Excerpt from "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus"

"For almost five centuries, Holmberg's Mistake--the supposition that Native Americans lived in an eternal, unhistoried state--held sway in scholarly work, and from there fanned out to high school textbooks, Hollywood movies, newspaper articles, environmental campaigns, romantic adventure books, and silk-screened T-shirts. It existed in many forms and was embraced both by those who hated Indians and those who admired them. Holmberg's Mistake explained the colonists' view of most Indians as incurably vicious barbarians; its mirror image was the dreamy stereotype of the Indian as a Noble Savage. Positive or negative, in both images Indians lacked what social scientists call agency --they were not actors in their own right, but recipients of whatever windfalls and disasters happenstance put in their way. 

The Noble Savage dates back as far as the first full-blown ethnography of American indigenous peoples, Bartolome de Las Casas's Apologetica Historia Sumaria , written mainly in the 1530s. Las Casas, a conquistador who repented of his actions and became a priest, spent the second half of his long life opposing European cruelty in the Americas. To his way of thinking, Indians were natural creatures who dwelt, gentle as cows, they had been quietly waiting--waiting for millenia--for Christian instruction. Las Casas's contemporary, the Italian commentator Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, shared these views. Indians, he wrote (I quote the English translation from 1556), 'lyve in that goulden world of whiche owlde writers speake so much,' existing 'simplye and innocentlye without inforcement of lawes.' 

In our day, beliefs about Indians' inherent simplicity and innocence refer mainly to their putative lack of impact on the environment. This notion dates back at least to Henry David Thoreau, who spent much time seeking 'Indian wisdom,' an indigenous way of thought that supposedly did not encompass measuring or categorizing, which he viewed as the evils that allowed human beings to change Nature. Thoreau's ideas continue to be influential. In the wake of the first Earth Day in 1970, a group named Keep America Beautiful, Inc., put up billboards that portrayed a Cherokee actor named Iron Eyes Cody quietly weeping over polluted land. The campaign was enormously successful. For almost a decade the image of the crying Indian appeared around the world. Yet though Indians here were playing a heroic role, the advertisement still embodied Holmberg's Mistake, for it implicitly depicted Indians as people who never changed their environment from its original wild state. Because history is change, they were people without history. 

Las Casas's anti-Spanish views met with such harsh attacks that he instructed his executors to publish the Apologetica Historia forty years after his death (he died in 1566). In fact, the book did not appear in complete form until 1909. As the delay suggests, polemics for the Noble Savage tended to meet with little sympathy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Emblematic was the U.S. historian George Bancroft, dean of his profession, who argued in 1834 that before Europeans arrived North America was 'an unproductive waste...Its only inhabitants were a few scattered tribes of feeble barbarians, destitute of commerce and of political connection.' Like Las Casas, Bancroft believed that Indians had existed in societies without change--except that Bancroft regarded this timelessness as an indication of sloth, not innocence. 

In different forms Bancroft's characterization was carried into the next century. Writing in 1934, Alfred L. Kroeber, one of the founders of American anthropology, theorized that the Indians in eastern North America could not develop--could have no history--because their lives consisted of 'warfare that was insane, unending, continuously attritional.' Escaping the cycle of conflict was 'well-nigh impossible,' he believed. 'The group that tried to shift its values from war to peace was almost certainly doomed to early extinction.' Kroeber conceded that Indians took time out from fighting to grow crops, but insisted that agriculture 'was not basic to life in the East; it was an auxiliary, in a sense a luxury.' As a result, 'Ninety-nine per cent or more of what [land] might have been developed remained virgin.'

Four decades later, Samuel Eliot Morison, twice a Pulitzer Prize winner, closed his two-volume European Discovery of America with the succinct claim that Indians had created no lasting monuments or institutions. Imprisoned in changeless wilderness, they were 'pagans expecting short and brutish lives, void of any hope for the future.' Native people's 'chief function in history,' the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton, proclaimed in 1965, 'is to show to the present an image of the past from which by history it has escaped.' 

Textbooks reflected academic beliefs faithfully. In a survey of U.S. history schoolbooks, the writer Frances Fitzgerald concluded that the characterization of Indians had moved, 'if anything, resolutely backward' between the 1840s and the 1940s. Earlier writers thought of Indians as important, though uncivilized, later books froze them into a formula: 'lazy, childlike, and cruel.' A main textbook of the 1940s devoted only a 'few paragraphs' to Indians, she wrote, 'of which the last is headed 'The Indians Were Backward.' 

These views, though less common today, continue to appear. The 1987 edition of American History: A Survey, a standard high school textbook by three centuries--centuries in which human races were evolving, forming communities, and building the beginnings of national civilizations in Africa, Asia, and Europe--the continents we know as the Americas stood empty of mankind and its works.' The story of Europeans in the New World, the book informed students, 'is the story of the creation of civilization where none existed.'

It is always easy for those living in the present to feel superior to those who lived in the past. Alfred W. Crosby, a University of Texas historian, noted that many of the researchers who embraced Holmberg's Mistake lived in an era when the driving force of events seemed to be great leaders of European descent and when white societies appeared to be overwhelming nonwhite societies everywhere. Throughout all of the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, nationalism was ascendant, and historians identified history with nations, rather than with cultures, religions, or ways of life. But the Second World War taught the West that non-Westerners--the Japanese, in this instance--were capable of swift societal change. The rapid disintegration of European colonial empires further adumbrated the point. Crosby likened the effects of these events on social scientists to those on astronomers from 'the discovery that the faint smudges seen between stars on the Milky way were really distant galaxies.'

Meanwhile, new disciplines and new technologies were creating new ways to examine the past. Demography, climatology, epidemiology, economics, botany, and palynology (pollen analysis); molecular and evolutionary biology; carbon-14 dating, ice-core sampling, satellite photography, and soil assays; genetic microsatellite analysis and virtual 3-D fly-throughs--a torrent of novel perspectives and techniques cascaded into use. and when these were employed, the idea that the only human occupants of one-third of the earth's surface had changed little for thousands of years begun to seem implausible. To be sure, some researchers have vigorously attacked the new findings as wild exaggerations. ('We have simply replaced the old myth [of untouched wilderness] with a new one,' scoffed geographer Thomas Vale, 'the myth of the humanized landscape.') But after several decades of discovery and debate, a new picture of the Americas and their original inhabitants is emerging. 

Advertisements still celebrate nomadic, ecologically pure Indians on horseback chasing bison in the Great Plains of North America, but at the time of Columbus the great majority of Native Americans could be found south of the Rio Grande. They were not nomadic, but built up and lived in some of the world's biggest and most opulent cities. Far from being dependent on big-game hunting, most Indians live on farms. Others subsisted on fish and shellfish. As for the horses, they were from Europe; except for llamas in the Andes, the Western Hemisphere had no beasts of burden. In other words, the Americas were immeasurably busier, more diverse, and more populous than researchers had previously imagined.

And older, too."

- Charles C. Mann

from: http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/1400032059/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371956044&sr=1-1&keywords=1491

Love his writing...

"The days and hours began to speak now with a clearer tongue. Each experience had a sharp meaning of its own.

  There was the breathlessly anxious fun of chasing and catching flitting fireflies on drowsy summer nights.

There was the drenching hospitality in the pervading smell of sweet magnolias.

  There was the aura of limitless freedom distilled from the rolling sweep of tall green grass swaying and glinting in the wind and sun.

There was the feeling of impersonal plenty when I saw a boll of cotton whose cup had spilt over and straggled its white fleece toward the earth.

  There was the pitying chuckle that bubbled in my throat when I watched a fat duck waddle across the back yard.

There was the suspense I felt when I heard the taut, sharp song of a yellow-black bee hovering nervously but patiently above a white rose. 

  There was the drugged, sleepy feeling that came from sipping glasses of milk, drinking them slowly so that they would last a long time, and drinking enough for the first time in my life. 

There was the bitter amusement of going into town with Granny and watching the baffled stares of white folks who saw an old white woman leading two undeniably Negro boys in and out of stores on Capitol Street.

  There was the slow, fresh, saliva-stimulating smell of cooking cotton seeds.

There was the excitement of fishing in muddy country creeks with my grandpa on cloudy days.

  There was the fear and awe I felt when Grandpa took me to a sawmill to watch the giant whirring steel blades whine and scream as they bit into wet green logs.

There was the puckery taste that almost made me cry when I ate my first half-ripe persimmon.

  There was the greedy joy in the tangy taste of wild hickory nuts.

There was the dry hot summer morning when I scratched my bare arms on briers while picking blackberries and came home with my fingers and lips stained black with sweet berry juice.

  There was the relish of eating my first fried fish sandwich, nibbling at it slowly and hoping that I would never eat it up. 

There was the morning when I thought I would fall dead from fear after I had stepped with my bare feet upon a bright little green garden snake.

  And there were the long, slow, drowsy days and nights of drizzling rain..."

- Richard Wright 

from: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Boy-P-S-Richard-Wright/dp/0061443085/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371752320&sr=8-1&keywords=black+boy

Genesis 2:18-20 - "A Fit Helper Among the Animals?"

"18 Yahweh God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone. I will make for him a helper suitable for him.'

19 So Yahweh God formed from the dust of the ground every kind of wild animal of the field, every kind of bird of the sky, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call each; whatever the man called each living creature, that was to be its name.

20 The man gave names to all cattle, birds of the sky, and to every wild animal of the field; but by Adam no helper suitable for him was found. 

18 Everything thus far in Genesis that has been scrutinized by God has been given a positive assessment. Every situation has come through as either good or very good. For the first time we encounter something that is not good: man's lack of a corresponding companion. The skies without the luminaries and birds are incomplete. The seas without the fish are incomplete. Without mankind and land animals the earth is incomplete. As a matter of fact, every phenomenon in Genesis 1-2, God excepted, is in need of something else to complete it and to enable it to function. 

In this particular case we should note that it is God who makes the judgment about the unsuitability of man's aloneness. Man is not consulted for his thoughts on the matter. At no point does the man offer to God any grievance about his current circumstances. 

God is not only evaluator; he is also rectifier. He is not long on analysis but short on solution. His remedy is to provide a helper suitable for him  (i.e., for man). The last part of v. 18 reads literally, 'I will make for him a helper as in front of him (or according to what is in front of him).' This last phrase, 'as in front of him (or according to what is in front of him)' (kenegdo), occurs only here and in v. 20. It suggests that what God creates for Adam will correspond to him. Thus the new creation will be neither superior nor an inferior, but an equal. The creation of this helper will form one-half of a polarity, and will be to man as the south pole is to the north pole. 

This new creation which man needs is called a helper (ezer), which is masculine in gender, though here it is a term for a woman. Any suggestion that this particular word denotes one who has only an associate or subordinate status to a senior member is refuted by the fact that most frequently this same word describes Yahweh's relationship to Israel. He is Israel's help(er) because he is the stronger one (see, e.g., Exodus 18:4; Deuteronomy 33:7, 26, 29; Psalm 33:20; 115:9-11; 124:8; 146:5; etc). The LXX translation of ezer by boethos offers further support for this nuance. The LXX uses boethos forty-five times to translate several Hebrew words, and except for three occurrences (1 Chronicles 12:18; Exekiel 12:14; Nahum 3:9) the word refers to help 'from a stronger one, in no way needing help.' The word is used less frequently for human helpers, and even here, the helper is one appealed to because of superior military strength (Isaiah 30:5) or superior size (Psalm 121:1). The verb behind ezer is azar, which means 'succor,' 'save from danger,' 'deliver from death.' The woman in Genesis 2 delivers or saves man from his solitude. 

19 Yahweh parades before Adam members of the animal world so that the man may confer on each its name. This is the first fulfillment of God's directive to humankind in 1:26, 28 to exercise authority over the animal, the fish, and the fowl. For to confer a name (qara' le) is to speak from a position of authority and sovereignty.

Many commentators have maintained that in this verse one finds a classic illustration of a major conflict between the sequence of creation in 1:1-2:4a and that in 2:4bff. In one (1:24-25) animals precede man. In the other (2:19) animals come after man. It is possible to translate formed  as 'had formed'  (so NIV). One can, however, retain the traditional translation and still avoid a contradiction. This verse does not imply that this was God's first creation of animals. Rather, it refers to the creation of a special group of animals brought before Adam for naming. 

20 The animals are creatures but they are not helpers. Adam must look elsewhere for his complement. Here God is creator, but not namer. In the preceding chapter it was God who conferred names on 'light' (1:5), 'darkness' (1:5), 'the vault' (1:8), 'dry land' (1:10). There 'called/named' is expressed by the formula qara' le, the same formula used in 2:19, 20, though v. 20 adds the plural noun semot, 'names, as the direct object of wayyiqra'. It is clear that when God confers a name on something he does so in his capacity of sovereign ruler, but qara' le does not by itself suggest superiority. So it is stretching the point to suggest that in naming the animals man exercises sovereignty over them. For that to be clear, one would need a parallel to the 'subdue' and 'have dominion over' of ch. 1. In naming the animals, man exercises God-given initiative. God gives to him the task of assigning labels to the only other living creatures who join him in the garden. We are told that the man obediently followed through with the assignment, but we are not told the names he conferred on each creature. In acting as name-giver, the man exhibits a quality of discernment."

-Victor P. Hamilton

from: http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-International-Commentary-Testament-Series/dp/0802825214/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371524536&sr=8-1&keywords=the+new+international+commentary+on+the+new+testament+the+book+of+genesis

"Deism In America"

"Deism existed as a major religious movement for only a few decades. Yet it played its role in shaping history--for most of the fathers of the United States were deists, and both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution shows its impact. 

Thomas Jefferson, for example, was well-read in such authors as Bolingbroke, Hume and Voltaire, and indeed described himself as an Epicurean, after the ancient philosopher who denied the reality of any supernatural world, including the traditional gods and religious ceremonies. And indeed, Jefferson shared the deistic belief that true Christianity is about rational morality, rather than outmoded metaphysics. In 1804, while president of the United States, he found the time to publish The Life and Morals of Jesus , also known as the 'Jefferson Bible' since it was an edited version of the Gospels consisting of ethics and parables with all the miracles removed. In 1787, he wrote in a letter to his nephew:

Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable not for the rightness but uprightness of the decision. 

It was Jefferson who, in 1776, drafted the Declaration of Independence, together with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, when not flying kites in thunderstorms, was a prominent Freemason [http://www.whatisfreemasonry.com/], and a friend of Thomas Paine, and in a letter written in 1790, the year of his death, expressed his admiration for the morality taught by Christ but his doubts regarding his divinity. Adams was a deist too, and was particularly opposed to the notion of church tradition and authority; he and Jefferson both rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Indeed, Jefferson hoped that unitarianism would, within a generation, become the universal religion of the United States."

- Jonathan Hill

from: http://www.amazon.com/Faith-Age-Reason-Enlightenment-Histories/dp/0745951309/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371272311&sr=8-1&keywords=faith+in+the+age+of+reason

"Because, unlike Christian theism, there is no orthodox deism, each deist is free to use reason, intuition, tradition, or whatever squares with his or her view of ultimate reality. Deists' core commitments will thus reflect their personal passions or, in common parlance, what turns them on--the flourishing of their individual personal life, their family life, public life. Early deists such as Franklin and Jefferson took public welfare as a key commitment. Others like Paine combined their commitment to public life with a passion for their own personal freedom (and the freedom of everyone in the commonwealth) from the dictates of religion. But the more a deist becomes divorced from allegiance to a personal God, the less religious mores and traditional goals characterize their core commitments. As a result, societies themselves become more pluralistic and less socially cohesive. Thus the tie between deism as a worldview and freedom as a personal and social goal inspired the bloody violence of the French Revolution and spurred on the development of democracy and eventually the vast cultural diversification of American society. Each year the Western World, especially America, becomes more pluralistic than the year before."

- James W. Sire

from: http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Next-Door-Worldview-Catalog/dp/0830838503/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371272917&sr=1-1&keywords=the+universe+next+door+5th+edition

There is a lot to say about how much we have been and still are affected by the beliefs of the Founding Fathers, and the thinkers that influenced them which I won't go into quite yet (it would require a much longer essay than I want to get into at this time). I would pose, however, that much of it is a lot more negative and insidious than many people would like to admit. As Christians, it is extremely important that we pay attention to history and the worldviews that we are surrounded by in our respective countries. It seems like a lot of people I've come into contact with spend more time looking at the problems with other countries' religions and worldviews rather than our own. Maybe it's easier to see the issues and holes in beliefs outside of our own societies? Either way, where we grow up, the history that we do or do not pay attention to, all affects us and how we think, and most importantly, how we view God. In much of the reading and studying I've been doing over the passed couple of years, I keep getting more glimpses of how Deism is still alive and well in our society, and how it damages peoples' relationship with Jesus. I would encourage everyone to examine their own beliefs, their views of God carefully and compare them to what the Bible says about Him. I know that the Holy Spirit has done a lot of work in my own life over the passed couple of years to show me where I've swallowed the pervading lies in this society about who God is and about His character. And in doing that, I've seen where Deism has actually affected my mind and how I relate to God too. From experience, I have to say it's much better seeing a lie for what it is, than choosing to hold onto it to remain comfortable. 

What Is Your Worldview? (8 Questions to Consider)

"If a worldview can be expressed in propositions, what might they be? Essentially, they are our basic, rock-bottom answers to the following seven questions:

1. What is prime reality--the really real?  To this we might answer: God, or the gods, or the material cosmos. Our answer here is the most fundamental. It sets the boundaries for the answers that can consistently be given to the other six questions. This will become clear as we move from worldview to worldview in the chapters that follow.

2. What is the nature of external reality, that is, the world around us?  Here our answers point to whether we see the world as created or autonomous, as chaotic or orderly, as matter or spirit; or whether we emphasize our subjective, personal relationship to the world or its objectivity apart from us. 

3. What is a human being? To this we might answer: a highly complex machine, a sleeping god, a person made in the image of God, a naked ape. 

4. What happens to a person at death? Here we might reply: personal extinction, or transformation to a higher state, or reincarnation, or departure to a shadowy existence on 'the other side.'

5. Why is it possible to know anything at all?  Sample answers include the idea that we are made in the image of an all-knowing God or that consciousness and rationality developed under the contingencies of survival in a long process of evolution. 

6. How do we know what is right and wrong? Again, perhaps we are made in the image of a God whose character is good, or right and wrong are determined by human choice alone or what feels good, or the notions simply developed under an impetus toward cultural or physical survival. 

7. What is the meaning of human history? To this we might answer: to realize the purposes of God or the gods, to make a paradise on earth, to prepare a people for a life in community with a loving and holy God, and so forth. 

Earlier editions of this book listed only seven questions, but these do not adequately encompass the notion of a worldview as a commitment or a matter of the heart. So I am adding the following questions to flesh out the personal implications of the rather intellectual and abstract character of the first seven questions. 

8. What personal, life-orienting core commitments are consistent with this worldview? Within any given worldview, core commitments may vary widely. For example, a Christian might say, to fulfill the will of God, or to seek first the kingdom of God, or to obey God and enjoy him forever, or to be devoted to knowing God or loving God. Each will lead to a somewhat different grasp of the Christian worldview. A naturalist might say to realize their personal potential for experiencing life, or to do as much good as they can for others, or to live in a world of inner peace in a world of social diversity and conflict. The question and its answers reveal the variety of ways the intellectual commitments are worked out in individual lives. They recognize the importance of seeing one's own worldview not only within the context of vastly different worldviews but within the community of one's own worldview. Each person, in other words, ends up having his or her own take on reality. And though it is extremely useful to identify the nature of a few (say, five to ten) generic worldviews, it is necessary in identifying and assessing one's own worldview to pay attention to its unique features, the most important of which is one's own answer to this eighth question. 

Within various basic worldviews other issues often arise. For example: Who is in charge of this world--God or humans or no one at all? Are we as human beings determined or free? Are we alone the maker of values? Is God really good? Is God personal or impersonal? Or does he, she or it exist at all? 

When stated in such a sequence, these questions boggle the mind. Either the answers are obvious to us and we wonder why anyone would bother to ask such questions, or else we wonder how any of them can be answered with any certainty. If we feel the answers are too obvious to consider, then we have a worldview, but we have no idea that many others do not share it. We should realize that we live in a pluralistic world. What is obvious to us may be 'a lie from hell' to our neighbor next door. If we do not recognize that, we are certainly naive and provincial, and we have much to learn about living in today's world. Alternatively, if we feel that none of the questions can be answered without cheating or committing intellectual suicide, we have already adopted a sort of worldview. The latter is a form of skepticism which in its extreme form leads to nihilism. 

The fact is that we cannot avoid assuming some answers to such questions. We will adopt either one stance or another. Refusing to adopt an explicit worldview will turn out to be itself a worldview, or at least a philosophic position. In short, we are caught. So long as we live, we will live either the examined or the unexamined life. It is the assumption of this book that the examined life is better."

- James W. Sire 

from: http://www.amazon.com/The-Universe-Next-Door-Worldview/dp/0830838503/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369851397&sr=8-1&keywords=the+universe+next+door

Sire, James. The Universe Next Door. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009.

"Religion Poisons Everything"

"In one of his more recent books, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything , the articulate and very interesting atheist and critic of Christianity Christopher Hitchens argues that the entire record of religion--all religion--is toward war, hatred, and strife, whether it is the Protestant-Catholic strife of Belfast in recent decades, or Beirut between peoples of Christian and Muslim heritage, or Belgrade or Baghdad or Bombay. All around the world religion poisons everything. It has to be said that there is some truth to the charge. It is not for nothing that centuries back the Thirty Years' War was at least in substantial measure a war of religion.   

The reason that there is some truth to the charge Hitchen levels is that one of the things that religion does--all religion--is treat some issues as matters of staggering importance. Today the current round of dominant terrorists are Muslims, and undoubtedly they would like to see Islamic culture and faith enjoy a bigger share of the world's financial and cultural pie. But what makes their beliefs crushingly important in their own eyes is their conviction that they represent the mind of God himself. 

Mind you, it has also been shown by Alister McGrath in his book on atheism that if you do not have religion to transcendentalize things, you end up transcendentalizing something else. In other words, the act of making something out to be of transcendental importance is not exclusively a function of religion. It may be a function of human desire to control. In the twentieth century, the powerful movements of Nazism and Stalinism were not religiously driven. Some in the Nazy party laid claim to their reconstruction of Christianity, but the purpose was to domesticate Christianity and harness its energies. In reality, what drove the two movements--Nazism and Stalinsim--were distinct visions of reality: on the one hand, the transcendentalizing of ethnicity, a sense of intrinsic Aryan superiority, a hate-filled blaming of Jews and of the Treaty of Versailles; on the other hand, a transcendentalizing of the state grounded in Marxist social and economic theory. So it is not as if religion poisons 

everything while everything else is good. The century characterized by the greatest bloodshed, the twentieth century, generated most of its violence in movements that were distinctly anti-religious. The world did not lose one-third of the population of Cambodia because of Christianity but because of communism.

Nevertheless, Christianity has had its fanatics. Still, the notion of fanaticism needs to be analyzed. Probably most people think that Christians can be placed on a spectrum between nominalism (Christians in name only) and fanaticism (Christians who are extremely intense about their beliefs and morals). On this scale, we might be most drawn to the middle of the scale, to the nice moderates. The problem is that the scale itself is mischievous. It assumes that Christianity itself is primarily about effort and moral improvement, so that the high-intensity end of the scale is peopled with self-righteous, over-confident, superior, condescending folk who are, at best, terribly off-putting.   

Yet that is not what Christianity is about. Where one sees that Christianity is being lived out in a fashion reasonably faithful to the Bible's emphasis on salvation by grace, on what God has done for us in Christ and not on what we have achieved, it ought to change everything. Tim Keller writes,

     Belief that you are accepted by God by sheer grace is profoundly humbling. The people who are fanatics,

     then, are not so because they are too committed to the gospel, but because they are not committed 

     enough. 

     Think of people you consider fanatical. They're overbearing, self-righteous, opinionated, insensitive, and 

     harsh. Why? It's not because they are too Christian but because they are not Christian enough. They are 

     fanatically zealous and courageous, but they are not fanatically humble, sensitive, loving, empathetic,

     forgiving, or understanding--as Christ was....What strikes us as overly fanatical is actually a failure to be

     fully committed to Christ and his gospel. 

If you really do drink deeply from what we have been seeing in the Bible and see that ultimately our hope is in God's grace, it changes everything. This is why biblical Christianity has always had within its heritage the capacity to challenge and reform itself: it returns to the grace of God. That is why, however ghastly and defenseless the Crusades were, it is the Christian heritage in the West that has apologized for them countless times. After all, Islam took over the Middle East first with equal  bloodthirstiness, and there is no trace in the heritage of Islam of any apology for any of it. 

Thus the slavery that was enacted and developed in the West, in which Christians participated, was also eventually destroyed by Christians who were trying to become more biblical and who challenged the entire wretched enterprise. Thomas Sowell analyzes what took place under Wilberforce and other Christian leaders in Great Britain until first the slave trade across the Atlantic and then eventually slavery itself was abolished in the British Empire. He notes that what drove the abolition movement initially were evangelical Christians determined to put a stop to an evil, and eventually enough public opinion was mobilized over successive generations of government officials that the antislavery movement was pushed further and further to its logical conclusion. 

Despite revisionist arguments advanced to prove that abolitionists had discovered it was more economical to abolish slavery than to maintain it, the realities were very different. For example, when slavery was finally abolished, the British government undertook to pay all the great sugarcane farmers of Jamaica and elsewhere under the British crown the price of the slaves to free them. The promise was for half the national GDP, and they undertook it not because it was going to save them money but because of Christian influence regarding what is right and wrong. That does not justify in the slightest all the wickedness that was done beforehand, but it does remind us that although the Bible can be used in all kinds of shameful ways, it can ground followers of Jesus so deeply in the sheer grace of God that entire ethical systems are transformed. When you come across what the gospel is genuinely about, it is humbling. It does not make people arrogant. It transforms them." 

- D. A. Carson

from: http://www.amazon.com/God-Who-There-Finding-Place/dp/0801013720/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370393681&sr=1-2&keywords=the+god+who+is+there

Carson, D. A. The God Who Is There: Finding Your Place In God's Story. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2010.