Re:On the Decline of Perl – external factors
by HeckFeck on Thursday April 01, 2021 @10:39AM
(#26661024)
I think it is a stretch to argue that every missionary is motivated by 'Imperialism'. Certainly some may have been in the past, but if one sincerely accepts the tenants of a religion then it isn't surprising one has enthusiasm to spread it. I've seen plenty of evangelists for every ideology under the sun. People who think they are right will go to great lengths to spread their ideas.
Also, the end of slavery was pushed by conscientious Christian evangelists like John Newton and William Wilberforce in the UK. It is easy to argue against slavery in Christianity owing to the Imago Dei doctrine. I suspect it is less easy to argue against slavery in other religions and cultures; many of which still practice forms of it today.
Spreading your religion while separating your culture is difficult. The same way it is difficult for a migrant to fully adapt the customs of any host culture. I think the relationships between these ideas are more complex than the evil catch-all of 'Imperialism!'.
Re:On the Decline of Perl – external factors
by emodendroket on Thursday April 01, 2021 @10:53AM
(#26661200)
I think it might be easier to see the point you are making if we substituted some other ideas. For instance, how many of us are ready to argue that freedom and democracy are evil or imperialist ideas? Yet they served as a rationale for the invasion of Iraq.
Re:On the Decline of Perl – external factors
by HeckFeck on Thursday April 01, 2021 @11:55AM
(#26662155)
There's more than one way to argue it.
Re:On the Decline of Perl – external factors
by emodendroket on Thursday April 01, 2021 @09:54AM
(#26660533)
I think one could easily make similar arguments about, say, the Internet. But let’s leave it aside. Let me ask you something: even granting it’s true, what does anything here have to do with Perl, beyond guilt by association?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_colonialism
>Christianity and colonialism
>Christianity and colonialism are often closely associated with each other because Protestantism and Catholicism participated as the state religions of the European colonial powers and in many ways they acted as the "religious arms" of those powers. According to Edward Andrews, Christian missionaries were initially portrayed as "visible saints, exemplars of ideal piety in a sea of persistent savagery". However, by the time the colonial era drew to a close in the last half of the twentieth century, missionaries became viewed as "ideological shock troops for colonial invasion whose zealotry blinded them", colonialism's "agent, scribe and moral alibi."
>In some areas, almost all of the colony's population were removed from their traditional belief systems and were turned into the Christian faith, which the colonizers used as a reason to destroy other faiths, enslave the natives, and exploit the lands and seas.
>"Colonialism is a form of imperialism based on a divine mandate and designed to bring liberation – spiritual, cultural, economic and political – by sharing the blessings of the Christ-inspired civilization of the West with a people suffering under satanic oppression, ignorance and disease, effected by a combination of political, economic and religious forces that cooperate under a regime seeking the benefit of both ruler and ruled." -Jan H. Boer of the Sudan United Mission