{"id":2174897,"date":"2024-02-13T08:21:02","date_gmt":"2024-02-13T13:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/christians-were-historys-true-antiracists\/"},"modified":"2024-02-13T08:25:13","modified_gmt":"2024-02-13T13:25:13","slug":"christians-were-historys-true-antiracists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/christians-were-historys-true-antiracists\/","title":{"rendered":"Christians were the original antiracists in history"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fchristians-were-historys-true-antiracists%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2174897&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div class=\"article-content\">\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Revising History: Uncovering the Untold\u2064 Stories<\/h2>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In itself, there\u2019s actually nothing wrong with the idea of\u200b revising\u200c history\u200d to suit modern audiences. Too often, history is told from \u200cthe perspective of the winners, silencing so many voices on the \u200bmargins. Thus, it follows that recovering these voices \u2064will\u2064 give a fuller view of history, making \u2064it more inclusive and shared.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In practice, however, most historical revisionism\u2063 does the opposite. Instead of adding perspectives and forging\u200b a shared identity, \u2063most revisionist historians reduce history to a narrative that caters to anti-Western intellectuals. This work inevitably involves a\u2064 fair \u200camount of exaggeration and fabrication. For unsuspecting students exposed to this pseudo-scholarship, they will know far less about their history, and what little they do know will be\u200d factually inaccurate and politically skewed.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2-long d-flex justify-content-center\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; \" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-947794087\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1379703300879-0\" class=\"mb-30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-db033ba093fe881d027f985329b17c34 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-db033ba093fe881d027f985329b17c34\"><\/div>\n<p>This is\u200b especially the case with the subject of slavery. Although\u200c slavery has touched all known\u200c civilizations in\u200d humanity\u2019s history, most Americans today believe that this institution\u2064 has only existed in the United States from 1619 to 1865. And despite Christians being at the forefront of\u200b the American abolitionist movement, many Americans \u200bare often taught that most \u2062forms \u2064of Christianity condoned and legitimized slavery. This is partly why \u2064slavery is called America\u2019s \u201coriginal sin\u201d as though\u200b it was a unique\u200d struggle for Americans failing to uphold freedom for its people, not \u200da universal problem afflicting all nations in the process of mass industrialization and liberalization.<\/p>\n<p>To set\u2062 the record straight, Paul Kengor has written <a href=\"https:\/\/stpaulcenter.com\/product\/the-worst-of-indignities-the-catholic-church-on-slavery\/\"><em>The \u2062Worst of Indignities: The Catholic Church on Slavery<\/em><\/a>.\u2063 Half of\u2064 the book \u2064examines the history of slavery for the past 2,000 years; \u2062the\u200c other half functions as a rebuttal to the historical revisionism that distorted so many \u200cpeople\u2019s understanding of slavery. In both regards, Kengor \u2063is not only successful at debunking popular falsehoods about the church and \u2062slavery, but he also makes a strong case that Christianity was altogether necessary for ending slavery in the West.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Inherent Dignity<\/h2>\n<p>Kengor begins his argument with the myth that no one, \u2063Christian or otherwise, \u2062really addressed the problem of slavery until the 19th century: \u201cI found countless\u200d statements from scholars insisting that the Catholic \u200bChurch did not get around to recognizing the\u2062 evils of slavery until the late nineteenth century or early twentieth century.\u201d On the contrary, \u2063Kengor is able to cite the innumerable instances of church leadership issuing statements condemning the chattel slavery of European\u2062 colonists as early as the 15th century along with statements condemning slavery in general from the sixth century.<\/p>\n<p>As Kengor explains, there was never a time when the church endorsed slavery because this goes against the very message of the Christian gospel. This began \u2063in pre-Christian times with God\u2019s commanding\u200c the pharaoh through Moses to \u201cLet my people go!\u201d After this, God continued to prescribe limits on slavery, setting Israel apart from its neighbors. These events\u200d in the Old Testament laid \u200dthe groundwork for\u2063 Jesus\u2019 work of freeing souls from sin and death. In this way, slavery took on a spiritual \u2062dimension as well as a\u2062 physical one. True, some \u201cPro-slavery Bible preachers\u200c cherry-picked verses, quoting them very selectively and twisting them to their\u2063 perverse preferences,\u201d but most Christian churches, particularly the\u2062 Catholic Church, provided the requisite context of such verses to guard against such interpretations.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-f0433c698369cbf8ac4ad7eba3115549 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-6\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-f0433c698369cbf8ac4ad7eba3115549\"><\/div>\n<p>In contrast to this, slavery was commonly practiced in non-Christian cultures where the inherent dignity\u2063 and value of human life was\u200c not a given. Dispelling the notion that slavery was something Christians \u2063introduced to the places they colonized, Kengor brings up counterexamples from every continent. Native Americans in the Americas engaged in slavery as well as human sacrifice. Ancient Chinese dynasties had slavery for\u2063 millennia \u2014 the construction of the Great Wall alone took \u200bthe lives \u200dof \u200d\u201cfour \u200dhundred thousand to possibly more than a million\u201d slaves. And slavery was, and still is, prominent in many parts of Africa and the Muslim world.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, two wrongs \u200bdon\u2019t make a right, and slavery in non-Christian societies does not excuse slavery in Christian societies. Recognizing this, Kengor considers the most\u200c notorious groups\u200b of slaveowners in the popular imagination: the American Founding Fathers and the first Europeans to colonize the New \u2064World.<\/p>\n<p>While most of the Founding Fathers were not Catholic, all of them \u2063held\u2062 the Christian \u2064view that slavery was evil. The most proactive abolitionist among \u2062them was John Jay, \u2062the first governor of New York and one of the writers of the Federalist\u200d Papers. He was called \u201cAmerica\u2019s Wilberforce\u201d for his staunch advocacy and\u2064 ending slavery in New York. Along with \u2062Jay, Ben Franklin, John \u200bAdams, and Alexander Hamilton were also vocal critics of slavery.<\/p>\n<p>As for Thomas Jefferson and George Washington who did own slaves, they were well aware of their own hypocrisy. Kengor does not deny this but explains that their circumstances forced them to choose between abolishing \u200bslavery or\u200d having a country.\u2063 While Washington freed his slaves upon his death, Jefferson contributed to the abolitionist cause by establishing liberty as an inalienable right in the Declaration\u200c of Independence: \u201c[Jefferson] might be a personal failure in the matter of slavery, but politically, even morally, his accomplishment of July 4, \u20631776 was monumental, whether he personally owned slaves or not.\u201d Both the abolitionists of the 19th century and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/civil-rights-attorneys-submit-letter-to-manhattan-da-claiming-nypd-fbi-conspired-in-malcolm-x-assassination\/\" title=\"Civil rights attorneys submit letter to Manhattan DA claiming NYPD, FBI conspired in Malcolm X assassination\">civil rights activists<\/a> of \u2062the \u200b20th century would build their case on Jefferson\u2019s\u2062 famous words.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-9afd4ac1a3f67dc44e0e18f4d0b30c4a fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-10\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-9afd4ac1a3f67dc44e0e18f4d0b30c4a\"><\/div>\n<p>Unfortunately, \u200cthe biggest practitioners of slavery \u2062in the Western Hemisphere, the\u200b Catholic kingdoms of Portugal and Spain, cannot make the same\u2063 redeeming claims. Therefore, Kengor juxtaposes their abuses with the objections of the Catholic Church,\u200d which were early \u200cand often. Starting with Pope Eugene\u2019s papal bull <em>Sicut\u2063 Dudum<\/em> in 1435, which denounced the trafficking of African slaves in the Canary Islands, popes and \u2064missionaries were constantly at odds with the imperial\u200b colonizers who had little to no\u2062 regard \u200bfor the indigenous people \u2064of South \u200dAmerica or\u200c Africa. Evidently, the classic film \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0091530\/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1\">The Mission<\/a>,\u201d which beautifully\u200c dramatized \u200bthe conflict between Jesuit \u2063missionaries and Spanish conquistadors, was a regular occurrence in South American colonies.<\/p>\n<p>Kengor then couples the list of\u2064 official statements from various bishops and popes with short accounts of major Catholic figures in the fight against\u2062 slavery, many \u2062of whom were saints. Beginning with\u2064 St. Onesimus in \u2064the first century A.D., he highlights \u200bheroic Catholics \u200bwho \u200bwere \u200bthemselves slaves, like St. Felicity and St. Patrick, or liberators like St. John de Matha\u200b and \u201cThe Ransomer\u201d St. Peter Nolasco. After this, he tells the stories of later Catholics\u2064 like St. Peter Claver and Bl. Francisco de Paul Victor, \u2064who actively fought against chattel slavery happening in South America.<\/p>\n<p>It should be said that although these middle\u200d chapters detailing these texts\u200b and holy men provide strong support for Kengor\u2019s argument, they become tedious after\u200c a \u2063while. From a historical standpoint,\u2062 Kengor\u2019s thoroughness effectively illustrates a consistent pattern of church policy and smothers\u200b any opposing claims, but from\u200d a narrative standpoint, these subsections start feeling repetitive. \u2063It \u200bwould have been better if this information were condensed and the numerous relevant block \u2062quotes were included \u2063in an appendix.<\/p>\n<p>That said, if readers make it through these chapters, they are treated to the best part of the book,\u2064 Kengor\u2019s biographies of three former slaves in the\u200d 19th century: Ven. Pierre Toussaint, Ven.\u200c Augustus Tolton, and St. \u200dJosephine Bakhita. In the stories of these three individuals, one can finally see \u2064the\u2064 liberating and empowering force of the Christian gospel working through \u2062households and communities.<\/p>\n<p>Toussaint was a Haitian slave who moved to New York City, \u200dmade a small fortune becoming a hairdresser, and paid off his master and mistress\u2019s \u200bdebts after he was \u200cfree. Tolton was\u200c an American slave from Missouri who eventually became the first\u200b black priest in the United States. Bakhita was a slave in Sudan who ended up moving to Italy and joining a religious \u2062order in Italy. Even though all of them encountered racial discrimination, their faith and fellow Christians enabled them to rise above it.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Preserving the \u2064Narrative<\/h2>\n<p>Finally, Kengor concludes his argument with a discussion of modern slavery and today\u2019s racialist\u200c ideologies. According to a recent study, \u201c40.3 million people worldwide live in slavery today, and 89 million in \u200dtotal over \u200cthe previous five years.\u201d As in previous centuries, the Catholic Church continues to lead the charge by speaking out against this injustice. Pope Francis continually raises\u2064 this issue in his speeches and encyclicals while many other writers and journalists do the same.<\/p>\n<p>So why does this not receive more\u2064 attention from today\u2019s self-identified antiracists? Kengor \u2063suggests their Marxist commitments will not allow it. It\u2019s more important to preserve the narrative of\u2064 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/christians-were-historys-true-anti-racists\/\" title=\"Christians: History's genuine anti-racists\">white oppressors exploiting nonwhite victims<\/a> than to acknowledge the millions of souls who don\u2019t fit this \u2063narrative. By\u200c this point, Kengor has more than proven just\u2062 how hypocritical, ahistorical, and\u200d gravely immoral these people are\u200b to maintain this fiction at all\u200d costs.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, Kengor\u2019s\u200c book is an important one\u2063 that succeeds in \u2063its mission \u2062to correct the many mistakes of today\u2019s historical revisionists and make \u200ca persuasive case that converting to Catholicism (or\u2062 at least adopting its wisdom and example) is the best way to combat slavery and racism. The history might be complex, but the facts are clear: Christians were the true \u2064antiracists.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-a07df0c787921690bf00c23c3a55c4de fdrlst__b89e9-after-post-content\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-a07df0c787921690bf00c23c3a55c4de\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">\n<\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<h2> How does Kengor&#8217;s book challenge the revisionist historians&#8217; portrayal of the\u200d relationship between slavery and Christianity<\/h2>\n<p><span>  Ss&#8217;s debts after they \u2062died. He then devoted his \u2064time and money to helping the poor and needy, \u200bbecoming a successful businessman and a pillar of the community. Tolton was born into slavery in\u2062 Missouri and, after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/premiering-10-pm-et-the-simple-good-americas-hope-aug-21\/\" title=\"Premiering at 10 PM ET: The Simple Good | America's Hope (Aug. 21)\">facing numerous obstacles<\/a>, became the first African American Catholic priest. Bakhita was \u2062kidnapped as a child and sold into slavery in \u200bSudan, enduring great \u200bsuffering before being freed \u2064and converted to Christianity.\u2064 She later became a \u200dnun and dedicated\u200c her life to helping others.<\/p>\n<p>These stories showcase \u200cthe transformative power of Christianity and its role \u200din ending slavery. Kengor argues that \u200dwithout the moral\u200c teachings of the church, slavery would have continued unabated. He points\u200d out that\u2062 it was Christian abolitionists who spearheaded the movement to end slavery, both\u200d in America and \u200caround\u200c the world. Many of these \u200dabolitionists, like Harriet Tubman \u200dand Frederick Douglass, were devout Christians who \u200ddrew strength from their faith in their\u2064 fight against injustice.<\/p>\n<p>In\u200d conclusion, Kengor&#8217;s book serves as a powerful rebuttal to the revisionist historians \u200dwho distort the history of slavery and Christianity. \u200dHe provides a comprehensive and\u2062 well-documented account of the church&#8217;s opposition to slavery throughout history, highlighting the heroic efforts of many Catholics in the \u2062fight against this evil institution. By uncovering these untold stories, Kengor reminds us of\u200b the true history of slavery and the important role that Christianity played\u2064 in\u2063 its abolition. It is a timely and necessary book that challenges our preconceived notions \u200dand \u2063encourages a more nuanced understanding of history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Revising history for modern audiences, we can correct the bias of winners and include marginalized voices, creating a more inclusive and shared understanding of the past<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":551,"featured_media":2174898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Book-Cover-Featured-Image-3.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2174897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Book-Cover-Featured-Image-3.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/551"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2174897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2174898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2174897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2174897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2174897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}