to have a special connection to the land and the spirit realm– Shamans, who because of their connection to the spirit

realm, healed social and physical ills through ritual

II. African Religions

Like Native Americans in terms of the interrelatedness between the sacred and earthly spheres

“Spirit possession”, whereby a person is overtaken by divine power, is an example of this particular to African culture– This often came through song and dance; dance itself

was viewed as a literal recreation of the world, because it embodied the divine in seemingly ordinary movement

III. European Christianity

Christianity in Europe was not as cohesive as those examining “other” forms of religion liked to think

The hegemony of Roman Catholic Church was disrupted by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldreich Zwingli, Henry VIII and the Anabaptists, during the Reformation– The Reformers felt they were stripping the church of all its frills and

returning it to its essentials Even among these Reformers however, differences abound

– In England in particular, Henry VIII made the king the supreme head of the church, marking the beginning of the English Reformation; his daughter Mary would return England to Catholicism; then her half-sister, Elizabeth I, later returned the church to Protestantism

– The 17th century would witness the birth of the Puritans, who believed that the Reformation was not complete in England

Colonial Encounters

Europeans’ first impression of Native Americans was that their veneration of spiritual ancestry translated to “crass polytheism” (11) and their ritual as pagan; African peoples lacked “souls” and the visual differences between Europeans and Africans was disconcerting

However, tension existed between religious and economic motives: do we convert them?– To convert Native Americans or Africans would be to

incorporate them, thus complicating Europeans’ right as superior beings to the land and even to the bodies of those foreigners

IV. Judaism and Islam

European Christians claimed superiority over Jews and Muslims due to religious superiority, rather than superiority of civilization

Jews were often ghettoized or given the option of “convert or die”- though this did not eliminate a Jewish presence in Europe

Muslims, who were expanding territory rapidly to the south and east of Europe, were encountered directly during the Crusades; for those Muslims inhabiting in Europe they too were given the choice to convert or perish, requiring that they too take their religion underground