The missionaries/soldiers destroyed some of the sacred groves. That was the idea that made me shudder and led me to design the next online course I'm offering. While it became a common global story of how Christianity, linked with variations of the Empire, engaged in conquest and conversion around the world, it is an often forgotten story in the earlier Christianization of Europe. And it has become a key part of the, "how did we get here" story: Europeans colonized other countries in the 17th century because they themselves had been colonized and Christianized.
Of course, the story is far more complex than that. And we need to be careful to recognize that this is not a Christian phenomenon. Many religious traditions have been caught up in this pattern.
Because so many students have asked me more questions about the Christianization of Europe, I am offering a course on some of the complexities of the transition from 'indigenous' Europe to Christianity.
One of the scholars whose work I've found particularly helpful as I've been doing the research for this course has been Prof Carole Cusack, who teaches religion at the University of Sydney, in Australia. She is part of a growing set of historians, religious scholars, and others who have been shifting away from the term "pagan" and "pre-Christian" (both of which are terms that inherently center Christianity as 'the event/movement' worth paying attention to and instead using the term 'indigenous European' and 'local traditions'. Even those terms are a bit problematic.
So I was excited when she offered to join me on this podcast, which is now available for you to listen to!
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