Christianity
See also:
Christianization
Serbian civilians who are being forced to convert to Catholicism by the
Ustaše regime stand in front of a baptismal font in a church in
Glina, July 1941
End of Roman empire
Forced conversion was a major way for the
Christianization of the
Roman Empire. In 392 Emperor
Theodosius I decreed that Christianity was the only legal religion of the Roman Empire, and forbidding pagan practices by law:
It is Our will that all the peoples who are ruled by the administration of Our Clemency shall practice that religion which the divine Peter the Apostle transmitted to the Romans....The rest, whom We adjudge demented and insane, shall sustain the infamy of heretical dogmas, their meeting places shall not receive the name of churches, and they shall be smitten first by divine vengeance and secondly by the retribution of Our own initiative
" (Codex Theodosianus XVI 1.2.).[1]
Medieval era
During the
Saxon Wars,
Charlemagne,
King of the Franks, forcibly Roman Catholicized the
Saxons from their native
Germanic paganism by way of warfare and law upon conquest. Examples include the
Massacre of Verden in 782, during which Charlemagne reportedly had 4,500 captive Saxons massacred upon rebelling against conversion, and the
Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, a law imposed on conquered Saxons in 785 which prescribes death to those that refuse to convert to Christianity.
Pope Innocent III pronounced in 1201 that even if torture and intimidation had been employed in receiving the sacrament, one nevertheless:
...does receive the impress of Christianity and may be forced to observe the Christian Faith as one who expressed a conditional willingness though, absolutely speaking, he was unwilling. ... [For] the grace of Baptism had been received, and they had been
anointed with the sacred oil, and had
participated in the body of the Lord, they might properly be forced to hold to the faith which they had accepted perforce, lest the name of the Lord be blasphemed, and lest they hold in contempt and consider vile the faith they had joined.
[3]
From
The Crusades, by Bernard Hamilton “In 1309 the
Teutonic Order moved its headquarters to Marienburg in Prussia. It had a papal license to wage perpetual war against the pagans and used this to launch annual crusades against
Lithuania. These expeditions were very popular with the nobility of northern Europe: campaigns were held twice a year, in the summer and in the winter when the order laid on special Christmas festivities for visiting crusaders.” “The excuse for men who enjoyed fighting and to lay waste large parts of Lithuania in the name of Christ was removed in 1386 when the
King of Lithuania,
Jagiello, married
Queen Jadwiga of Poland and received Catholic baptism. The two kingdoms were united under Christian rulers and the Teutonic Knights no longer had any justification for crusading against pagans there.”
Spanish Inquisition
After the end of the
Islamic control of Spain, Muslims and Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497.
[After the
Reconquista, so called "
New Christians" were those inhabitants (
Sephardic Jews or
Mudéjar Muslims) during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era who were baptized under coercion and in the face of murder, becoming forced converts from Islam (
Moriscos,
Conversos and
secret Moors) and forced converts from
Judaism (
Conversos,
Crypto-Jews and
Marranos). Then the
Spanish Inquisition targeted primarily forced converts from Judaism who came under suspicion of either continuing to adhere to their old religion or of having fallen back into it. Jewish conversos still resided in Spain and often hiddenly (cryptically) practiced Judaism and were suspected by the "Old Christians" of being
Crypto-Jews. The Spanish Inquisition generated much wealth and income for the church and individual inquisitors by confiscating the property of the persecutees or selling them into slavery. The end of the
Al-Andalus and the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula went hand in hand with the increase of Spanish-Portugal influence in the world, as exemplified in the Christian conquest of the Americas and their aboriginal Indian population. The Ottoman empire, the Netherlands, and the New World absorbed much of the Jewish refugees.
Goa Inquisition
Main article:
Goa Inquisition
Religious persecution took place by the Portuguese in
Goa, India from 16th to the 17th century. The natives of Goa, most of them Hindus were subjected to
severe torture and oppression by the zealous Portuguese rulers and missionaries and forcibly converted to Christianity.
In 1567, the campaign of destroying temples in Bardez met with success. At the end of it 300 Hindu temples were destroyed. Enacting laws, prohibition was laid from December 4, 1567 on rituals of Hindu marriages, sacred thread wearing and cremation. All the persons above 15 years of age were compelled to listen to Christian preaching, failing which they were punished. In 1583, Hindu temples at Assolna and Cuncolim were destroyed through army action. "The fathers of the Church forbade the Hindus under terrible penalties the use of their own sacred books, and prevented them from all exercise of their religion. They destroyed their temples, and so harassed and interfered with the people that they abandoned the city in large numbers, refusing to remain any longer in a place where they had no liberty, and were liable to imprisonment, torture and death if they worshipped after their own fashion the gods of their fathers." wrote Filippo Sassetti, who was in India from 1578 to 1588. An order was issued in June 1684 for suppressing the Konkani language and making it compulsory to speak the Portuguese language. The law provided for dealing toughly with anyone using the local language. Following that law all the non-Christian cultural symbols and the books written in local languages were sought to be destroyed.
Methods such as repressive laws, demolition of temples and mosques, destruction of holy books, fines and the forcible conversion of orphans were used.
Native American boarding schools
The government paid religious societies to provide education to Native American children on reservations. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) founded additional
American Indian boarding schools based on the assimilation model of the
Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
Children were usually immersed in European-American culture through appearance changes with haircuts, were forbidden to speak their native languages, and traditional names were replaced by new European-American names. The experience of the schools was often harsh, especially for the younger children who were separated from their families. In numerous ways, they were encouraged or forced to abandon their Native American identities and cultures.The number of Native American children in the boarding schools reached a peak in the 1970s, with an estimated enrollment of 60,000 in 1973. Especially through investigations of the later twentieth century, there have been many documented cases of sexual, physical and mental abuse occurring at such schools.Since those years, tribal nations have increasingly insisted on community-based schools and have also founded numerous tribally controlled colleges. Community schools have also been supported by the federal government through the BIA and legislation. The largest boarding schools have closed. In some cases, reservations or tribes were too small or poor to support independent schools and still wanted an alternative for their children, especially for high school. By 2007, the number of Native American children in boarding schools had declined to 9,500.
The
Baptist Church of Tripura is alleged to have supplied the
NLFT with arms and financial support and to have encouraged the murder of Hindus, particularly infants, as a means to depopulate the region of all Hindus.In 2009, the Assam Times reported that about fifteen armed
Hmar militants, members of Manmasi National Christian Army, tried to force Hindu residents of Bhuvan Pahar,
Assam to convert to Christianity. A few Christian evangelists in India have been accused of forced conversion of Hindus, and some of them have been for allegedly converting others by force.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forcible_conversion_to_Christianity#Christianity
