Tercel

From what I have read it appears that a people-group's adoption of Christianity or not was very heavily dependent upon how well (or not) their own culture's understanding of God and religious practices and way of fitted with Christianity, and whether the early missionaries presented Christianity as something in opposition to, or as a fulfillment of, the culture's current religious teachings.

There are a number of tribes worldwide that had ancient stories that taught things like there being one creator God who the tribe had once followed but who had rejected them because they had done something wrong but who one day would accept them back and in the mean time the worshipped other evil-spirit gods in order to appease them etc. There were cultures with stories paralleling the Bible's Fall story with their ancestors eating the forbidden fruit etc. There were groups waiting for the prophesied coming of a white person bringing a book which told about God etc. Unsuprising, these kind of cultures tended towards mass conversions.
In general the presence of a tradition teaching that the people had previously worshipped a monotheistic Creator-God but had abandoned worshipping him long ago for some reason or another seems to have been the trigger for mass-conversions - if the missionary or the tribes-people successfully made the connection.

Christian missionaries seem to have had the most trouble in attempting to convert cultures where Buddhism was dominant. Presumably the presence of a clearly established religion which shares little in common with Christianity means that gaining converts is a process of one-by-one convincing them that their own culture's religion is wrong and this new religion is right.

So to answer the question:
Why buy the conquerer's God?
-Because he's your own God already.

Jayjay

I'd like you to back this up. Name a few cultures that had the idea of

A) forbidden fruit and banishment, or
B) waiting for the "true" monotheistic God to arrive, or
C) white man coming to save them with a book of knowledge.

I'm not saying that such cultures don't exist. Just that I haven't heard of them before and as such I am inclined to assume that this is just your regular christian propaganda at play.

Thanatoast

Tercel said:

Hmm, I'd be curious to hear some testimonies of those who converted from Buddhism to Xianity, to see how your theory holds up. Did they completely eliminate their previous world-view, or did they somehow incorporate Jesus, the Bible, etc. into it. From my limited knowledge of Buddhism, that would be no small feat.

Then again, maybe I wouln't want to hear them. Most Xian testimonies kinda make me nauseous.

Godless Dave

Mostly because the conquerors killed anyone who didn't convert. Once they had taken over, if you wanted to be on their good side you joined their religion (and adopted their style of dress and learned their language). This doesn't just work for Christianity, but for any religion of a conquering people. That's how Islam spread to South Asia. It's why many Bosnians are Muslim - converts to Islam had more rights under he Ottoman Empire.

I bristle a little bit whenever someone says Christianity is part of my heritage. My religious heritage is the stories of Odin, Thor, Tyr, and Freyja. My ancestors were robbed of their heritage by Christian conquerors.

Sarpedon

I agree with the esteemed Godless Dave. A good source to read about the conversion of the Scandanavians is "The Last Apocalypse" which describes events in europe circa 1000 (ce). We find a certain psychopathic king of Norway converted to christianity, (probably because he usurped the throne, and needed a non-traditional deity to endorse his reign) and then embarked on various bloody conquests and attacks on neighboring countries. Iceland voted in a democratic process (!!) to convert to christianity. This would have been a triumph for christianity, if only they had not done it under threat of terrible violence by the aforementioned king.

As for the colonialists, it is a simple matter of policy and survival. The standard procedure for colonialists were to convert the dregs of the society (every society has a discontented minority) while at the same time the missionaries spy out the land. Once they have acquired knowledge of the lay of the land, as well as a convenient "fifth column" the soldiers move in. The aforementioned work by Chinua Achebe illustrates that very well. (it is also excellent literature in its own right, and very fair reporting, not one sided) The original converts then become the ruling class. Another good example of this is Vietnam. It is interesting to see that in countries like India, when the christians were in power, there were many conversions, now that the christians are not in power, there are few conversions. Nowadays, if a hindu gets sick of the caste system, he becomes a buddhist, not a christian. It seems that Christianity can't even hold its own without force or other forms of temptation or conversion. Ever since european nations adopted secular governments, religious attendance and belief has plummeted. It is now estimated that Britain now is 40% atheist or agnostic. 40%!! how many do you think there were after world war 2? 10% maybe? (very optimistic) To see such growth of religious disbelief is testament to the ineffectuality of christian belief to hold its own without coercion. A similar picture is being seen in every developed country. Only in the poor, uneducated nations do we see any kind of religious "growth".

wildernesse

Something semi-relevant to this conversation.

When Florida was still Spanish, but northwards was English--slaves would escape to Florida and become Catholics and loyal to the Spanish throne--probably more for the freedom than the faith. The king of Spain granted freedom to escaped slaves after 1693 to encourage this sort of thing--and also to be annoying to the English Carolinians. There was a definite advantage to converting for these escaped slaves--I don't know if they converted to save their souls, but they definitely saved their skins. Here's a link to a site about Fort Mose, a free African settlement in Spanish Florida.

I'd assume that the reason conquered people converted was because there was an advantage--fellow converts were protected by the more powerful conquerors, got a share of the food stuffs/technology/etc., had more power (not saying equality but more than non-converts) in society. Of course, they could also have found solace and comfort in Christianity that was lacking in their previous religion. The last option is not as obvious to outsider observers, of course, as it is an inward advantage and not always correlated to outward advantages.

--tibac

Edited to add: And who says that the natives gave up their religious belief? Many "pagan" or non-Christian beliefs have been synthesized into Christianity--such as Easter and its trimmings, Christmas trees, Yule logs, peyote use in the Native American church, the use of roots in African American communities, etc. I'm most familiar with European additions to Christianity because I'm "European-American"--but many cultures do not have a wholesale trade of their traditional beliefs for new beliefs, even conquering ones.

philechat

This idea I do not deny. I think many native religions might support a class system that is oppressive to a certain disavantaged caste, and the caste converts to Christianity because it gives them a justification of power denyed of them in the previous religions (as of the peasant/slave caste in Ancient Rome, for example).

Similar trends has also been observed in Buddhism, Islam, and Communism, where the original class system of the society is subverted after religious (or ideological) conversion of an oppressed class of people.

wildernesse

Yes, my previous post shouldn't have specified Christianity as the only thing that conquered people could find solace/comfort in--it does apply to all conquering cultural institutions. My mind was still stuck in the colonial U.S.

--tibac

Jack the Bodiless

I think technology probably WAS the advantage.

Remember the Clarke maxim? "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". The newcomers had a god who was "obviously" real and powerful. The Incas, for instance, faced mysterious warriors with metal skins who rode great beasts and wielded blades of terrible power which could sever a man's head with one stroke. They couldn't even be harmed by weapons! And then there were the thunder-rods, and the floating fortresses...

Not only did the newcomers have a god of power, but it would quickly have been evident that the native gods were powerless.

India, China and Japan had relatively advanced civilizations of their own. Christianity has almost never prevailed against a comparable level of technology.

lpetrich

And add to that those epidemics of inadvertently-transmitted diseases that the visitors were carriers of -- and seemingly invulnerable to. I wonder if seeming to have a more powerful god had also had an effect.

Also, I wonder how much that Tercel discusses had been back-projection, invention of seeming awareness. This is something like how the Old Testament was interpreted in the New Testament as justifying Jesus Christ's career. And it is especially likely if the previous beliefs were transmitted entirely orally.

Which reminds me of something extremely curious: when Europeans first encountered the New World en masse, both sides sometimes came to believe that they had already known of the other.