As I research and write my book on the radical Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566), I’m meticulously working my way through all of his writings. I laugh at the assignment I gave myself because the man wrote a lot. This is why it will take a few years for me to finish the book - thanks for your patience!
To help you visualize how much Las Casas wrote, I’m including a picture of the complete set of his works currently sitting in my library. Thanks to a rare bookseller I found in Queens and to a temporary loan from the Rice University library, I have access to the full set (Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas: Obras Completas. 14 vols. Madrid, 1998). It’s 14 volumes. But notice how 11 is divided into two? So it’s more like 15, actually. Histories. Petitions. Scholastic and legal treatises. Letters. And these volumes don’t even include other important primary documents related to Las Casas, like the angry op-eds written by his haters such as Motolinía, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo or Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, or the diary entry of Tomás de la Torre who joined Las Casas on a trans-Atlantic trip that got massively delayed.
Yes, please keep me in your prayers as I carry out this work.
Thankfully, I find Las Casas’ writings very engaging. I recently finished typing up my notes on his first book, titled De unico vocationis modo omnium gentium ad veram religionem (The Only Way To Call All People to the True Religion). It focuses on the proper methods of evangelism. With a critical eye toward the Spanish Christians trying to forcibly convert Native Americans, Las Casas argues that any evangelism of unbelievers should be “delicate, sweet, and tender; persuasive to the understanding and attractive to their [free] will.”
Of course, Las Casas remains trapped within a Christian-superiority complex by believing Christianity to be the one true religion that all Native Americans should convert to. Yet, his vision of faith as something that appeals to reason and respects free will leads him to make several bold arguments against the violence of forced conversion and in respect of Native rights. Countering the Spaniards who argued that war could be used to convert the Indians, Las Casas asks: “Well, in reality, what is war but a communal homicide and larceny against many? …What will we say of the ‘right’ to strip owners, kings, princes, and magistrates of their dominions, dignities, states, offices, jurisdictions, and charges, all of which belong to them by natural right?”
De unico vocationis modo begins as a scholastic work in its style. Las Casas offers citation after citation of Aristotle, Cicero, church fathers like Augustine, canon law, and the Bible to make his case about peaceful evangelism. But later in the book, as Las Casas explicitly turns to the American context, his passionate words leap off the page:
Aren’t these [violent conquests] afflicting the stranger, specifically the indigenous and legitimate lords, who owe us nothing? Isn’t this harming the orphans and the widows - what the divine precept prohibits us from doing? Those who are afflicted and sorrowful, won’t they cry out to God and won’t God hear them?
What I’m Reading
A Philosopher’s Defense of Anger - Q&A with Myisha Cherry
As a former philosophy major, I always have a soft spot in my heart for philosophers who make this field of thought more inclusive and who approach the traditional canon with a fresh perspective. While talking about her book The Case for Rage: Why Anger Is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle, Cherry makes an important distinction between a “Lordean rage” and a narcissistic rage in which an individual is only concerned with their own victimhood.
I’m a big fan of Seneca, but I also think Cherry brings up a fair point here:
Philosophy has been a very élitist, very white-male-dominated field, and with that comes a certain perspective. Take Seneca: he lived in palaces; he only saw anger of one particular type—the anger of the political rulers. I don’t knock that—that’s his perspective—but I wonder what it would have been like for him if he had seen the anger of the peasants. Would his argument look different? The position that I have in philosophy—I grew up poor, I am a Black woman, et cetera—means I have a very different perspective, and very different evidence of what the stuff of anger actually looks like.
Particularly in philosophy, there’s an emphasis on being rational, and anything that doesn’t appear rational is often argued against. Seneca said, “To be angry is to be a madman”—there’s a long tradition of saying that to be entrapped by anger is not to have one’s full rational capacities. I think that’s a very narrow view of what anger is.
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He Unleashed a California Massacre. Should This School Be Named for Him? - Thomas Fuller
For the past four years, the University of California, Hastings College of the Law has been investigating the role of its founder, Serranus Hastings, in one of the darkest, yet least discussed, chapters of the state’s history. Mr. Hastings, one of the wealthiest men in California in that era and the state’s first chief justice, masterminded one set of massacres.
This is a great reported piece on how the founder of Hastings College of the Law in California helped orchestrate a massacre of Native Americans and how descendent communities from both sides are grappling with a very late acknowledgment of this legacy.
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Findings from the 2021 American Values Survey - PRRI Staff
Every year, the Public Religion Research Institute releases its American Values Survey, White evangelical Protestants remain outliers in several categories, and I take a deep breath before reading it. What stood out to me this time? This finding on political violence:
After the violent attacks on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, the prospect of political violence threatening a peaceful transfer of power has become more than an abstract question. As noted above, nearly one in five Americans (18%) agree with the statement “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Republicans (30%) are more likely to agree with this than independents (17%) and Democrats (11%). Among Republicans who most trust far-right news sources, agreement increases to 40%, compared to 32% among those who most trust Fox News and 22% among those who most trust mainstream news sources.
White evangelical Protestants (26%) are the religious group most likely to agree that true American patriots might have to resort to violence in order to save our country, while 23% of those who follow non-Christian religions, 22% of Hispanic Catholics, 19% of white Catholics, 19% of other Christians, 17% of white mainline (non-evangelical) Protestants, 16% of Black Protestants, and 13% of religiously unaffiliated Americans agree.
YIKES.
One of the hallmarks of living in a healthy democracy is people seeking alternatives to political violence. The fact that 18% of Americans believe we “may have to resort to violence in order to save our country” is an extremely disturbing development.
Song I Love
21 Savage - a lot
For whenever I feel like things are “a lot.”
The music video for the song is worth watching. It fleshes out 21 Savage’s message by peeling back the layers of his success and revealing who gets left behind as he takes his seat at the table of wealth and fame.
That's a powerful video. Would never have seen it without you sharing. Thanks.