The Church in the Americas
The Church For and Against the Racial Empires
Photograph: Statue of the Spanish Dominican preacher Antonio Montesinos, outside of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Photo credit: Caballero, Wikimedia Commons. Antonio Montesinos advocated before Spanish authorities on behalf of the Taino people, on what is now the island of Hispaniola. Because the Western European church was reverting back to the pre-Christian model of ancient pagan tribalism and imperialism, the first encounters of Europeans with the Americas were bound up with greed, slavery, and sexual violence. Montesinos reminds us that the true task of the church was to repent of this heresy and reassert God's good vision for humanity.
Introduction
The selection of perspectives on church history in this section — Church and Empire — has been guided by three factors: (1) to demonstrate that Christianity has not been a “white man’s religion”; (2) the study of empire as a recurring motif in Scripture by recent biblical studies scholars; and (3) explorations of biblical Christian ethics on issues of power and polity, to understand how Christians were faithful to Christ or not. Christian relational ethics continues a Christian theological anthropology that began with reflection on the human nature of Jesus, and the human experience of biblical Israel.
The Church and Empire in the Americas: Topics:
This section explores the experience and activities of Christians under colonial and modern regimes in the Americas. The pages are: African Americans Pre-1954 and Post-1954 because in 1954, the Supreme Court handed down Brown v. Board of Education, which was a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement and U.S. legal history; African American Spirituality; Asian America; Latin American In the US and Latin American Outside the US; Native American; White Anti-Supremacist; and White Supremacist.
Church and Empire: Topics:
This page is part of our section on Church and Empire. These resources begin with a biblical exposition of Empire in Church and Empire and the meaning of Pentecost in Pentecost as Paradigm for Christianity and Cultures, then grouped by region: Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, Americas, then Nation-State, with special attention given to The Shoah of Nazi Germany.
