“When they came they had the bible and we had the land. Then they told us to close our eyes and pray, when we opened them they had the land and we had the bible”

Evangelical Christianity is sweeping Latin America and it comes straight from the North. (hmmm)

To criticise such an influential institution in our society is risky, but the need to challenge the authority of all Christian churches overrides the fear of backlash in the community. It’s important to highlight to the reader that the writer is of no religious affiliation and therefore has no interest in talking down a religion and bigging up another.

When Christianity reached the shores of Latin America 5 centuries ago, the land and the people of the continent were enjoying a paradise – like civilization, similar to the one that is preached by Christians when they talk about the “paradise on earth that is to come”. The Spanish colonizers took advantage of the warm welcome of the indigenous people and literally approached them with the bible in one hand and a gun in the other.

It has been a long time since that but Christianity has become the most influential institution in Latin America. Our indigenous ancestors worshipped the sun; this in our modern society would be called blasphemy. But does it not make more sense to worship the very thing that actually gives us life on this planet?

Although the Spanish used their powerful weapons to make the natives submit to them and their religious beliefs, they did resist it in every way they could. They pretended that they accepted the Christian god while still worshipping their own gods in secret. 70 million indigenous people were wiped out by the children of this violent god.

There has not been much change; the Latin American masses are still controlled by the disease of Christianity. Evangelical Christians are a fast growing religious fundamental sect that is invading the poorest areas of Latin America. They preach a wrathful, violent, homophobic and even racist god. They also teach people to submit to the governments because they have been selected by god. This is no coincidence, there is a clear scheme to control the masses and what other way to do it but by scaring them into believing that all they have to do to get into heaven is to behave themselves and not use their own logic and intellect because god only accepts those fully submitted and devoted to him and only him.

If you study history closely you will gather that Jesus was in fact a revolutionary. He struggled to liberate the poor from their ignorance and mental chains imposed by those in power. Like most radical revolutionaries he was persecuted and murdered for speaking out for the people. Jesus was not a Christian and did not believe in the bible or in churches, he believed in freedom from mental and spiritual slavery. That is what each and every one of us must strive for, total freedom from the chains of our oppressor.

Amen