CHRISTIANITY AND IMPERIALISM By Robert Halfhill

If you are a liberal, or even a radical, you probably think the Marxist view that religon is a prop to class societies is just another part of an outmoded theory that has never been empirically confirmed. Then you should read the Flashback on page B5 of the Sunday, October 1, 2006 STAR TRIBUNE. The Flashback is about Knute Nelson, the Splendid Viking, who was elected Minnesota Governor in 1892 after he had served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Afterwards, he served in the U.S. Senate from 1895 until his death in 1923. "Providence," Nelson said in connection with the Spanish-American War, "has given the United States the duty of extending Christian civilization. We come as ministering angels, not despots."

I wonder what the inhabitants of the Philippines thought of these American "ministering angels" after the Philippinos had fought for years for independence from Spain when the United States appeared on the scene and fought a three year war to reduce the Philippines to a colonial possession of the United States. During the last year of this war, the United States created the same kind of artificial famine that Stalin would use over three decades later to subdue the Ukraine.

The British writer, Rudyard Kipling called on both racism and Christianity in support of British imperialism when he wrote of "lesser breeds without the law."

People who come from areas where capitalist exploitation is at its rawest and nakedly apparent often do not find Marxism dry and merely theoretical. Franz J. T. Lee was one of the few South African Blacks to win the opportunity for graduate study abroad. He tells of reading DAS CAPITAL while studying for his Ph.D. in Germany, concluding "and I read it like a novel!"