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June 22, 2020 - 3:00pm
The latest casualty of the wave of iconoclasm that is sweeping the US has been the statue of the Franciscan mission priest Junipero Serra in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Serra, who was recognised as a saint by the Catholic Church in 2015, has been called the Apostle of California for his evangelistic work there in the eighteenth century, when the area was still under the control of Spain.
Serra seems to have been an incredibly driven and hard-working individual, with a reputation as a scholar and ascetic. He established numerous missions across what is now Mexico and the United States, despite suffering chronic health problems. Altogether he spent more than thirty years spreading the Catholic faith in the Americas, a calling for which he had abandoned a promising career in the Spanish church. His canonisation ceremony, presided over by Pope Francis during his visit to the USA in 2015, featured Catholics from Native American backgrounds.
The controversy over the honour paid to Serra seems to arise from both particular and general concerns about his work. Critics highlight the apparent frequent use of corporal punishment and physical restraint of native Californians who worked at the Catholic missions overseen by him. More widely, Serra and others like him are seen as complicit in the injustices and violence of Spanish colonialism. Although Serra himself often clashed with the military authorities over their brutality towards the indigenous population, and urged clemency when some of them burnt down a mission, it is understandable that the Catholic missions are still viewed with a certain ambiguity by some present-day Native Americans. The effect of European settlement on their way of life and their culture was catastrophic.
But the question remains how much of the antagonism to Serra and others like him is sincere and well-founded, and how much of it is part of a simplistic campaign of vilification of those wicked Dead White Men who represent the old Western civilisation so hated by modern first world progressives.
Nevertheless, it can be uncomfortable for modern-day Christians to reflect on the extent to which the spread of the faith in certain places was not only accompanied, but arguably enabled, by especially rapacious and cruel forms of imperial expansion. As a Christian, I find it hard to regret the fact that Christianity has reached almost every corner of the Earth, but we ought to be honest in how we reflect on some of the means by which this has been achieved.
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SubscribeBoko Haram in Nigeria regard the mass murder of their Christian neighbours as legitimate because they were converted by missionaries and evangelists in previous centuries.
If you start saying there is some reason to feel ‘uncomfortable’ about Christian missionary work being culturally insensitive, you just end up with the high speed abolition of Christianity and give permission to the Marxists, who are behind this, to do what Marxists have always done to Christians.
We cannot afford to be complex and nuanced and sophisticated in this game. We have to defend our Christian heritage warts and all, or we will see the return of mass murder, not just iconoclasm and scapegoating.
As Burnley FC will tell you, White Lives Don’t Matter, so I don’t think any of us have got long before the machetes start coming for us.
Why the surprise that even the best of us have flaws? Can we be confident that future generations won’t disagree with what we think is good now?
Even the best, indeed, have flaws – surely Christianity has made that point more assertively than any other value system:
“When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its cornerstone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward ““ in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have failed, because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.” – G.K. Chesterton
Thanks for posting this, Basil. I’d never come across this quote before. I’ll have to read more of Chesterton.
You will not regret the time invested.
So are Hispanics now White Men? I thought they were officially an Oppressed Minority. Or is that only the ones who are still alive?
So glad I went to school and learnt my history decades ago, before this nonsense took hold. Other than some good pop music, the ’60s were a disaster.
Growing up in California, I first learned about the Spanish mission system at the age of 10. The teachers did not go into any gory or scary details, but it was still easy to read between the lines and see that the Missionaries had anything but the best interest of the Indians at heart. The lessons gave me terrible fears that a Missionary would take me away from my family and make me live in a mission where I would be beaten if I did not profess a Catholic faith. As an adult, I am now confident that the Spanish missionary endeavor was entirely devoid of religious or Christian merit. Rather, the Spanish made cynical use of men like Junipero Serra whose faith may have been sincere but who were powerless to stop an empire as brutal and sadistic as it was wealthy. Inasmuch as the statue of Junipero Serra represents the hand-in-glove relationship of Church and Empire, we as a society benefit from rejecting its hypocrisy. Students of Christ should appreciate this.
Seems like you have encountered some form of the ‘black legend’. I’m sure there were dastardly Spaniards who saw religious proselytization as a means to an end (for power, fame, etc.), but that is a pretty stark brush to use for all of them.
It is also foolish, I think, to assume that Christianity is a less potent force than politics over anything longer than the very short term. Even if men like Serra thought they were being used as pawns by secular authorities, I don’t think it would have dissuaded them, as their perspective and aims in spreading the faith were (and are) broader and deeper.
If you are willing to so generally condemn colonization, where do you stop? Is it wrong for developed nations to subsidize certain moral imperatives in developing countries while discouraging others? How is this not cultural imperialism?
Is it wrong for the US federal government to impel states to set the drinking age at 21 (although it doesn’t legally have the authority to do so)?
Whenever there are conflicting ideas about morality and authority, some will be better than others. When is it morally licit to impose a view on someone else? Where do you draw the line between imposing and recommending?
A good and balanced statement, T.T.
I lived in many of these California missions as a Franciscan priest. I came to learn over the years that we as missionaries had not done the native inhabitants of the California mission territories any favor, but had in effect attempted to destroy their legitimate (and most often superior) beliefs.
Along with the takeovers of land and resources, our religious missionary activities joined with European militarism in an unjust imperialistic effort.
I am no longer a priest or a Christian, and I am eternally grateful to all those whose wisdom and example have led me out of these massive historical delusions.
We will never be able to pay back to the native Americans of this country what has been taken from them. But watch carefully, because the survivors of the European invasion are beginning and will succeed in redressing these injustices in the future.
A good and balanced statement, T.T.
I wrote a lengthy comment but they seemed to not want to print it. I was a Franciscan priest at one time and lived in several of the missions being discussed.
We did a great injustice to the natives, in combining our religious teachings with European imperialism.