Mark Twain Quotes
I do not know why we respect missionaries. Perhaps it is because they have not intruded here from Turkey or China or Polynesia to break our hearts by sapping away our children's faith & winning them to the worship of alien gods. We have lacked the opportunity to find out how a parent feels to see his child deriding & blaspheming the religion of its ancestors.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. This viewpoint of Twain’s was just too jarring for an English newspaper to publish as England had been the leading Christian missionary nation in the 19th century. In the 20th century United States parents had a taste of Twain’s description with the Krishna’s, Scientologists, and other religions or cults doing what Christian missionaries had done elsewhere.
Mark Twain, Writer, Founder, Anti-Imperialist League, Unpublished editorial sent to Charles Frederic Moberly Bell of the London Times, July 1900
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This church which was so active later in sending missionaries throughout the world, at first thought the idea absurd.
Most fundamentalist Muslims view advocacy of any religion other than Islam as an “aggression” against Islam. While Americans are used to evangelizing and very aggressive attempts to convert others to and from various religion, the lack of freedom in most Islamic societies makes this a foreign notion. Also, Muslims read the works of some Christian missionaries and generalize this view to the West in its entirety. For example, See {607979}
Some Muslims refer to Christians as polytheists because of the concept of the Trinity. To them this is worshipping more thn one God. The Roman Catholic practice of praying to the Virgin Mary is another exmple for them.
The Empress provided freedom of religion in order to induce many settlers to immigrate to Russia. However, the clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church were terribly fearful that they would lose parishioners to other religions and they prevailed upon Catherine to outlaw preaching and conversion of the Russians. However, they were all for any attempt to convert the Muslims in the Russian Empier or at the borders. This limitation on conversion lasted until the Communist Revolution when the Communists even prohibited the Russian Orthodox from converting people. It was not until the fall of the Soviet Union that other religions were allowed to try and convert Russians and even then the number of sects that were allowed to do so were limited.
Those who argue that the United States is a Christian country often point to this quotation to illustrate the fundamental religious purpose to the Massachusetts Colonies
Christian Neophytes were Indians who claimed that they had converted to Christianity. The French initially banned giving or selling firearms to the Indians of North America. However in 1640, they made an exception to provide arms to the Huron Indians who they thought had converted to Christianity. Four years later the Jesuits were using guns as the major motivation for conversion of Indians. The hypocrisy of using weapons of war to attract converts to a religion of peace gave way to the incredible success that the trading of guns for souls had achieved. The French military also thought that the armed Indians could be used as allies in the coming battle with England for control of North America. The English then armed their Indian allies, and the French and Indian Wars saw armed Indians on both sides.
In some countries political candidates run on religious platforms to convert the part of the population that is not of their religion and turn the nation into a theocracy.
The Guru was then horribly tortured, and when he still would not convert, the Emperor had him beheaded. A new Indian Emperor, Aurangzeb, had ascended the throne of India by imprisoning his father and murdering his brothers. All the Emperors in those days were Muslims ever since the Islamic army had left Arabia and conquered most land to the East including most of India. Aurangzeb was worse than most and claimed he had a vision from God telling him that he should make everyone in the kingdom a Muslim. But about half the population was still Hindu. He decided to get the Sikh Guru to convert and then almost all would follow. The Sikhs were considered a Hindu sect at the time, and the Sikh Guru was respected by most Hindus. When the Emperor sent for the Guru, he explained that India should only have one religion, Islam, and offered the Guru much gold to convert, but if he did not do so, it would go badly for him. The Guru asked that a large pile of peppercorns be brought before them, and had it set on fire. When the fire burned out, the Guru went through the ashes and found three peppercorns intact.
this is a joke Tutu has used, but variants of it exist which are not original to him.
While Aquinas brought much wisdom and good to the Church, this statement and others laid a foundation for murdering non-believers and organizing the Inquisition.
The major religions differ when it comes to conversion. Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and some Christian Religions do not aggressively seek converts but will accept converts who come themselves. Other Christian religions and Islam aggressively try and convert others and see it as their religious duty to do so.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter often called "The Great American Novel".
