[Buddha-l] Religious Persecution [was: NYTimes.com: Let Us Pray forWealth]

[Dan Lusthaus]

Franz,

Are we living in such a hypersensitive PC world that I need to explain what
I wrote? If so, then in capsule form, the issue is this:

1. Missionaries, military and merchants -- especially in the Christian case
in places like Japan and China that I was discussion -- are inextricably
fused at the hip. When Buddhist missionaries leaked out of NW India to
follow the Silk Road to Persia and China the middle term in that triad -- 
the military -- was an absent ingredient. Hence, we can conclude that while
the first and third may be on some level necessary conditions for
propogation, the middle term is not. Hence its inclusion is unnecessary and
dispensible. Consequence: When it IS included, it needn't have been, and it
can provide additional factors to the propogation.

2. While the triad may, at times, act as a unity and other times work at
cross-purposes, they symbiotically appear on foreign shores and usually
share enough common purpose to work in tandem.

3. In the Japanese case I called "sound policy" the Catholics were active
instigators and participants in an insurrection -- their stated purpose to
bring light and truth to the heathens. They introduced firearms into the
struggle (do I need to rehash the impact that had on "samurai" culture and
traditional Japanese ideals of warfare -- perhaps I can send you a copy of
that tacky T. Cruise film about the "last" samurai [don't ask, though; I
don't own a copy to copy!]) Had they backed the winner the "religious"
history of Japan would have been very different.

4. The Catholic theory of authority -- just like the Emperor theory -- goes
from the top down, demanding fidelity, loyalty and obedience to the top gun,
even if he lives in Rome rather being a local boy.

5. Christian "converts" in Japan, following a foreign authority in
insurrection against the national authority, were committing treason, and
causing bloodshed.

6. Christianity -- and pardon the indelicate way I am about to put this -- 
is like a stubborn virus. Once a host is infected, it is almost impossible
to extirpate. So even after the defeat of the Christian-backed side, the
converts refused to recant, hence posing, in the eyes of the triumphant
leadership, an incorrigible fifth column.

7. Therefore, the association christianity [aka Catholicism] = firearms and
dangerous new weapons = brainwashing local people to revere and swear
obedience to a foreign despot (aka the Pope) = dangerous foreigners =
military threat = political threat = destabilizing internal presence was a
sound and reasonable conclusion, concordant with the facts and experience
(and, as history shows, a long track record, most of which the Japanese
didn't know or hadn't even happened yet).

8. The banning of all people from Catholic countries was a political, not a
religious decision, and to have done otherwise would have been the type of
suicide the aztecs experienced. They brought offerings of tomatoes to the
Spanish Conquistadors -- Tomatoes were unknown to Europeans, but the rule of
thumb was that anything "red" must be poison, so, deciding that the Aztecs
were trying to poison them, they massacred them on the spot.

9. That Japan is what it is today and the Aztecs are only a memory suggests
(if you prefer softer language) that Japan's policy toward missionaries was
sound.

Is that clearer?

Aztecs were pushed off a cliff en masse, not gradually edged down a slippery
slope...

Dan


> Be careful, Dan, you are on a slippery slope ...

PS Caveat apparently necessary in these sensitive times: I am not an
advocate for Aztec culture, daily sacrifices by removing some poor sap's
heart on the top of pyramid, etc. I like tomatoes. The Aztec parallel was
introduced to emphasize that the dire predictions for an alternate outcome
in Japan are not mere hyptotheticals, but exactly what the times were all
about. When Columbus first sighted the new World and met the "natives", he
thought he was in Japan.

Buddhist content: The Japanese purging of dangerous missionaries and their
military arms was not a "Buddhist" policy. The Catholic insurrection
involvement WAS a Christian strategy.