Comment by Mdotaut801@lemmy.world on Cult vs Religion Explained

My understanding of Christianity, growing up Christian, was that Christianity is forced upon most people who now believe in it. Indoctrination is a key part of missionary work.

My guess is it’s just what they were raised into and most don’t care to question it. I might be wrong

It’s the result of several different avenues.

During life in slavery, religion would be presented as the place where the little morals slavers displayed came from. “Sure, this asshole has you enslaved, forces you to work most of the day, whips you and will possibly rape your daughter, but the reason he [small act of generosity] is because he’s Christian”. The same religious ideology ultimately condoned slavery, but it wasn’t presented to them that way.

If a slave wanted to learn to read and the means were presented to them, the Bible would be present in some way or another.

During the early decades after emancipation, Christianity was already somewhat entrenched among black people, so the place where they’d gather together in community would be religious rituals.

From that point onwards, black communities being Christian was a self-perpetuating dynamic.

It wasn’t something born out of rationality with all options and perspectives being presented to them, but rather due to circumstance, lesser evils and lack of better alternatives. There are black people who see things the way you have explained it to them - but only after the process of deconversion, which tends to get one alienated from their community.

first: there are no black (or white (or yellow!)) people. It’s a colonial and racist heritage to talk about “black people”.

2nd: There were christian communities (or kingdoms) in africa before anybody in europe (let alone americas) heard about jesus

This is patently untrue and a form erasure.

There are black Americans. If you talk to them, and ask if they are African American they will tell you no, because they are not African. They are just Americans. Same as the are white Americans.

You don’t get to choose.

i know that in “America”, still to day, people who are “imported” from Africa during colonialism are called “black”. Racial theories of the past are banalized today.

This right here is racism. The “I know where black people came from.” Racism. The micro-agressions of erasing a swath of people’s existence. The inability to even say the word slavery, denying an entire sorrid period of American history. The fucking audacity to say that a black or African or African Americans lived existence is trivializing their past.

when i write “imported”, i of course am writing about slavery. My comment is not about denying all the suffering slaves and their children and their children’s children had to go through or are still going through. Imported means a “soulless” object (like animals too were considered to be back then), a slave.

My comment is about, like i wrote, racial color codification and banal use of it in phrases like "i’ve noticed that a lot of black people …

Except when combined with your previous post it denotes, excludes, marginalizes and codifies a race of people in a way that just isn’t true for many modern black Americans.

Black Americans are not necessarily descendents of slaves. Some black Americans that are descendents of slaves are no more African than I am(or I am as African as they are depending on how you want to say it). Many black Americans are as much European as they are African (through the 1 drop rulings and the often raped slaves)… And all of this denies the black Americans existence since slavery. The unique situation of black Americans, where national origin is irrelevant… It is purely a white privilege to say that “white” or “black” is not a race. It’s tantamount to saying that Nazis only killed white people.

We acknowledge that the way we divide ethnic genetic variety into different races is a social construct, entirely invented by humans. But denying that race exists at all does no favors to the victims of racism.

yes, you’re right.

He obviously doesn’t have black friends.

i don’t have “black friends”. i have friends that have different skin colors (if that’s what you need to read to continue to feel uncomfortable with what i write).

it’s common practice. so no, it doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable but it’s sad to read, yes. i am sorry for you. good luck, anyways. have a good day

I’m pretty sure Europeans heard about Jesus when Peter became Bishop of Rome in the first century.

yes, you’re right. Looks like it was simultaneous.

I was thinking of a more gradual expansion towards Europe through Syria, Anatolia, Byzantium &c. They don’t need to establish their religion to run to Rome and tell people there about Jesus. Thank you for taking the time to correct what i wrote and what i had in mind.

Rome didn’t convert to Christianity until the 4th century.

Hearing about is not the same as converted. Some people in Rome became Christians. Hence Peter being Bishop of Rome. It just wasn’t a full conversion empire-wide until Constantine.

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