I learned something new about Mexico (was researching Indigenous)

[Dulfite]

aTokenYeti said:

Dulfite said:

Christians, period, were focused on sharing the Gospel and are still. If England/Netherlands were more focused on land acquisition, settlement, and extraction, it's because many in the colonies and after independence weren't letting faith drive their decision making process.

We often focus, at least in regards to the American colonies, on their makeup being the puritans or other Christians fleeing persecution in Europe, and a great many were. But the colonies were also the dumping ground of criminals and other misfits and many of those people went on to trailblaze out west without being converted themselves.

I think there were extremely important theological differences between Catholics and Protestants at the time that radically altered their relationships with indigenous Americans, the issue of pre-ordination being by far the most important. Most European Protestant settlers in North America believe firmly that their land theft and genocidal warfare was morally righteous because they were members of the spiritual “elect”, and that the indigenous were damned to hell from the moment they were born. 

also, I disagree with the notion that English Protestants were keeping persecution. The puritans in particular believed the English crown was too soft on Catholics and wasn’t religiously strict enough. 

We could go in circles all day long on which group did worse things in different parts of the planets in different eras. At the end of the day, there were people that "called" themselves Christians, either Catholic/Protestant/otherwise, that did terrible things to believers and non-believers alike that were not Biblically justified. True Christians, those changed by Christ (not the ones born going to church but never actually professing a belief in Christ), don't live perfect lives, but are fully aware of their sin, are repentent of it, and become more Christ-like as they go on living.

There are many people that have convinced others, even themselves, that they are Christians, but reality speaks otherwise.