It is in vogue today on the multiculturalist Left to speak up for 'indigenous' people-giving voice to the voiceless [1]. There are those on
the Right who take an expansive view of conservatism who also harbor such sentiments, but they are a distinct minority in their camp [2]. In my experience, the question is less 'is it good for the indigenes?' and more 'how did whitey screw up now?' This explains part of the focus on white on non-white oppression (and yes, I know there are many examples) as opposed to inter-non-white conflicts (the body count is probably far higher in
the past few years in this category-and yes, part of it is that the same appeals to humanitarianism do not seem to work on such 'authentic' peoples as the
Indonesians in Irian Jaya-in fact, where is the Indonesian equivalent of the Democrats in apartheid South Africa, who argued for one-man-one-vote against
the Nationalists? I know Amien Rais has made some sounds toward federalism, but his party has also flirted with Lakshar Jihad).
Let us turn to the question of missionaries in 'underdeveloped' regions of the world (dare we say 'primitive'?). Reading The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond years ago I noted clearly the distaste that he felt toward Christian proselytizers in Papua New Guinea. He comes
back to this theme in Guns, Germs and Steel, bemoaning the Papuan tendency to view worship of Christ as a magical elixir that will lead them toward modernity and affluence. I have
But though I ingest these views to caution me from being enthusiastic about Christianization of non-Christian cultures in the hope places like 'New Britain' and 'New Caledonia' will evolve into incarnations of their namesakes in more than word alone, I cannot discount the importance of the faith in Christ in importing portions of the Western cultural outlook. Until Christianization in the 20th century the Naga people of northeast Indian were head-hunters far from the tracks of civilized man, today, they are a Christian and literate people with a
close association with the American Baptist missionaries that converted them. Similarly, the Mizos (Chin in Myanmar) are 90% Christian and 90% literate [3]. The other part of India that is rather literate is Kerala, which is 20% Christian. Of course, the coastal areas of Borneo were being Islamicized while The Philippines was brought into the Catholic Church, and both conversions resulted in the extinction of practices such as head-hunting in these areas a well. Similarly, the Buddhist cultures of mainland Southeast Asia also have long civilized traditions that eschew such grotesque 'pagan' practices like human sacrifice despite their heathen character. All the religious civilizations of
the Eurasian oikoumene that emerged from the chrysalis of late-stage paganism during the axial age
tend to share a moralistic outlook that banishes the magic and blood of the pervious epochs to the bins of history and darkness.
Japan is one nation that shows that one can be modern and forward thinking without Christianity. On the other hand, many of the other non-Christian polities
in Asia have a strong Christian presence in their elite. These baptized members of a given ethnos serve as interfaces with the methods and variables of Western cultural thinking which they transmit despite their failures at spreading the gospel to their fellows. To give an example, Taiwan (The Republic of China for sticklers) was ruled by the Chiang family for 40 years. They were pious Methodists who oversaw the development of a pagan country. The first native Taiwanese president was a Presbyterian (Lee Teng Hui and Chiang Kai-Shek were both converts as an aside). And yet there have been periods in the past two generations when Christianity seemed to stagnate and shrink while the Taiwanese themselves were waxing in prosperity. Today the present head of state is a Buddhist and Christians form no more than 10% of the population (more likely 5%, but the numbers I have seen are variable). In fact, like Singapore, South Korea and Japan, Christianity has served to revive Buddhism as a force in public and private life in Taiwan, which has swallowed whole the ideas of Chinese Folk Religion and is rapidly vanquishing Taoism [4]. The particulars differ, as the Japanese are notoriously immune to seduction by Christ while the Koreans are enthusiastic converts who have sent
missionaries to Europe!
In any case, my focus is less on the cultures that have felt the touch of the three great civilizations, Western, Indian and Chinese, but to those peoples who
are outside the stream of history that has been formed by the co-mingling and cross-fertilization of the great traditions. My point in the preceding section
was to show that Christianity is not the only touchstone of civility, but it can also have a salubrious effect through competition with a sophisticated but indolent native intellectual tradition. So it is no surprise that many would assert that faith in Jesus uplifts and transforms (positively) those from genuinely insular and
primitive backgrounds. The spirit of the anti-clerical Enlightenment has spawned those, such as Jared Diamond, and many anti-Christian, but Western,
intellectuals, who disparage Christianity and hold up Rousseau's ideal of the 'noble savage.' Unfortunately, try as they might to portray them as
such, many pre-Christian pagan cultures outside the oikoumene only display the latter tendency of Rousseau’s archetype. A common pattern among pagan people upon meeting missionaries of the 'True Faith,' past and present, is to bifurcate between heathens and Christians. Among the 'civilized' ones, such as ancient Rome, the heathens would bring to bear their own complex theoretical superstructure, though Christian zeal and organization tended to win the day, often by co-option of what was right and good in the eyes of the new faith in the old [5]. On the other hand, pagan cultures that do not develop their own literate cultures and metaphysical systems are often brutal, bloody and anti-intellectual in their outlook, defending sacrifice of flesh and cruel customs, while the Christian camp tends to be formed by 'progressives' who espouse literacy and gentility (the means toward a placid and religiously homogenous culture under Christ can be traumatic- for instance,
the Russian princes of the Rurikid dynasty tore the idols of the god Perun from their pedestals and had them dragged about Kiev and dumped in rivers and
destroyed & defaced, sacrilege to believers in the old religion). While India or China had deep and rich wells of intellectual sophistication and nuance to bring to the modern world, the cultures of Polynesia or ancient Scandinavia simply could not resist Christianization because the pagans were silent in the halls of the mind and less stalwart in strength of spirit [6]. Just as the last pagan regions of Sweden were isolated from the invigorating influence of the pan-European Christian civilization while Norway and Denmark were being unified by baptized kings and taking their seats in the halls of power, isolated pagan groups embedded in 'higher' civilizations cut themselves off from the trappings of modernity and maintain a continuity with the past only
through grinding poverty and ignorance [7].
Are there reasons that intellectuals scoff at Christianity among the pagans besides partisan bias? Reading Diamond's works I certainly get the feeling that fascinating study subjects are being replaced by false Westerners in Papuan guise. Certainly, the rampant destruction of native artifacts and the rebellion against the elders and their rich histories and traditions can only horrify Western intellectuals who prize human diversity in all its panoply as a higher good worthy of study and praise. Of course, this is in its own way patronizing and dehumanizing, as it seems that scientists and scholars are interested in the authentic indigenous cultures are relics and fossils that will illustrate their own
paradigms and models about universal human nature and deviations from it [8]. Yes, Christianity might mean that the old ways have to go,
some that are even adaptive-who wants to dress like a Utah Mormon in Samoa after all? But kowtowing to missionaries probably means that bright kids have a
chance at literacy, and reading the Bible might just be a necessary prerequisite for getting to all the good stuff that's out there once the world of books unlocked with letters that lead through the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. In my perfect world, I wish that Africans wouldn't have to trade their juju witchdoctors for quaking Pentecostal droolers, but if the Holy Rollers are the price they have to pay to replace chicken sacrifices & native medicine with schools & hospitals, well, I'm sure any boy or girl in Botswana or Congo would be happy to pay it. The power and awe that the ancestors inspire and the fear native priests and witchdoctors demand is a great and mighty thing, and have sustained myriad cultures from time immemorial-but they seem to whither in the face of the power of the Word and the fire & brimstone rained down upon the imaginations of the enraptured [9].
Forward thinkers such as Marx have hurled contempt at non-Western civilizations as dead-ends, and James Mill was a progressive who wanted to bring equality and modernity to the benighted lower castes of India no matter the cost to the indigenous cultural matrix (as did another Mill, John Stuart, pupil of Bentham who debated Burke on the question of civilizing India, and argued in the affirmative) [10]. Today many liberals and Leftists have turned their backs on the white man's burden and it is the missionaries of Christ who seem to be driven by the zeal to tear down the old so that the new may arise (NGOs of the non-religious variety act as a secular form of this of course-but they tend to be more solicitous of indigenous ways from what I gather). Their primary aim is perhaps to save souls for Christ, but if they bring hospitals, schools and lift the status of women, can any right-thinking liberal who
espouses universal values and dignity of individual life rather than group integrity deny them their just results? It is known that in many regions of the world one incentive for conversion to world religions is to do away with costly sacrifices to propitiate capricious gods and replace such means of setting fate right with prayer. From a materialistic perspective it seems proper and
utilitarian that prayer to a god that many consider ancient and outmoded beyond its years is a lesser evil than to waste flesh and libation on demons in the darkness that haunt the dreams men in all cultures. So that the Papuan may become post-Christian, the secular intellectual might have to accept that they will become intoxicated by the Christ of his forbears, before the long hangover after religious frenzy turns their spirituality inward and evinces the quietism and private contemplation more common in the modern West.