Reading about the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and the way Cortes and his lackeys portrayed the Catholic Christian faith one would be surprised that more people haven't left Christianity and that, in the degraded form of the Spanish Inquisition, that it would not have taken hold in the New World at all. These people were Christian in name only and it was a particularly degraded and corrupted form of Christianity they were embracing and promulgating. There was absolutely nothing in their behaviour that even suggested Jesus Christ and quite a lot that seemed to have come straight from the Pit of Hell, as we used to say in the Jesus' People.
Anyone who gives a thorough and unbiased reading of the Christian Gospels, allowing for a suspension of disbelief in case they don't happen to believe in miracles or exorcisms, will see a powerful and consistent message of social justice, mercy, love, integrity, peace, and the search for truth in all things. How did those wretched Jew and Muslim hating, witch and heretic burning and pagan slaughtering murderers ever get carte blanche from God's ostensible representative on earth, the Pope, to be entrusted as stewards of the religion of Jesus Christ? Keep in mind that many of the popes of the day, especially Alexander VI, were themselves some of the most venal and corrupt subhuman slime that ever crept along the surface of the earth.
But what happened to this most sublimely beautiful of all religions that it be rendered into something so impotent and so ugly?
There are many answers, but the first that stands out to me is that none of these people had ever had any real encounter with the experience and truth of the Gospel. They likely had never experienced the presence or blessing of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, they were so brainwashed by the lies and half-truths with which the popes and priests had completely distorted and undermined the message of Christianity, that they simply could not see any contradiction between their alleged obligation to shoot, burn, hang or hack to death anyone who got in their way, and the Son of God who himself was tortured and executed by Roman soldiers very much like themselves.
So the Conquistadores and the useless priests they brought with them would proclaim to the native people in the Caribbean and in Mexico in Spanish, a language they could not possibly understand, that the land they had enjoyed as their very own for thousands of years was now being taken over by a foreign power in the name of a deity they simply could not relate to. The survivors, in the spirit of the conquered, consented to being baptised and converted to a faith they could not possibly comprehend and so Mama Espana working in concert with Papa Iglesia (father church) could spread their corrupted filth of pious lies that only mocked and made a complete travesty of the Gospel of love they claimed to own.
Had the Spanish really known the Gospel of Love as demonstrated throughout by the life, sufferings, death and resurrection of their Lord, I wonder how things might have been different? Would they have even bothered sailing over to the Americas, given that they were driven largely by greed and a lust for land and power? Perhaps, had these people been truly and authentically Christian, which is to say, humble persons of peace, love and integrity, they might have made this venture anyway as missionaries. Surely they would have been horrified by the bloody practices of human sacrifice they would have encountered, as well as the constant internecine warfare practiced with great gusto by the various native tribes and nations among each other, but with none of the hypocritical bleating of equally violent priests and Conquistadores, given the equally bloody and horrendous human sacrifice of innocent lives being burnt at the stake back home in Mama Espana.
Perhaps Montezuma and his cohorts would have received them graciously. Or maybe they themselves would have been dragged up the temple steps to be offered as food for their gods? But I think that in time something peaceful and equitable might have been achieved, with mutual respect, and even if the peoples of the New World didn't abandon their religion for the Christian faith perhaps the example, prayers and friendship of the visitors would eventually have dissuaded them from their more barbaric practices. Perhaps even a very different kind of New World might have evolved, integrating the best from both cultures. But because they were all given to violence and blood-letting, Spanish and Indigenous, it is unlikely that we will ever know what might have happened instead.
What we have now instead is a collection of some twenty countries or so, bonded together by many cultural similarities and with varying approaches and experiences of their indigenous presence. We also have some twenty countries or so, in many ways historically hobbled by social inequality, economic injustice, racism and the remnants of one of the most rigid hierarchical caste systems outside of India. We also have some twenty countries full of proud and resilient people who to this day strive bravely in the face of all odds to do and be their best and to celebrate their rich and beautiful cultures in the midst of a growingly complex and uncertain world.
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