Christians Imposed Gender Religious Views on Native People



When Christians invaded and conquered the Americas, they brought with them a narrative about gender which was new to the native people here. The Christian opinion, derived from the from the Bible, was that there were only men and women. A later version was that marriage was between one man and one woman, even though the Bible has men with several wives.

Native people did not see gender in this way. They had terms for people who were neither male nor female. A person's worth to the tribe was the contribution made, not some foreign notion of gender.

Imposing Christianity by the gun or sword on native people was one of many dark areas of the Christian faith. Even today there is in the news a story of a young man who was killed trying to push Christianity on a tribe who neither needed nor wanted it. I suppose there will be all kinds of weeping over what happened to him. There should be weeping about the overbearing arrogance that permeates the faith and causes followers to think others need to believe it.

By all accounts, native people had about five categories of gender including homosexuality. There saw no reason to change how they defined and treated the topic of gender until Christians introduced the idea of sin.

The lesson is, feel free to believe whatever you want. Let others do the same.


Comments

  1. JulieNovember 24, 2018 at 6:16 AM

    I enjoy your excursions into this subject. I myself have enjoyed a life as a man, however, in the past, I was very frustrated even depressed I suppose, on not being able to express my female side. Now I have discovered I can occasionally go out in public presenting myself as a woman. All my friends are aware of this and often join me for an outing. While I don’t pass I still receive a lot of sincere compliments on my looks which I always appreciate. I go by the name Julie Gemini of facebook.
    I find the range of acceptance to disapproval interesting. Your assertion that Christianity is one if not the main, source of condemnation makes sense to me. The differences between Conservatives and Liberals are the most obvious though. While conservative Christians like Evangelicals and Catholics are the worst even non-religious conservatives have a problem with me. Seeing me between a joke to disgusting. I have learned to pay no attention to them. There are religious liberals on the other hand who tolerate to enjoying my company. In the end all I can say is it gets so unnecessarily complicated.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jon LindgrenNovember 24, 2018 at 8:21 AM

    Julie--Good for you. I hope you can continue dressing as a woman whenever you want to.

    ReplyDelete

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