Eurocentrism and Manifest Destiny

Chapter 4 Eurocentrism and Manifest Destiny

The United States is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without making civilization known. Oscar Wilde

For Europe and the United States, cultures are “civilized” or “wild”, depending on the anthropological approach or distance. As we get “closer” to the European-American ideal, culture will be more “civilized” —but never the same — and as we move away from that ideal, culture will be more “savage.” Even notable anthropologists, philosophers, scientists, used the term “savage” to refer to non-European cultures. They have assumed the role of “civilizers”, and have awarded other cultures the role of “savages”. Unfortunately many cultures assumed this role assigned by the aggressor.

Today we pride ourselves on having an “inclusive” education, however in fact, curricular teaching, in our schools, high schools and universities, remains Eurocentric, deliberately omitting the importance of comprehensive, universal, and complementary knowledge. Paying little attention to the wisdom of our indigenous cultures, the “oriental” philosophy, ignoring in its programs the worldview of the original nations, and universal integrative knowledge.

We have taken a very important step by including those who think, feel or live differently from what is culturally established, however we continue to experience strong resistance to other non-Western cultures. While the contribution of European culture is important, we must bear in mind that great scientific and technological achievements have passed from China to Europe through the Arab world. Europe always had the interest of knowing and penetrating the “East”, in those mysterious and unknown countries that reached the Mediterranean. Among them India, from which came cotton fabrics, cane sugar, pearls, precious stones, ivory, ebony, incense, aromas, spices in particular pepper, and silk fabrics from China, supplying from this trade both Romans

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as Greeks. In the last period of antiquity, the Greek-Egyptian merchants knew China and designated it by the names of Thinai and Sinai. In the 13th century, the Victorian merchants knew China under the name of Cathay, and already from the 8th century, the Arab sailors who visited the maritime cities of the Malay Peninsula, went ahead to China where they learned a lot of nautical and technological knowledge, and to use the compass which allowed them to move away from the coasts and to risk following straight courses on the high seas.

The Mohammedan merchant Soleiman, who lived in the 9th century, left us an account of the sea route to Chanfu (Hang-Chu-Fu) in China, which started from the port of Chiraz. The same route was described a few years later by Abul-Casim Ibn Cordadbé, Postmaster of the Calida Motamid. In the 10th century, he visited Chinese ports from Ceylon, one of the most notable Arab travelers named Masudi who paints China as an enchanting country with lush vegetation and cut by countless canals. No palm trees are seen there, he says, but the inhabitants of this empire exceed all other creatures of God in industrial and artistic skill. Already in the 13th century, trade with China continued, in that same century, the most famous of the Arab travelers, Ibn Batuta, visited China.

With the Crusades, relations with the countries of the “East” came to life, thanks to the activity of Italian merchants who took advantage of the victory of the Christian armies that had occupied the coasts of Syria. The caravans were increased to the interior of Asia where Italian merchants could not yet penetrate because of the intervention of the Mohammedan populations whose territory they had to cross. The Mongols were the mediating people between Europe and China.

Since the time of the reign of the Ptolemies of Egypt, trade was already with the Eastern countries, mainly in the hands of the Greek merchants, established in Egypt and thanks to them the island of Java and had the first direct deal with China. The extreme point that the navigator and merchant Alexandros reached in the first century of our era was the port of Cattigara, a maritime city not far from the mouth of the Yan-Tse-Kiang River, the extreme limit, which continued to be so until the end of the century. XIII. Greek ships departed from the port of Clisma, directly for India on annual visits (Ruge, 1890).

These mythical forces that built the idea of a Europe as the “navel” of Humanity, erasing all historical influence, are the same mythical forces that shaped the young American nation, under the doctrinal fiction of Manifest Destiny, by which the empire He will magnify himself, erected by divine forces to guide nations that “cannot rule themselves.” Through the rationalization

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mechanism of a deep national ambition and hatred towards the peoples it wishes to subjugate. Manifest Destiny contains religious elements transmuted in the form of political philosophy, concepts of racial superiority, as in forces marked by Calvinist expansionism and its predestination.

I will mention the famous expressions of Senator Beveridge (USA) discussing the fate of the Philippines after annexation, as a consequence of the war with Spain:

They are unable to exercise self-government. How could they be? They do not form a race capable of governing itself. They are Orientals, Malays, educated by the Spanish during the worst stage of the latter. Mr. President, this problem runs deeper than any question of party politics; even deeper than any question of the isolated politics of our country, even deeper than a problem of constitutional power. It is elemental. It is racial. God has not been preparing the Teutonic and English-speaking peoples for a thousand years for a vain attitude of self-contemplation, and self-admiration. Do not! It has made us master organizers of the world to impose the system where chaos reigns. He instilled in us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction in every corner of the Earth. He bent us to the government so that we can rule the wild and senile peoples. If it weren’t for this force, the world would fall into barbarism and darkness. And throughout our race, He singled out the American people as the chosen nation to lead the regeneration of the world. (Weinberg, 1968, p. 95)

In the context of the Cold War, the French Protestant Frederick Hoffet, came to the conclusion that the Protestant, Teutonic and English-speaking countries, [being the United States the most important] are countries culturally superior to the Catholic countries, and therefore They must “intervene” in the politics of the latter in order to “guide” them towards freedom, prosperity, democracy, “moral rectitude, respect for the law, and civic spirit.” These ideas leave humanity divided into two types of psychological structures determined by religion: the Protestant subject and the Catholic, the first superior and the second inferior, also excluding all other religions as “pagan”, therefore, this idea automatically enables the military intervention of nations modeled by Protestantism, over nations modeled by Catholicism.

Now, if it is true, as we believe we have demonstrated, the qualities that have formed the soul of the American nation are Protestant qualities, if the secret of American success is that of the Protestant man, one cannot help wondering if American imperialism is not, in the last analysis a Protestant imperial-

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ism. Well, as we have seen, Calvinism contains ferments capable of pushing the peoples towards an imperialist policy. The Calvinist theocracy contains an expansive power that has proven to be singularly effective, and that is stopped neither by the borders of the continents nor by the seas. Isn’t the tough, ascetic Calvinist man the American-style conqueror type, sober and without Faust, a merchant rather than a military man, but a military man when necessary, and then all the more effective since his power is more unknown? One can therefore imagine a Protestant imperialism, or more exactly a Calvinist imperialism to use a term that perhaps is considered daring and that, to the extent that it is translated into political practice, would be an imperialism of democracy [...] A society of Nations under the aegis of an America that was faithful to the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers, would ensure the happiness of the world. (Hoffet, 1951, p. 114)

Since the beginning of human life, religion has played an important role in social life through space and time. This original content has taken other historical and generational forms, being transmuted into various concepts and ideas. However, these pristine forces, although they cannot be perceived with definition, have not been totally diluted, they are preserved under the guise of other totally “different” fields of knowledge. Such transmutation will conserve in a distorted form, certain contents of that original material. This mechanism is determined by unconscious and historical processes, in such a way that the original content will be deformed, through a process of secularization, and will be integrated into various fields of knowledge.

These contents, already transmuted and internalized in a given society, although it has significantly changed in form, content, and context, although it no longer belongs to religious ideas, it still continues its journey, being transmuted over and over again through time, under new designs.

Spencer concludes that the religions with the greatest number of ceremonies are more “backward”, that is, they have evolved less on the social phylogenetic scale than those that practice a greater number of them. The truth is that Protestantism moved away more easily from the old dominant structures, while Catholicism continued to be rooted in them. The expansive and impetuous force of Calvinist predestination gradually shaped political expansionism. The Protestant concept of work, time and progress was very different from Catholicism. It is necessary to remember that in the first there are no mendicant orders because it is assumed that there can be no poverty under the will of God if the poor accept to submit to the divine will, they will cease to be poor and will become blessed. Therefore, the origin of poverty lies in the lack

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of faith in the true God. Calvinist Protestantism became an expansive “western” milieu similar to the “holy war.”

Christianity and more precisely the nations modeled under Protestantism, influenced with greater vehemence in the construction of “Eurocentrism”, in the patriarchal tendency, capitalism, later racist theories, in “scientific” racism, which, later crossing the Ocean Atlantic, descended from the religious pulpits, from the Puritan stages to later crystallize in the expansionist political ideologies of the United States. The idea that Humans are born “inferior” or “superior”, “savage” or “civilized”, “saved” or “condemned” either through biological or theological determinism, has its antecedents, from the Reformation period.

In the same way as the biblical account states that Moses crossed the Red Sea with the Israelites to reach the promised land, the English came to believe that they were fulfilling a divine and similar mission by crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and once they entered the “Promised Land”, its mission consisted of exterminating and plundering the indigenous peoples, considered as intruders in those “sacred” lands predestined for the white man. In a sense today we can speak of an “Anglo-American Israel”. In a symbolic sense, the United States becomes a “Promised Land”, erecting a political, social, and economic ideological structure, where its components are the result of various historical transmutations whose preliminary contents have had an expansionist religious character.

In 1785 Jefferson proposed that the seal of the United States represent the children of Israel, guided by a pillar of light. In 1796 John Cushing explicitly stated what in Jefferson had been mere implication: that God’s dispensations to America were reminiscent of those granted to Israel. Theological poet Timothy Dwight revealed his Hebraic nationalism even more frankly when in 1787 he said of the Americans that they were “this chosen race.” This dogma of the chosen people is rooted in national selfishness, but flourishes in a conscience of moral force. Its moral phase is revealed in Jefferson’s (1801) reference to the United States as “the purest hope in the world.” His inaugural address in 1805 revived in a morally nationalized structure the Calvinist dogma of the Puritans about God’s elect, that is, the concept that “God guided our ancestors, as Israel once did” (Weinberg, 1968, p. 49).

In social psychology, the “historical psychic transmutation” is an unconscious process by which certain contents: religious, scientific, political, artistic, among others, are gradually deformed over time, resulting in other substitute forms of them, but preserving certain previous contents, and so on in a dynamic movement.

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Through all my work I wrote about the importance of historical transmutation, which allows us to understand that in reality what we live as the present: the social forms of thinking, feeling, and acting, are not precisely characteristic of the present as we usually do. believe. We live them as present situations, but in reality certain contents come from cultural deformations, from unknown times and geographical places.

Therefore, to understand the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and the concept of Eurocentrism, we must necessarily “go back” hundreds of years into the past. In the “West”, the idea of “natural” Human evil had a predominant impulse in Protestant theology. These religious contents have been transmuted into Darwinian ideology, into Spencer’s philosophy and sociology, even reaching psychoanalysis.

While Calvin in the 16th century affirmed the “natural” evil of “man”, Darwin understood nature as “cruel”, under the unconscious influence of a social and colonial era, in which the weakest were exterminated before the forces of the British imperialism. Influenced by these same unconscious forces from the past, Freud reached the same conclusions when he asserted that man is man’s wolf. Although at first glance it is illogical to affirm that a certain Calvinist influence could be manifested in Freud - at least in a direct and conscious way -, since Freud was skeptical about religion, and therefore did not harbor a religious tendency, nevertheless, it is It is possible to see that influence through the distortion of previous historical processes.

I must point out for my part, that Calvinism and in general terms Protestantism has a pessimistic concept of life, and of the theological certainty of the “natural” malignancy of Human beings. These ideas, which still persist, were part of the cultural unconscious of the European nations that embraced the new Reformed religions. According to Protestant theology, society does not have the ability to influence the behavior of the subject, since it is born “evil” by nature, and in the same way as a disease, sin spreads through the generations.

The idea of original sin is conceived as a universal, generational, and inevitable “disease”, as a contagious pathology similar to leprosy. The idea of sin has a certain psychic connection with the biological concept of heredity. If it were theologically accepted that the causes of Human behavior come largely from the social context, in which it lives, then the idea of original sin as disease and as inheritance would lose its meaning and likewise, the concept of natural Human evil. and universal. Consequently, the behavioral response would be

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motivated by social, cultural, psychological, economic, industrial causes… and would not be caused by the curse of sin9 .

Capra points out that more recent research has shown that:

the more the biological world is studied, the more one realizes that the tendency to associate to establish bonds, to live one within the other, and to cooperate, is an essential characteristic of living organisms.

In the words of Lewis Thomas “There are no solitary beings, each creature is, in some way related and dependent on the others.”

In recent decades, detailed studies of ecosystems have clearly shown that most of the relationships that exist between living organisms are essentially cooperative relationships characterized by coexistence and interdependence, and by various levels of symbiosis. Although there is competition, this usually occurs within a broader cooperation context so that the more general system remains in balance. Even relationships between predators and their prey that are destructive to immediate prey are often advantageous for both species. This view contrasts sharply with the ideas of social Darwinists, who viewed life solely in terms of competition, of struggle and of destruction. His conception of nature has created has contributed to create a philosophy that legitimizes the exploitation and disastrous impact of our technology on the natural environment. However, this conception has no scientific justification because it fails to perceive the principles of cooperation and integration that are an essential aspect of the different ways that living organisms have to organize themselves at any level. (Fritjof, 1998, pp. 324-325)

As Thomas has pointed out, even in cases where there have to be winners and losers, the transfer does not have to be a struggle. For example, when two members of the coral species meet in a place where there is only room for one, the smaller of the two disintegrates and does so through its own autonomous mechanisms. “He is not expelled, he is not defeated, he is not killed; he simply chooses to withdraw. The excess of competitiveness of aggressiveness and destructive behavior predominates only in the human species and must

9  Quoting Saint Augustine, Calvin affirms that “our corruption does not come from the bad examples that we have seen in others, but we come out of the same womb with the perversity that we have, which cannot be denied without great impudence.” Instituciones Cristianas. Libro II, chapter I, p. 5.

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be considered from the point of view of cultural values and not pseudo-scientifically “explained” as an intrinsically natural phenomenon. (Fritjof, 1985)

The concept of predestination, human powerlessness, and contempt for the present life are the leitmotif of Calvinist ideas. The Human being is insignificant and powerless, he is trapped in the hands of a tyrant, cruel God, unable to decide his destiny. He is miserable from the beginning, and therefore must distrust himself, and even hate himself;

For it is no wonder that we are so blind in this regard, since no one is freed from that plague of self-love, which, as Scripture attests, is naturally ingrained in all of us. (Institución Cristiana. Libro III. Chapter XII, p. 5)

The security of man goes through self-humiliation which represents Calvin’s hatred towards the world, hatred repressed, projected, and rationalized through asceticism, “in the name of God”, hating “justifiably” those who oppose his ideas, or directing hostility towards oneself, considering itself nonada, or an insignificant “worm”. By a mere whim of divinity, men are born condemned or saved from before birth, and without being able to do anything to avoid it.

Because to condemn and destroy whoever you see fit, is more typical of the cruelty of an executioner, than of the legitimate sentence of a judge. And so it seems to them that men have just cause to complain about God, if by his own will and without their deserving it, he predestines them to eternal death. (Institución Cristiana. Libro III. Chapter XXIII, p. 2)

As we see, human destiny is determined by a higher will, and does not depend on their works, on what it can do, therefore, no one can or should ask why God has decided it this way. It is a mystery, and we do not mean anything to ask ourselves why this supreme being has decided so.

That is why when it is asked why God has done it this way, we must answer: because he wanted to. Well, if you insist on asking why he wanted, with this you are looking for something superior and more excellent than the will of God; which is impossible to find. So refrain human recklessness, and do not seek what does not exist, lest you find what exists. (Institución Cristiana. Libro III. Chapter XXIII, p. 2)

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I have insisted on the study of the Reformation period because its religious influence has transmuted through the centuries under the dimension of political content, in an American colonialist expansionism and in the doctrine of its Manifest Destiny. These religious forces of a puritanical nature inspired the construction of colonialism, imperialism, racist pretensions, European and American nationalists, and the supposed superiority of the “Aryan race”. Erich Fromm rightly points out that the Calvinist theory of predestination “has experienced its most vigorous resurgence in Nazi ideology” (Fromm, n.d.).

Humanity according to Calvin is divided between two classes of people: the damned and the saved, by an unchangeable divine destiny, predestined from before the foundation of the world, and without anyone being able to change it voluntarily. This religious theory denies the equality of beings. Humans are born unequal, therefore solidarity, fellowship, and love between them are rejected at the same time. It leads them to suspect, to distrust the world around them, despising it and hating it, because all those who do not belong to the group of the chosen ones, have to represent in a certain sense a threat to those who believe they are chosen.

This produces a certain increase of anxiety and uncertainty in the Calvinist, because how can he know if he belongs to the group of the saved or to the group of the damned? If God decided my destiny before I was born and I cannot do anything to change it, how can I know what destiny God decided for me? How can I find out if I have been predestined to be condemned? What can I do to silence the tremendous doubts, fears and uncertainty caused by the discomfort of not knowing the destiny that God chose for me? How can I overcome doubts in advance about my destiny before death comes to me?

Startled by doubts, helplessness, insignificance, uncertainty, nothingness, and fear, the Calvinist endeavors to quell his unbearable feelings, incessantly indulging in compulsive work, in such a way that economic success, prosperity, was the ultimate goal. a sign that “revealed” to him and superficially reassured him by convincing himself that he had been predestined for eternal salvation.

This economic and business success is transformed into a green light indicating that something good is going to happen, that this person has been predestined for the salvation of his soul, momentarily managing to silence his unconscious doubts. However, if economic success shows him his saving predestination, economic failure and poverty will be viewed with fear and distrust, coming to despise the needy for being a being not predestined by Providence. While the certainty of salvation, according to Luther, results from a feeling of fullness, for Calvin the certainty of salvation is obtained through action.

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Calvin’s physical complexion differs markedly from Luther’s. If we look at the first, we will see a thin subject, thin-faced, inexhaustible, tireless, in the task of proclaiming his faith. Luther appears more robust, surely slower movements and less agility.

Speaking of Calvin, the Protestant Frederick Hoffet said:

Incessantly tormented by the certainty about his salvation, the Calvinistic Christian will display in the service of God, an activity that can calm his torment. The slightest weakness appears to him as a disturbing sign, because laziness, as we have already seen, is for Calvin an unequivocal proof of perdition. This fear of being counted among the condemned, if he does not prove with his work that he has been chosen, has marked the character of the Protestant. So Calvinism drives man to work, not only because of the moral qualities that he develops in him, but also because of a remarkable psychological mechanism that keeps him in an eminently energy-producing tension. (Hoffet, 1951, p. 78)

The 16th century was characterized by constant fighting, which divided Europe into two camps. The new beliefs litigated to prevail over the old ones: national liberty against despotism, nobility against the unity of the State embodied in the persons of princes, and the parties fought violently. The historian William Oncken reminds us that the 16th century gave rise to religious reformers such as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox; Kings like Carlos V, Francisco I, Felipe II, Isabel, Enrique II; generals like Colonna, Francisco de Guisa, Coligny, Alejandro de Parma, Mauricio de Nassau; statesmen such as Granvella, William of Orange, the Cardinal of Lorraine, Catherine de Medici; writers like Montaigne, Rabelais, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Ariosto, Tasso ...

The greatest interest was in the religious revolution, there was a great desire for profound changes, which explains the speed with which the Reformation initiated by Martin Luther spread through Germany. These new ideas spread to neighboring towns, especially in central and northern Europe. In France it was the more prosperous social classes that embraced these new ideas, and the clergy had become greatly corrupted. Under the sovereignty of Philip the Fair, an alliance was formed between France and the Holy See, moving the Roman Curia to French soil. What prepared France for the Reformation was humanism, which replaced the dialectic of the scholastics with the thoughts of the Greek philosophers, and opposed medieval asceticism. He created doubts, questioning the interpretation of biblical texts. The critical spirit of humanism pierced religious traditions, and it was a serious blow. The pomp of the

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canonical hierarchy, and the luxury of the prelates, were questioned. Francisco I saw the monarchy and its absolute power threatened, which could be detrimental to the unity of the State, for which, he persecuted the reformers by burning many of them at the stake in 1525.

The University of Bourges in which he studied Juan Calvin, was the center of French Protestantism. Calvino was raised in the midst of a dogmatic, rude, intolerant, and austere climate, conditions he inherited from his father, for whom he did not profess great affection. He was a lonely child, without friends, with a great desire to know. Influenced by the anti-Catholic character of a German professor named Melchior Volmar, Calvino plunged into humanism. This produced a change in his Catholic convictions, later denying them. As a reformer, he was the only one to order and systematize for the first time, the doctrines of the Reformation, rejecting the ecclesiastical tradition. His government in Geneva was based on hatred, intolerance, authoritarianism, fear, espionage, betrayal, persecution, religious fanaticism. Calvin broke into independent secular power, launching excommunication, banishing his opponents. The desire to create a “State of God” on earth prevented him from distancing himself between religious aspects and private, public, civil and political life, trying to unify the public and municipal administration, the legal and the administrative, the secular, to the religious.

Oncken states that:

the bases on which the administration and criminal law rested were rigorous, extraordinarily rigorous. Prison, torture, capital punishment were applied to relatively minor crimes, especially those that violated morality or the name of God. In the space of four years, among the 15,000 inhabitants of Geneva at that time, between 800 and 900 prisons had been verified, 76 exile decrees had been published and 58 death sentences were issued, of which many were applied to those on whom only a mere suspicion weighed, despite having been subjected to the most cruel torments. If we calculate that the number of adult men amounted to 5,000, we will find that in that period of time one sixth of the Genevan citizens were imprisoned and the thirty-seventh exiled, or taken to the scaffold; a proportion similar to that offered by the period of the Terror of the French Republic. The most persecuted crimes were witchcraft and the “manufacture of the plague” - it refers to the plague from 1542 to 1543 -. In three months during the year 1545, thirty-four people accused of these crimes were executed, not counting the unfortunate ones who died in prison or in torment or who voluntarily killed themselves. In this regard, we must mention the beheading of Jacobo Gruet in 1547, for being the author of a pamphlet against a French preacher and for certain manifestations against

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the reforming doctrines. Calvino celebrated having been the promoter of these abuses and thus on July 14, 1547 he wrote to a friend of his: (Bonnet, I, 212): Il and in a (GRUET) qui est en danger de payer un escot good chier; je ne scay si la vie n’y demeurera point, Il semble advis aux jeunes gens que je les presse trop. Especially if the bride is not tenuous in appearance, it is seroit pitié. (Oncken, 1894, p. 79)10

Max Weber showed that modern Western capitalism began in the Reformation period and that it had its representatives among the peasants, and in the middle and lower classes of the cities. The craving compulsion for work was an important psychological characteristic of later Calvinism. He further pointed out the religious meaning of the word profession, [beruf] from German. The word concentrates the belief of a mission imposed by God. This reality only occurs within Protestant thought, Catholic peoples lack that religious content. In the towns where Catholicism predominates, the profession is not related to divine concepts. It is precisely in the Lutheran tradition where work is first linked to a divine mission. The concept of duty is a “profession” for the Protestant. “It seems that the Lutheran translation of the Bible is where it appears for the first time used in our current sense.” This ethical-religious concept of the profession spread to all Protestant creeds. (Weber, n.d., p. 49)

Going back to the 16th century, to the Reformation period; to understand how two totally different thoughts arose as a result of the interpretations that were made of the same religious text which have had great consequences in the future life until today, both in the nations modeled by Catholic ethics, as in the nations modeled by the Protestant ethic. We have historically transmuted the concept of Protestant religious time into a capitalist time that has been structured since the sixteenth century, gradually shedding a religious content while maintaining the same already deformed and secularized anxiogenic impulses, and creating a new, compulsive subject.

In the same way, nineteenth-century biology psychically transmuted contents of a Calvinist religious nature, building with them the theory of the survival of the fittest, based on previous contents of a religious survival of predestination. This biological theory not only shaped the behavior of later

10  In this same work the murder of the French doctor Miguel Servetus is mentioned in detail. Due to a theological controversy about the beliefs about the trinity, Calvin denounced him as a heretic before the Inquisition of Lyon and as proof of them he showed the letters that Servetus had written, abusing trust. He was finally captured and burned on October 27, 1553.

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societies, it was shaped at the same time by unconscious religious forces. The great historical importance of the Reformation period caused profound historical transmutations in the course of subsequent centuries to the present day. When applying psychological knowledge in order to analyze Christian theology, we are surprised by the expansive force that Calvinism produced and which it transmuted into different political discourses that were now unrecognizable for having lost the religious appearance, under rationalizations and later historical manifestations of an imperialist, colonialist nature and racist.

So far as a religion understands that Humanity has been divinely condemned, and that it is also the only true religion - as manifested in the psychological structure of Western monotheism - that it has the only antidote to cure the disease of evil. , and the only leadership to undertake the redemptive mission, and if it does not do so, that curse will fall on its own religious acolytes through negligence, it will then come, with remarkable speed, to impart and impose if necessary its message of manumisor and thus avoid that his acolytes like the rest of humanity, are “lost” in damnation. It will tend to expand remarkably, because it urgently needs to warn Humanity that it is under an unknown danger and that only they know it. They will work tirelessly day and night to achieve it, knocking on doors, walking thousands of miles, traveling to remote places, all in order to avoid condemnation of the “lost” and their own. If, on the contrary, another religion assumes a different interpretation, having no urgency to expand, because it has believed that Humanity is not in imminent danger; or if it is, there are other substitute ways to avoid it, it will not consider this situation as urgent.

The Calvinist ideal was to resurrect the ancient Jewish state. As modern states were formed, this ideal was consciously losing its religious content, manifesting itself under secularized forms, through political expansionism, deforming but preserving certain previous content. The representation of the old Jewish state replaced the new states, imagined by their “conquerors” as new “promised lands.”

This is essential to understand, because those same religious forces have subsequently transmuted producing a later political expansionism, in the nations that adopted it. Therefore we have to analyze the religious psychological structures, in Protestantism, Catholicism, and in the different monotheistic typologies, to understand the later imperialist forces. Colonialism is not only related to the possession of land, racism and slavery, but also to the possession of Humans, their feelings, their bodies, their freedom, oppressing the weaker nations, imposing moral and educational provisions, sexual and religious, plundering the desires of the weakest.

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Different theological approaches are vital to understanding the psychological structure and expansionist scope of monotheistic religions, and their relationship to imperialism. In the same way, Catholicism and Protestantism give importance to faith to achieve justification; however, Protestantism gives a fundamental value to justification by faith, and not through “works.” On the other hand, for Catholicism works have a different value, in some situations, they can have a redemptive quality by themselves, in such a way that Humanity can do something for itself to save itself. In such a case many people throughout the world will be able to safeguard themselves from hell, even though no one has ever warned them about damnation, and messianic salvation.

If this is so, if it is possible to “save oneself” through works without resorting to faith, then the action of going and announcing Christian redemption will not be so urgent, and therefore religious expansionism will be less, it will have less force, will lose some importance since Humanity will be able to save itself through its own actions, doing “well”. In Protestantism it is not so. The subject cannot escape his condemnation for “good” works, but only for faith, which becomes the vehicle of works. These differences, although they seem simple, change an entire psychological structure. This new religious interpretation gave a tremendous expansive impulse to Protestantism, and later to the political system of the nations that were modeled by it.

For the Protestant religion, all human beings without exception are born condemned, even those who have not had the opportunity to hear the redemptive message. Therefore it is urgent the need to go and warn them that they must accept the Protestant Christian faith to escape eternal torments, since there is no other truth, and another possibility of “salvation” beyond this life. Why waste time and energy traveling and preaching the Protestant faith, if a person in the middle of nowhere, without ever having seen the white man and woman, and without knowing what Christianity is, has the ability to find out for himself redemption itself? Beyond the theological discussions, what is of interest here is the psychological importance that these ideas have had in the centuries after the Reformation, and even today, reaching us historically.

This theological “obligation”, the urgency to go to warn the “lost”, the “ignorant” were ideas that have been transmuted into colonialist politics, bringing the European “superior civilization” into contact with the universal “inferior” peoples in order to “save” them from their “barbarism.” Seen in this way, political colonialism is transformed into a secularized missionary religion.

On the other hand, when theologically “condemning” nations that never heard of Christianity and Europe, some important characteristics will not be taken into account, that is, certain knowledge that Europe may have learned

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from these nations. They are supposed to have been excluded because they are “idolatrous” peoples, and there can be nothing in them that is considered worthy of being received. The society “condemned” by theology, becomes the society “savage” for the political system that was nursed by these religious forces. John Burgess, who was Theodore Roosevelt’s law professor, develops the concept of the civilizing mission:

Finally, from the evident mission of the Teutonic nations, we must draw the conclusion that interference in the affairs of the not totally barbarian populations, who have made certain progress on the path of state organization, but who show themselves incapable of solving the problem of political civilization in a relatively comprehensive way is a justified policy. No one can doubt that the interest of world civilization, law and order and the authentic freedom that is the fruit of the latter should reign everywhere on the globe.

The influence of the aforementioned professor is manifested in the following statements by Roosevelt shortly before ascending to the presidency:

Barbarism does not and cannot have a place in a civilized world. Our duty to the people living in barbarism requires that we free them from their chains and we can achieve that goal only if we destroy barbarism itself. The missionary, the merchant, and the soldier each play a certain role in this work of destruction and in the subsequent elevation of the people. (Weinberg, 1968, p. 399)

From my perspective, in this case, the political discourse reveals the unconscious action of the transmutation of the primitive theological content into current political content, but keeping intact some theological elements in politics, and political elements in the theological, which are already unrecognizable as theological due to the deformation that this constant succession of transmutations underwent over time. Expressions such as “Temple of justice”, referring to the judicial apparatus, or protocol forms such as Lord most excellent, most eminent, excellence, most illustrious, supereminent, are expressions that contain religious elements secularized by transmutation. In the American example we analyze the analogy between Protestant religion and politics, as a product of the evolution of historical transmutations.

1. Just as there is a divine MISSION through expansionist evangelization, there is a regenerative and imperialist political MISSION.

118 Eurocentrism monotheism and the epistemology of decolonization

2. In the same way that there is a people “chosen” to carry out the mission of converting the “pagans”, that is, the Christian Church, there is also a nation chosen to carry out that mission: redemptive, namely, the U.S. 3. The evident mission of the American nation is to civilize, order, and liberate humanity. In the same way, the mission of the Church consists of civilizing, ordering and liberating. 4. “Uncivil” nations are incapable of governing themselves. The “savage”, lacking in religious knowledge, is unable to progress on his own. 5. The United States is the people “chosen” by Providence, and therefore must intervene in the “uncivil” nations as “a good neighbor”, or as international police. The church must intervene in the “savage” nations seeking the conversion of the “pagans” to Christianity. 6. The US imperialist policy is justified as a “protective” mission and guide for nations that cannot govern themselves. The Christian Church is justified as a redemptive mission, seeking the “salvation of souls.” 7. The American nation has the political mission of liberating the “uncivil” nations. The Church has the divine mission of liberating the “savage” cultures”. 8. The American nation must reign politically on Earth, in such a way that the Earth “is filled with the knowledge of the glory of God” 9. The American nation conquered a “promised land” beyond the Atlantic Ocean and must destroy the peoples “Savages” who inhabit it for the good of Humanity, freeing the world from the disgrace of idolatry. 10. The American nation - in the same way as the other colonial powers - as the new “spiritual Israel” dislodged the “pagan” nations that were in our continent, obeying this command:

When the Lord your God has brought you into the land where you are going to enter to possess it and has driven many nations before you: the Hittites, the Gergesees, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites ...

11. The missionary, the merchant, and the soldier play that destructive role, and the elevation of the American empire. All of them complement and need each other, because, “just as in a body we have many members, not all the members have the same function.” 12. The American nation will provisionally reign over all the nations of the Earth, in the same way, the Christian Church will reign eternally.

119 Eurocentrism monotheism and the epistemology of decolonization

To a certain extent, Christianity, and in a broad sense monotheism, believes in the idea of what we can call cosmic warmongering, that is, a constant “war” against invisible forces before which it is necessary to keep a constant state of alert. In a sense these religions symbolically represent a great army that is constantly on the alert and ready to rise up in war; a “spiritual” war against these armies of darkness, a “holy war” against invisible beings who desire our destruction (Ephesians 6: 10-17).

This war against the invisible powers, has “descended” from the celestial regions to Earth, to transfer the combat from heaven to a material battlefield where cosmic enemies, incorporeal and immortal, are temporarily replaced by other mortal enemies. God no longer destroys his enemies as he did in biblical times, either through angels, fire, through earthquakes or by a supernatural universal flood, now he has to do it through the hand of his faithful, through its own vigilantes, since Providence no longer responds to portentous forms of justice.

The American empire represents a refuge for Christianity and especially for expansionist Protestantism. It is precisely there where the main movements and denominations have their headquarters, their large television networks, and their congregations. Political and imperialist expansionism is closely linked to religious expansionism.

The constant struggle and the “cosmic” war, against the celestial enemies, was transmuted under other substitute forms of political power, through bloody wars to achieve power, geophagy, colonialism, crossing oceans, and “conquering” new “lands. promised”. In the same way that Moses crossed the Red Sea, burying the wicked armies of Pharaoh, the colonial empires crossed the oceans to reach their “promised lands”, annihilate its inhabitants, and settle there. The expansive European and American colonial forces have been impelled by religious forces transmuted under political expressions. This religious message of redemption takes other substitute forms of power and submission, transforming itself into combative and universal ideas. God is the God of armies, destined to defeat heretics (1: Samuel 1: 3. Victorious warrior Zephaniah 3:17. Warrior, man of war, who will launch a battle cry against his enemies. Isaiah 42:13).