How much was Christianity involved with...

[SHRED]

the attempted genocide of the Native Americans and slavery of the Africans?

Do you have links?

Thanks

[trotsky]

1. Depends on what you mean by "involved."

Certainly nearly everyone who carried out the slaughter was a Christian, and the Christianity of the time had no respect whatsoever for native belief systems, even going so far as to call for their eradication.

This site has some interesting pages:
http://www.runningdeerslonghouse.com/webdoc2.htm
http://www.runningdeerslonghouse.com/webdoc15.htm

And some Christians still can't let Native Americans follow their own religion - they keep trying to convert the natives:
http://www.chosunjournal.com/culture.html

[onager]

2. Slave trade? This guy was certainly onto the scam...

The methods of the priest and the parson have been very curious, their history is very entertaining.

In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. Long after some Christian peoples had freed their slaves the Church still held on to hers.

If any could know, to absolute certainty, that all this was right, and according to God's will and desire, surely it was she, since she was God's specially appointed representative in the earth and sole authorized and infallible expounder of his Bible.

There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; she was right, she was doing in this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery.

Yet now at last, in our immediate day, we hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong, and we see him sending an expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain: it is the practice that has changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession -- and take the credit of the correction. As she will presently do in this instance.

From Bible Teaching and Religious Practice by Mark Twain

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/twainwp.htm