Church at fault, not Macdonald

Dear Editor: I refer to the recent discussions regarding Sir John A. Macdonald’s “involvement” in the residential schools scandal and other legislation many people currently find offensive.

It has been stated in his defence that Sir John was “a man of his time.” This is true but I wonder how many people today realize the degree of influence which the church had on the Victorians.

Anybody old enough to have met somebody who spent his prime years in Victorian times cannot fail to be aware how much their lives were shaped by the teachings of the church. My own grandfather (born in 1861) who died when I was 11-years-old, never took any important decisions without first studying the passages in the Bible which he felt to be relevant to the matter in hand and most people in the Victorian era were like-minded.

It is also important to consider the attitude of the church establishment to the Indigenous population. They firstly tried to convert them to Christianity. When that failed because most Indigenous peoples failed to see the relevance of the Christian message to their ancient heritage, the church branded them as “ignorant savages” and decided that they had to be either converted by force or eliminated completely.

This message, promoted by the church hierarchy and reinforced by sermons from the pulpit in local churches of most denominations, were accepted by the Victorians as what was morally right. It had to be right – the Church said so! This is what guided Sir John and his contemporary politicians. They had to wipe out Indigenous culture because the church told them it was what God wanted.

So the villains of the piece were not the politicians of the day but the church leaders fueled by their anger at the refusal of the Indigenous peoples to convert to Christianity and their total failure to even attempt to understand the underlying culture they were dealing with. Brian Butler Penticton