EARLY BELGIAN COLONIAL EFFORTS - The University of Texas at ...

in the overcrowded cities and factories, seemingly forgotten by God. Religion
eventually became a private, internal outlook within a man’s soul that was not
necessarily reflected in his actions and certainly not in his society, government, and
education.
The sense of faith and mission was still alive among many, however. If the
locals were not interested, the “unchurched” natives would be—and what of the
infidels? The perception of the inferiority of the animist religions of Africa and (to a
lesser extent) that of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam provided an all-too-easy target,
and perhaps justification, for imperialism. “Go therefore and make disciples.” 37
Christians might disagree among themselves about the Bible and who was a heretic but
clearly “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” 38 certainly applied to non-Christians. These two
concepts drove the missionary zeal that justified a purer non-economic and political
rationale for colonization. If the industrialists and their economic investments needed to
be protected, how much more would the men and women of God?
The secularization of Europe brought with it a broadening of the applications of
scientific inquiry. As the scientific method began to be applied outside the more rigid
disciplines of mathematics, physics, and chemistry, the apparent randomness or at least
unpredictability of nature and man began to be felt. The early work produced by
Erasmus Darwin 39 on acquired characteristics and their evolutionary aspects and the
between Religion and Secularism in Europe: A Commentary on Modern German History, 1517-1939
(London: Faber and Faber, 1946).
37 Mathew 28.19 RSV.
38 “No salvation outside the church”
39 Erasmus King-Hele Desmond Darwin, The Essential Writings of Erasmus Darwin (London:
MacGibbon & Kee, 1968).
28