Christianity and Indigenous Communities Essay Example for Free

Christianity and endemic Communities Essay?The question about Christianity and its full chooseance into original communities continues to linger on a ok line of whether Indigenous communities came to a consensus of compromising with the new religion or simply eradicating it by refusing to snuff it behind their traditional ways of believing and creating spiritual consciousness.Some scholars such as, Kevin Terraciano, in his chapter, The People of dickens Hearts and the One God from Castile, argue that Christianity was not notwithstanding rejected by acts of continuing Indigenous religious practices, provided also mocked because it was thought to be a lie and inferior to the Indigenous commonwealth in Yanhuitlan and Coatlan this new religion did not coincide with theirs . On the other hand, in her book, Biography of A Mexican Crucifx, Jennifer Hughes comes to conclude that Indigenous communities accepted Christianity through their own modes of seeing par on the wholeel par adigms of their feeling with the life of religious images such as the Cristo Aparecido from Totolapan. They came to see this image as a representation of their suffering , their colonial journey and their need for finding religious meaning in a newly evangelized land.In Terracianos, some(prenominal) Peoples Heart, he subversively implies that Christianity was based on the idea that there had to exist some type of religious conformity based on Catholicism. From this point, Indigenous population have been victims of racism, discrimination, disregard for their beliefs, uprooting and political marginalization. As Terraciano points out, in this summons of spiritual conquest, domination can occur occur through methods of interrogation and punishment if found guilty, which was distinctly the case during the Spanish Inquisition during the 16th century.Native lords were confronted both by friars, Dominicans and Spanish for their supposed dedication to practicing paganism, and encoura ging Indigenous communities to continue their reverence and offerings to their many gods, while on the surface make a menial space to pray to the New God from Castile. Terraciano explains how in order for Christianity to make itself dominant, the population of Yanhuitlan and Coatlan had to not only get rid of their ancestors images, burn them, but also force themselves to accept Christianity as their only spiritual choice.Nevertheless, Indigenous communities and to a great extent the native lords encouraged Indigenous communities to keep their belief intact . An example of this is addicted when, Don Fransciso, a native lord who was accused of paganism, and disruptive doings stated that the people of Yanhuitlan were not to embrace Christianity, that their gods did not come from Castile, and then a result of this was the parody of Yanhuitlan peoples both by verbal insults and gestures towards Native Christians, There go the Christian Castile, the chickens, (Terraciano, pg.7) T his shows us that the refusal to indoctrinate Christianity as part of a Yanhuitlan identity was obstruct by the continuing reinforcement that Indigenous communities e where reluctant to forgetting their ancient practices and beliefs. For instance when trialed, Don Francisco was asked if he knew any prayers in Latin, Castillan or Mixtec, he admitted that he knew two, but when asked to recite them, he said he could not remember them (Terraciano, 8).This once more reiterates through the examples given by Terraciano, that native lords saw Christianity as unimportant, they did not care to learn the way of Catholicism or become subservient to the God of Castile. After mass, many nobles would drink pulque and joke around that they had not dumb a word of the sermon (Terraciano 8).Ultimately, with the ambivalence of Christianity also came the practice of certain ritual acts which often took prop in small areas or carried out in a secluded place where the Indigenous people would be safe, as the lords began to denounce that their gods were angry and had brought upon drought and death to the Yanhuitlan community because some lords were weak decent to follow a God who could not save them from their hunger, even as he was called the almighty and powerful.In conclusion, what Terraciano delivers this idea of a power struggle that occurred within the communities of Yanhuitlan and Coatlan as to converting to Christianity and keeping their original religion as their primal way of religious consciousness and looking at Christianity with eyes of ambiguity and uselessness to their survival, both spiritual and physical. Nevertheless, for other scholars, their research has taken them to analyze the impacts of Christianity from a different perspective, one where both Christianity and Indigeneity mix, forming a culture of religious hybridism.As Jennifer Hughes states in her book, for the missionaries, Christianization in the New World was a genocide to all material of religious cu lture, it was a process of erasure, yet with this the Indigenous population was left with an spiritual emptiness, hence images such as the Cristo Aparecido became that fulfillement not only to their seek for religious authenticity, but also serving as some type of protective force against the legacy left by colonial conquest. For Hughes, the community of Tolopan accept this image of the Cristo Aparecido since the very beginning, to them