WHY TO WE BELIEVE WHAT WE DO

Will have to do until I can come up with a better title And this one grew and spread all over the place. 

A funny thing happened as I was working my way through the family tree. A pagan ancestor who had bean fighting Charlamagne's empire building finally converted to Christianity, taking most of his army with him, not because he understood Christian doctrine and probably never really did. No. We are finally defeated. Obviously your Christian God is more powerful than Odin. OK. Which way to the baptism?

Another ancestor from what is now Norway was working his way through the Islands to the north and west of Scotland. He had recently converted. His message to the head men of one of the Islands. by the time I come through again you and your people better be baptized or else. Sorry I don't remember his name off hand and since my ancestry software didn't make the trip over the mountains I'm forced to reconstruct much of the information. And no, I don't feel like getting a new copy of their overpriced software. Went with another company but much of my archived information was in the wrong format. 

Where was I? Vladimir of Kiev bacame a convert in the tenth century. He suggested, strongly, that those whi wished to remain his friends should get baptized too. "So let's all meet down by the river." I'm pretty sure no one took the time to make sure the new "I'm getting baptized so I can stay in good with the local Grand Duke" converts really understood what they were getting into. 

Just finished slogging through the novel Captain From Castile set during the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish. Main themes the Inquisition, conquest, and the attempts to bring Roman Catholic Catholicism to the natives with side orders of the politics underlying just about everything. 

Side note a Taino cheftain, Hatuey, led a faily successful guerrilla resistance to the Spanish. Finally captured he was condemned to be burned at the stake. Franciscan friar attempted to convert him at the last minutes. Preomises of heaven and threats of hell. No promise of freedom but he would be mercivully strangled before the fires were set. History has him saking if there would be Christians in heaven. "Of course." History also has him saying that if heaven has people so cruel as the Christians he knoss he doesn't want to go there. Source Liberation Theology for Armchair Theologians. 

In the novel the Spanish view the Indian gods as demons. And that was before the Spanish Christians met the Aztecs. Believing that the Gods of Light needed human blood to defeat the darkness the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice and ceremonial cannibleism. I am not being snarky in noting that they apparently took the body and blood theology to an extreme interpretation. 

The Spanish believed they were successfully converting heathens away from their demonic Gods. Many of the Indians admitted they accepting baptism because the God of the Spaniards was obviously more powerful tham their Gods. At least on the surface. Harsh treatment, condecensian and greed soon convinced many of the Aztecs that all this God talk was a cover for stealing everything that wasn't fastened down. In the novel the rubber really hits the road when a Spanish garrison in Tenochtilan interferes with the major festival of the Aztec calendar. If the native americans had been immune to smallpox the story of conquest might have gone in another direction.

So, what has all this to do with current events. Why do the followers of certain denominations in this country appear to have very little understanding of Christianity. Why are so many churches almost empty in western Europe. I submit that as the church expanded too many converted out of fear, because the new "god" sppeared to be stronger than the old gods, because that's where the power was. ONce converted apparently there wasn't that much effort put into helping the new believers really understand what they were getting into. 

There's a history of badly educated clergy, the attitude (expressed in the novel) that too much theologhy would just confuse the lay people. In an era when many folks couldn't read and write their own language Latin would have been a whole other country. At least beyond the rote responses required for church. The church in the US has the same problem. Anyone can call themselves a pastor, set up a church, get tax exemptions, and buy canned sermons off the internet. 

And now some of those churches are sending missionaries into Latin America. They may find it tough going. The prosperity gospel meets the favelas of Rio, the slums of Central America or the impoverished, landless farmers. Most of them have no use for the poor in this country I can't see the leopard changing its spots south of the border.